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May 8, 2015 By Siobhan Leave a Comment

Product Management: How can you make sure investors love your strategy?

What Investors Care About?

Investors hate missing out on a great opportunity but equally they fear making a bad investment. For Product Management it is essential that they consider the needs of this crucial stakeholder.

So what are some of the things that investors think about when investing in product companies…

  • The challenge the product is trying to address and the evidence you have captured that this is a challenge the market wants solved
  • The size of the market opportunity
  • Any early traction you have obtained for your product
  • Your articulation of the value you bring to the market and how you will monetise this value
  • Why your business is uniquely different and how you compete with others?
  • Why you think people will be compelled to buy from you? Who your buyers are and what do they care about?
  • What team is in place to execute on the product strategy and how effective are this team?
  • Your strategy for marketing communications and sales
  • Your strategy for partnering with others to gain market traction or to execute on your product strategy

If this is what investors want to understand about your business, then how much attention do the leaders in your business, including Product Management give these areas?

As someone who has helped startups with their business plans and product strategy I understand that to capture the interest of the investor community it is hugely important to articulate the growth opportunity for your business through a business plan and associated Product Strategy.

Articulating the market opportunity and your value proposition for each target market is crucial. Clearly representing the challenge you address for your target market, capturing insights from this market and understanding how you will capture market interest to drive revenue growth is essential to ensure you get the kick-start of investment you need to scale your business.

Strategy is based on a differentiated customer value proposition. Satisfying customers is the source of sustainable value creation.” 

Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Strategy Maps)

Of course your Product Strategy needs to consider areas such as your mission and vision (with associated metrics of success), segmented market opportunity, your pricing strategy, your positioning of value for each target market, your competitive differentiation, any partnership strategy and a link to any sales and marketing strategies. You also need to highlight the key metrics that you will monitor to ensure product success – recurring revenue goals, customer acquisition rates, etc.

Everyone in the organisation needs to have sight of the key objectives (OKRs or SMART metrics of success) that the business is aiming to achieve at a high level so that they can define and align their own metrics of success to drive these corporate objectives.

A company that has captured initial investment through a clearly defined business plan and product strategy will move quickly to focus on the execution of this plan – hiring engineers, marketers and sales personnel. Keeping these resources aligned to deliver on the promises made to investors is now crucial!

It is really important that you can demonstrate to an investor that everyone in the business is aligned around the product strategy and that you can show how cross functional goals and initiatives are aligned. So it is important to define clear corporate goals and objectives that can be cascaded throughout the business. This ensures that you:

  • Create an aligned and collaborative organization that shares a common understanding of how the business will create value
  • Ensure the organization remains focused on corporate strategic objectives
  • Maximize ROI for corporate resources and ensure all resources are delivering effectively
  • Support decision making for all employees
  • Enable Sales and Marketing to clearly position the products and solutions to the target market and thereby drive revenue growth

How can you make sure you are investor ready?

Whether you are a startup or SME you should take the time to ensure that you have captured the right insights from the market to create a clear and compelling Business Plan and Product Strategy.

There are so many things that Investors care about but you need to focus on what is key in the context of your industry.

I have recently spent time running strategic insight gathering and value proposition workshops with companies across multiple industry sectors. The exercise has been enlightening for everyone – particularly those companies that have spent a lot of time focusing on the “execution” rather than the “strategic” side of product management and for those companies that have a requirement for near term investment. These workshops support the company with the insights that are needed to create a compelling product strategy.

Contact me siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details on how your business can capture market insights to drive future opportunity.


Filed Under: Management Strategy, Marketing, Product Management, Product Manager, Product Mentor, Product Strategy, Product Strategy, Strategic Marketing Tagged With: Alignment, Business Plan, Collaborate, Customer, Investor, Market, Product Management, Product Manager, Product Mentor, Product Strategy, Strategy, Value Proposition

November 21, 2014 By Siobhan

5 Steps to Deeper Customer Insight

Market Insight
Product Manager
Product Strategy
Capturing Market Insight for Product Strategy

Why your Product Strategy needs to be based on deep market insight

As a Product Manager does market insight simply involve letting your existing customers dictate what they would like to see in the product? Sometimes, more influential customers (those with a strong contribution to overall revenue) can drive product strategy.  However, because one large company asks for something does not mean that there are lots of customers with this same need.  Individual customers generally have little concern for the needs of other customers.

It is easy to lose sight of market demand if you are too focused on your own product. If your product strategy requires that you deliver a broad-based market-driven offering then focusing on individual customer demands may not help you to achieve this. It is more likely to drive you down a services route.

Customers can provide lots of useful insights related to their use of the  product and what they would like to see in our product. However, there are steps you can follow to proactively capture deeper customer insight, enabling you to focus on the broader market.

