A B2B Product Management Story
Shreyas Doshi
ex-Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo. Startup advisor. Coaching PMs through my courses.
Once upon a time, there was.... a new product idea ????
What happens next:
- PM diligently talks to customers about whether such a product will solve their problems ??
- All customers say “yes” ??
- PM reports findings to Executive team, gets staffing for the product ??
- First version launched ??
- Hardly any customer adopts it ??
2/
At the first Product Review post-launch:
- PM directs attention towards positives, says “Here’s what we’ve learned”
- Learnings usually include “Our MVP isn’t sufficient. Need to make it easier to implement/adopt. Need features X, Y, Z”
- PM gets the mandate to build said features
3/
Fast forward 2 or 3 quarters:
- Features X, Y, Z built
- But adoption is still anemic
4/
At the next Product Review:
- Sales and Marketing start getting implicated
- PM says: “We know from talking to customers that we have the right product. We need to improve our Go-To-Market strategy”
- The Executives and the PM are “pot-committed” at this point
- Ideas about how to better sell the product are discussed: reduce prices, cross-sell, bundle, start email campaigns, re-organize the Sales team, etc.
- Changes are made
5/
Fast forward 2 or 3 quarters:
- Adoption still anemic
- By this time, original PM has left the team
- A new PM joins. Starts with a “customer listening tour” in first 90 days
- Identifies issues that the previous PM missed or ignored
- Presents new findings and recommendations to the Executive team
- Gets the mandate to execute on revised plan
6/
Now what?
- Go back up to Step 2
- Repeat these steps a couple more times & then....
7/
Ultimately:
- Executive team decides to sunset the product
- Learnings are captured and shared widely in the org
- "We haven't failed, we have learned"
- Of course, Edison is quoted at some point??
8/
So, what really happened here?
Many possible reasons for this saga, but the most common ones:
(A) The product should not have been built in the first place
(B) The original product was ill-conceived and all subsequent choices/pivots had to inherit this original sin
(B) has been covered elsewhere in Product Management literature, so let’s talk about (A) today in what remains of this article.
9/
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.”
The Focusing Illusion, adapted to the business world:
“Nothing in business is as important as it actually is, while you are talking about it.”
That is the REAL problem.
10/
When you talk to a customer about a specific problem, they will naturally “focus” on that problem, at the exclusion of other problems they (or their business overall) is facing.
With this focus comes a disproportionate emphasis on solving THAT specific problem.
Hence the customer’s initial excitement about your possible product solution.
Hence also the tepid response and adoption once you’ve built said product.
11/
The focus of your early discussion was on the problem, solution space, and willingness to buy.
But when the customer is FORCED to prioritize the implementation of your product vs. every other problem they are facing it is no longer a theoretical “would you use this?” exercise
12/
How to overcome this?
First, be objective. A surprisingly high proportion of PMs view customer interviews as a way to confirm or justify their product ideas or to solidify an Executive's mandate.
Don’t pooh-pooh this as not applicable to you.
None of us are immune to this.
14/
Second, after you’ve talked to a customer about a specific problem and possible solutions you could build, ask them to stack rank the problem being discussed vs. the other problems they are trying to solve for their business and their organization.
This is where the real truth will emerge.
This Customer Problems Stack Rank (CPSR) will act as a great test of the TRUE priority of the customer problem & the product solution you’re discussing.
If you can, take this a step further. Get the CPSR from multiple Personas touched by your product: VP Support, VP Marketing, Head of IT, ....
15/
A surprisingly high number of failed B2B products shouldn’t have been built in the first place.
This isn't Hindsight Bias.
To the discerning product eye, this can be quite clear upfront, before a single line of code is written.
16/
In our industry, “trying to find Product-Market Fit” is viewed as a rational, noble, laudable effort. It's an Apple Pie Position.
There's nothing inherently wrong with taking years to seek Product-Market Fit.
But recognize that it need not be the default way of building products.
17/
While Good Product Managers detect this later in the product’s lifecycle, Great Product Managers can determine this well in advance.
They do it with a critical evaluation of what truly matters for customers. This is hardly magic, but it is common sense that isn’t common.
18/
Being a Product Manager is a major responsibility.
The rigor in your thinking and the purity of your intentions can dictate whether tens of thousands of hours of Eng, Design, Ops, Marketing, Sales,.. collective efforts end up as a sheer waste or lead to something meaningful.
19/
As with most hard things in life and business, there’s no silver bullet here.
But just as it does in life, the Focusing Illusion can and does affect us in business. It's one of the major culprits behind products that were actually DOA but no one recognized them as such early on.
20/
So whether you’re a PM, a product leader, or an Executive:
Understand the Focusing Illusion, recognize its power, remind yourself that you aren’t immune to it, & use tools like the Customer Problems Stack Rank to help yourself and your customers combat it.
All the best!
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Founder The Garage | Global Executive E.ON Drive??
1 年Christina Thekla Zacharia Christos Spentzos Sebastian Schmieder Lea Brünker ??René Schr?der
Manager, Product Management at Smartsheet
1 年Ashley Angell
Strategic B2B SaaS Product Leader and Advisor with legal tech and compliance domain expertise
1 年PTSD sweats from this article. Here's hoping we all "don't pooh-pooh" these insights and apply them in practice (she says, rolling up sleeves and going into the re-listening of the VoC interviews).
Executive Director, Loxahatchee River District; Co-Founder, Fish Rules, LLC
1 年Well said. As a potential buyer of solutions, it is easy to get excited by a fun idea. But, in a zero sum world, a fun idea doesn't justify the funds.
Software development operational excellence practitioner and consultant
1 年I think there is a yawning gap between customer research and customer development in terms of effectiveness. Everyone lies, mostly to ourselves, and we often don't really know what makes us do what we do, and certainly even less why we do it. Bob Moesta's JTBD 'Switch Interview' tool asks people to tell you about their journey in switching products because he KNOWS that they don't really know exactly why or how they arrived to that point. If you go to a customer and offer to sit with them and collaborate to solve an aspect of a challenge they have by building and validating a solution with them, AND then they agree to buy it from you at a rate that you know would work for your business, then you have a much more solid starting point for a commercial product. After you do it with a few customers, you can be fairly certain that you have found a solution to a real need. The fact is that a lot of companies, particularly companies that have very strong revenues, are perfectly comfortable gambling rather than finding out for themselves what works and what doesn't before investing into building new offerings.