Business Strategies (Products, Technology, Marketing & Sales)

As product companies we build products to meet a need out there. Along the way, we follow the standard practice of reaching out to existing customers, prospects, experts in the field to get validation of the problem, our proposed solution, market, pricing etc. But having met someone (physically or online) and requested feedback, accepting the feedback is a skill that […]

All products need validation before they are built to ascertain the real problem they solve. They need early supporters/evangelists, after they are built, to prove the worth in the marketplace and to cross the proverbial chasm. Getting people to try your product is tough but let us assume you were lucky and found some early […]

A day-in-a-life of a Product Manager involves a variety of interactions. sometimes it is customers sometime it is the marketing team and in large parts  it could be the engineering team. As a product manager one is required to seek out information from one channel, synthesize it and feed other channels. It could be understanding […]

Bringing a product to the market is difficult. Convincing others to buy the product or use the product is even more. It is critical that the positioning of the product and messaging the value it delivers is done right. The Value Proposition of a product or service has a major impact on the success of […]

Product Demos start much before the product has come into being. Startups would do well to follow Steve Blank’s customer development, in arriving at the definition of what the product would be. While most of the demos with prospective customers would be around the problem, the degree of pain, day-in-a-life of the end-user and the benefits of your […]

Product Management teams have always had to deal with competing priorities when it came to defining the roadmap and what goes into it. A product roadmap is fluid and evolves as the customer base expands or based on larger market demands. It is easy to get into a product features’ arm race with the competition in […]

An oven, no matter how good it is can just be a shiny object. Its value is realized only based on the cake that comes out of that oven. The cake in turn is dependent on the recipe, the ingredients you use and how you cook the cake. A cake bought from a bakery, on […]

I was having this interesting chat with a salesperson today as I was trying to help get him hired to a software company. As we went through all the details of the product he posed this interesting question to me. How complete do you think is the product? 50%? 60%? I had heard this question before […]