5 Step Insight2Value Process – As a Product Manager:
  • Step 1: Capture Insights – Research and articulate data on your current business context, future market opportunities, buyer behaviours and competitive landscape
  • Step 2: Focus – Apply a methodology to help you to identify and prioritise key market opportunities that will drive revenue and enable you to clearly articulate your service/product/solution offering for these markets
  • Step 3: Position – Create a positioning statement that enables you to differentiate in a competitive landscape
  • Step 4: Validate – Apply Voice of the Customer (VoTC) techniques to enable you to validate your market hypothesis through qualitative and quantitative research
  • Step 5: Communicate – Create a compelling message that can be used in a targeted marketing campaign. Supporting you to create a Marketing Plan that will drive engagement with your target markets
High Performing Strategic Marketing

My approach is consultative and collaborate. Therefore, I strongly believe in approaches that help your business to align the disciplines of product management, engineering, sales and marketing. I have the foundations and understanding of how products are designed and engineered. I know the importance of an aligned approach across the organisation.

For those of you in the Technology Sector, everything I do will help you to create relevant business requirements (Business Epics) for the product or solution development backlog – aligning product management/strategic marketing and solution development (engineering).

Remember: “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling him. Companies need to take a customer-first perspective to succeed…”

Peter Druker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Checkout the Insights2Value approach to support your business to drive insights that will add real value.

Filed Under: Marketing, Product Management Tagged With: Customer, Insight, Market, Product Manager, Strategy, Value Proposition

May 15, 2014 By Siobhan

Articulating your Value Proposition – Not Just for Startups

The Challenge

As someone who has helped startups with their business plans I understand that to capture the interest of the investor community it is hugely important to articulate a compelling product strategy and value proposition. Clearly representing the problem or need you address for your target market, listening to your target customers and understanding how you will drive revenue growth is essential to ensure you get the kick-start of investment you need to scale your business.

Strategy is based on a differentiated customer value proposition. Satisfying customers is the source of sustainable value creation.” 

Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Strategy Maps)

Business plans typically only get shared with a targeted group – generally the CEO and potential investors. The continued articulation of the value proposition within the company, especially as the number of new employees grows, can be ad-hoc at best.

A company that has captured initial investment through a clearly defined business plan will move quickly to focus on the execution of this plan – hiring engineers, marketers and sales personnel. As time progresses and they learn more about their target market they may change their initial corporate strategy and re-evaluate their initial hypotheses of what the customer needs. Somewhere along the line their value proposition changes but often this is not captured or re-communicated clearly to everyone in the organization.

Once the company begins to execute the business plan different dynamics will occur across the organization. The background and focus of the engineering team will mean that they will generally position the product strategy from a technical standpoint, often failing to understand or demonstrate the “business value” of what they are creating. Marketing will battle to understand the technical complexities of the product and will fail to create compelling positioning material. Sales will struggle without a clear view of the target market, the value the company brings or the product’s unique selling points. Without a defined value proposition the company will struggle to position the product strategy and potential opportunities will be missed.

Articulating a compelling value proposition as part of your product strategy allows you to:

  • Create an aligned and collaborative organization that shares a common understanding of how the business will create value
  • Ensure the organization remains focused on corporate strategic objectives
  • Maximize ROI for corporate resources and ensure all resources are delivering effectively
  • Support decision making for all employees
  • Enable Sales and Marketing to clearly position the products and solutions to the target market and thereby drive revenue growth
The Solution

Whether you are a startup or SME you should take the time to ensure that your Value Proposition is clearly articulated inside your business so that everyone can clearly represent it outside your business.

Product engineering, sales and marketing teams are often too busy delivering current project objectives to focus on the company’s value proposition and ensure that everyone is aligned around a common message.

Undertaking this exercise takes time and focus from the Product Manager or Strategic Marketer.

IntegratedThinking can help through a short-term engagement that will provide tools and methodologies to support your teams to:

  • Understand the market segment you are addressing
  • Review and define the value proposition for each of your target customer segments
  • Articulate this value proposition to the wider team with clarity
  • Validate this value proposition with your target market
  • Support the marketing team to articulate this value proposition through corporate messaging

“Working with Siobhan enabled us to really understand the market we are addressing and the problems and needs of our customers – we learned to recognize the huge benefits that can be achieved from an “outside in” approach to product management. As a result, we have strengthened our value proposition”

Bill Walsh, CEO Aspire
The Approach

The initial consultation is free, helping your to articulate your requirements. I will then provide a project proposal for review and approval that will articulate what needs to be done, how long it will take and how much it will cost.  In a busy environment, where the time of your key resources is precious, you need someone who has done this before and can drive the project to completion.

Please feel free to give me a call or contact me via email and I will be happy to discuss this further.

Contact: email siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details

I have over 30 years of commercial experience with over
15 of these in strategy development with SMEs from across
multiple sectors.
I have experience of marketing, sales and product strategy
and use the many transferrable skills that I developed in the
technology sector to work with SMEs from across multiple
industry sectors. I focus specifically on key elements of
strategic marketing and product & service strategy.

Since the establishment of my consultancy business in October 2013 I have been providing in-house mentoring to scaling companies.


Filed Under: Innovation, Product Management Tagged With: Business Analyst, CEO, Customer, Innovation, Strategy, Value Proposition

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