Strategic and Tactical Requirements: Spaghetti or Layer Cake?
When you combine strategic and tactical requirements, you can end up with a bowl of spaghetti or a layer cake. The layer cake approach makes the relationship between strategic and tactical requirements simple for everyone to understand and, believe it or not, a more appetizing dish for the masses. The Playbook:
Segmenting Markets and Quantifying New Product Ideas
Segmenting markets is the most important thing your organization can do because it answers the question, WHO are our target customers? In other words, your market segments are the basis for all critical decisions because they form the common bulls-eye that focuses all product, marketing and sales activities to common customer needs and goals.
Market segmentation is especially important when quantifying new product ideas because it doesn’t force you to rely on sales forecasts or sales commitments which are highly volatile. When your target markets aren’t clearly defined (segmented), every product idea looks like a great opportunity because, on the surface, it has unlimited potential. The Playbook: […]
Demonstrating Solutions vs. Products
In many cases, the product silos that exist internally become transparent to your buyers during the sales cycle, creating the perception you’ve got a bunch of fragmented products instead of integrated solutions. Longer and more difficult sales cycles lie ahead if this is the case. The Playbook:
Three tactics that will help you sell a high-value business solution instead of a bunch of tactical products.
Five Steps to Solutions-Driven Product Management
Here’s what makes solutions-driven product management such a challenge. The vast majority of product companies are a mishmash of products brought together through mergers and/or acquisitions. Each one throws another silo into the fire that further fragments strategies, product plans, R&D, marketing and sales. The $64,000 question is, “how do you transform multiple disparate products into business solutions to achieve a whole that’s more valuable than the sum of the parts?” The Playbook:
Market Problems vs. Customer Goals: Gaining More Valuable Insights
If you’re in a product management, product marketing or sales enablement role, consider replacing the phrase market problems with target customer goals. It will remove any blinders you might have and open your eyes to a whole new narrative that’ll help you deliver, market and sell solutions with more strategic value. The Playbook: Here’s how it works. […]
One-Off Features: The Price of Committing Too Often
If you’re a software company, committing to one-off features just to win a single deal has been a long-standing business practice. Making a habit of it, and worse yet, getting good at it, is the equivalent of throwing your company into a death spiral then perfecting your spin. Here’s why. Every time you commit development resources to a one-off project, you’re simultaneously mortgaging another piece of your future and further handicapping your ability to compete in your most lucrative markets. The Playbook: […]