If Your Product Strategy Doesn’t Piss Somebody Off, It’s Not Very Good!

Don’t get me wrong. The goal of your product strategy isn’t to piss people off.

It’s to demonstrate that your product direction is aligned with the goals and priorities of your target customers, current customers included.

It’s to demonstrate that you have a vision beyond the next release or two for how you’re going to make customers better at mission-critical processes that are strategic to their business.

It’s to demonstrate that you know how to monetize your vision and execute a strategy that grows revenue, wallet share and customer retention.

Here’s the rub.

If your portfolio strategy is set to make a big impact in one or two areas, by default, it’s not going to have much of an impact in a lot of other areas.

That’s the part that pisses people off because you’re expected to be everything to everyone…and be good at it!

Product Strategy In the Ideal World…

• Sales wants your product strategy aligned to its pipeline.
• Customer success wants a strategy that quiets the squeaky wheels.
• Engineering wants a product strategy that allows them to use their technical savvy.
• Marketing wants a strategy that makes it easier to differentiate your value.
• Senior executives want a product strategy that brings in new logos and entices existing customers to give you more money.

If your target markets are clearly defined and you understand what’s driving those organizations from the top down, your product portfolio strategy should energize sales, marketing, customer success, engineering and executives (80/20 rule in play).

The worst move you can make the “peanut butter” strategy where you spread small incremental improvements across your entire portfolio without making a significant value impact in any one area.

Great! No one’s PO’d but no one’s energized either. It’s a recipe for mediocrity.

Don’t settle for a mediocre portfolio strategy just to keep people from getting mad.

Contact us to learn how a portfolio approach to product strategy can energize your organization and strengthen product management’s ability to consistently deliver solutions with strategic value.

Originally published at https://www.proficientz.com on March 24, 2021.