Thread by @shreyas

A B2B Product Management Story: on discovering problems that customers actually care about

Very visual story thread👇🏾

Our story starts with a new product idea

PM diligently talks to customers about whether this product will solve their problems

Customers say yes!

PM reports findings to the executive team

There's excitement

Staffing obtained 🙌🏾

🎉🎊

Hardly any customer adopts it

At the next product review:

PM directs attention towards positives:
“Here’s what we’ve learnt”

Learnings usually include:
“Our MVP isn’t sufficient. We need to make it easier to implement & adopt. We need features X, Y, Z”

PM gets mandate to build said features

Adoption is still anemic😐

At next product review:
Sales & Marketing start getting implicated

PM says:
“We know from talking to customers that we have the right product. We just need to improve our Go-To-Market strategy.”

Executives & the PM are “pot-committed” at this point.

Ideas about how to better sell the product are discussed: reduce prices, cross-sell, bundle, email campaigns, re-organize the Sales team, etc.

Changes are made.

Still no growth😟

By this time, original PM has left the team

A new PM joins. Starts with a “customer listening tour” in first 90 days

Identifies some additional issues

Presents new findings & recommendations to the executive team

Gets mandate to execute on revised plan

Now what?

Go back a few tweets

Repeat the steps a couple more times

More things shipped

Still no growth

And then...

Ultimately:

Executive team decides to sunset the product

Learnings are captured and shared widely in the org

"We haven't failed, we have learnt"

Of course, Edison is quoted at some point

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 & the later pivots had to inherit this original error

Let's look at (A)👇🏾

The product solved *a* problem

But not *the* problem

Often, product teams want to be in the top right quadrant

But, there's more to the puzzle

We need to understand this

And remember it

Daniel Kahneman said:

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it”

This is the Focusing Illusion.

The Focusing Illusion, in business:

“Nothing in business is as important as it actually is, while you are talking about it.”

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.

A good solution here:
Customer Problems Stack Rank (CPSR)

Ask the customer to stack rank the problem vs. the other problems they are trying to solve for their business & org.

Also get the CPSR from other personas involved: VP Support, VP Mktg...

You are now closer to truth.

The lesson

Huge thanks to @shaunemiller for collaboration on this thread.

The excellent visuals are all Shaun.

Any mistakes are entirely mine.

Consider following Shaun at:
@shaunemiller

B2B Product Management Story, in 1 tweet

Back to the top of this thread:

Want more details on solutions?

Check out the original non-visual thread, from this tweet onwards:

If your B2B product can consistently:

A) Prevent the buyer from getting fired, or

B) Help the buyer get promoted, or

C) Very directly earn them more revenue

you might be on to something big.

More tips 👇🏾

How will the buyer get promoted?

A thread on thinking about B2B products

Think like a marketer

Understand the competition

Be rigorous with segmentation

Be intentional about positioning

Probably the most important thing to remember about most B2B products

Working on B2B products at a product-focused company is fun for product people who get energized by business impact *and* want to build superb products

The Focusing Illusion is one of 7 cognitive biases of product managers and product teams.

Check out this thread to learn about the other cognitive biases and increase odds of product success:

If we are talking about product success, it's important to recognize the role of the market.

A short thread exploring this:

Executing well on an important problem is a necessary but not sufficient condition for business impact. Should also have a rigorous strategy. You don't *have* to write it down, though it often does help align the team better.

A thread on product strategy:

At times, the problem isn't that we drew incorrect conclusions from talking to customers.

The problem is that we don't talk to customers much, if at all.

A thread describing the reason why & what to do about it: