Strategy

Applying Product Management Principles to Small Business Development

1
47 days
by in Atlanta, Marketing, Product Management, Small Business, Strategy

In the course of nurturing our Atlanta crepe and catering startup, I find myself applying product management and principles and strategies to the development of the business.  I thought I’d share a few examples:

Segmentation: My wife’s perception of the business is that it is a “farmers’ market vendor,” but I prefer to think of it as a mobile crepe vendor.  We both recognize that her focus on farmer’s markets is a manifestation of her operations mindset.  In reality, farmer’s markets are a way to gain exposure to the marketplace and get one’s name out; the real profit is found in private event catering that affords a higher revenue stream.  We have implemented additional tactics to reach the previously unidentified segments of office personnel and wealthy party hosts.

Tactics and Strategy: Recognizing that party hosts and offices are a significant segments of the market that we need to account for, we implemented tactics to make sure we reach them.  Our website and SEO activities are being deployed to reach those searching for crepe parties, crepe catering, and crepes in Atlanta in general.  We’re slowly seeing results here, as we’ve had three private event inquiries in the last 6 weeks after zero in all previous weeks.

Partnerships: We are taking concentrated effort to reach out to friends with small businesses, with which we can imagine mutually beneficial relationship.  In this way, we’ll be able to extend our offering to provide a more complete solution to clients’ needs that we cannot solve on our own.  Over the next several months, we’re hoping to announce a few events in tandem with other related businesses.

Since the business is only six months old, there is plenty of ground left to cover!  However, I’m happy to recognize the value that product management provides in terms of marketing and positioning a small business.

“No Salespeople! I’ll call when I’m ready to buy.”

0
67 days
by in Marketing, Strategy

“No Salespeople!  I’ll call when I’m ready to buy.”

That’s the quote I heard in a B2B Marketing seminar at this weekend’s B2BCamp.  The quote was attributed to CIOs of major corporations, who are finding less and less time to be entertaining phone calls and visits from salespeople–even those who are trying to help them with real problems they’re facing daily.

Executives and decision makers have less than zero time.  When they have problems, they turn to Google.  It’s up to you to make sure you’re there when they go searching.  In the early stages, your marketing automation needs to be feeding that buyer subject matter expertise and thought leadership to help them understand the symptoms they’re seeing daily and recognize the core problem.  In the later stages, you need to be there with the appropriate product information and an easy way to transition to a sales representative.  But be certain, it’s all about the buyer.

This is profound.  And it’s the future.

Judy Mod and others call this being “buyer-centric.”  I call it knowing your target market and all the personas within the buyer team.  Sadly, my presentation with Kevin O’Malley–an earlier version of which, recorded without Kevin, is available here–was not offered at B2BCamp, but it would fit nicely into this narrative.  The personas relevant in this discussion aren’t necessarily the primary users of the product, but rather are the person interested in the purchase, influencers who need some sort of dashboard type data as output, and so on.  Modern B2B selling requires that the information needed by each be available and offered up on a platter at the right time.

If you don’t understand those buyer types, go out and listen to the market.  If you do, make sure you communicate them effectively inside your organization–and consider using personas to achieve that objective.

 

 

The Strategy Canvas

0
383 days
by in Product Management, Strategy, Uncategorized

I recently read a copy of the book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant.  As many have observed previously, this is a great source of inspiration and food for thought, and well worth the investment of time from product managers.

Blue Ocean strategy, in summary, involves examining the value proposition of a value or service to identify whether every item included is truly valued or could be eliminated, and whether any additional items adjacent to the offering could be included as a way to expand the footprint of the offering to serve additional parts of the market.

The most valuable tool I found in the book is the Strategy Canvas.  The strategy canvas is a graphical tool that represents the key value elements included in an offering, and comparing how multiple competitors position themselves to satisfy each of those key elements.  By including a “Red line” one can show where the current industry value curve sits, to provide additional perspective.  I’ve immediately found the technique useful in visualizing and describing how an already-specified product will compete and keeping focus on where to invest resources.  I look forward to applying this visualization technique to new-product development.

Sample Strategy Canvas



One of the book’s frequent criticisms is that the book doesn’t validate that commonly-cited trend-setters like Southwest Airlines or Cirque de Soleil achieved their success as a result of applying Blue-Ocean analysis and strategy, or whether they are simply easily illustrated using the book’s approach and techniques.  Scott Sehlhorst has suggested that the way to design a winning product in the Blue Ocean framework is to apply the same type of measurement to personas: measure the value each persona places on each value element, and from there design your offering around the value elements that concern the persona you are building your product for.  I recommend reviewing Scott’s post as a primer on how to apply this strategy framework proactively.

The anecdotes that illustrate the book’s key points are memorable and useful–one can easily use the stark contrasts between Cirque and its competitors, for example, as an analogy when discussing competitive strategy.  Since I was immediately able to put the book to use in my day-to-day work, before even finishing the last chapter, I can do nothing but recommend this title to other product managers.

 

 

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