WTF Is Product Strategy?
So WTF is Product Strategy anyway??
Let’s take a step back to look at the big picture.
What exactly is a Product Strategy?
Why do you need a Product Strategy?
What makes a good vs. bad Product Strategy?
How do you create a Product Strategy?
Founders have a vision.
When we speak to founders, they are able to articulate their vision succinctly. After all, that’s why they started the company in the first place!
Real-world experiences lead tech entrepreneurs to identify an industry problem and fix it. So when they talk to prospects, it’s natural for them to hone right in on pain points, empathize with how these challenges impact business, and expertly explain why their product is going to fix things. That’s why most companies have great early success with sales. It’s when the founders are directly involved with deals.
Challenges come with scale.
As companies grow, founders hire talented sales leaders, marketers, and technical wizards. They look for industry experience at competitors, established brands, and big-name Fortune 500 companies. This is common sense. You wouldn’t want people running your company with no knowledge of your industry.
But there’s a tradeoff. Instead of having someone who is passionate about the uniqueness of their idea, who wakes up every morning inspired to challenge the status quo and innovate… Now you have a team of people who see the product through the lens of years of industry experience.
From premium to commodity.
Your veteran industry team sees your product in terms of commonalities. They analyze strengths and weaknesses, pricing competition, feature comparisons, and market saturation. They naturally identify with buyers. And they try to create incentives for those buyers. They offer discounts and free trials and chop the product up into easily digestible SKUs that can be sold à la carte.
This is how the product gets commoditized.
Your initial sales meeting looks like this: The founder walks into the room and sells the entire product suite at a premium.
Now your sales meetings look like this: A sales rep walks into the room and sells one small feature at a heavy discount.
Sound familiar?
So what is Product Strategy?
Product Strategy is a roadmap to implement the founders’ vision. It’s a framework that focuses on the uniqueness of the product, what makes it different rather than the same. Here are the basic pieces:
Positioning. Distill the company vision into points that fit on the fingers of one hand. Founders never have more than 5 reasons for creating a company.
Competitive Intelligence. Understand where the market sees you, but don’t be limited by it.
Marketing Strategy. Create a narrative that illustrates the founders’ journey. Start with the big inspirational picture, then gradually narrow your focus to tech stacks and features and pricing.
Sales Strategy. Create sales materials (presentations, brochures, emails) that reinforce your Product Strategy. Take extra time to train your sales team with the stories, the color, and the passion that drove the creation of your company. And test them. Make them present the story back to you and make sure they internalize it.
Pricing & Metrics. If you find yourself having to win every deal on price, something has gone wrong. Go back and repeat steps 1-4. If you’ve done it correctly you should see deal size naturally rise and the need for negotiation and discounting fall. Once you have found your pricing sweet spot, create KPIs, quotas, and incentives based on demonstrated growth metrics.
What’s a good Product Strategy?
This is the simplest part. If you have a good Product Strategy, then your founders will be confident in each and every salesperson’s ability to tell the company story and close deals. And they’ll be excited about every post, ad, brochure, event, and press release, because marketing will be focused on their passion.
How do we create a winning Product Strategy?
It takes work. But, here at Antimatter Consulting, it’s the most incredibly fun and rewarding work. It’s where we get to tap into the souls of people we admire and help them to share their stories with the world. So stay tuned and walk with us as we discover what makes our family of clients special.
👉 Book a free consultation and start building your Product Strategy today!