Assessing Opportunity
So what does it take to bring a new product to market? Well, a lot of things. But it all starts somewhere; and that somewhere is assessing the potential market opportunity.
Really, this is about constructing a business - however lightweight or heavy you and your organization need it to be - and making the appropriate decisions early on.
I’ve been reading through the Product Manager’s Desk Reference these last couple of weeks, and it has really started to round out my skill set as a product manager. It’s one thing to be able to take instruction top-down (from your CEO or Board of Directors) and bring a product to market that they say needs to do, “x, y, and z.” But it’s another to fully understand the product and how it aligns with the opportunity / customer need and overall business strategy.
When you are in a start-up, you always walk a very fine line between overkill and getting 3-4 months in to something and realize you’ve missed key things. It’s important not to rush, but it’s really important not to skip over key steps.
So I look at this step in product development / definition as identifying a few key things, that aren’t too different from the Party of Four model I’ve identified in the past.
It all starts with identifying the problem itself. This is essentially stating the obvious - what the opportunity is. For example, maybe it’s the fact that people always complain about chewing gum never lasting long enough and always losing its taste far too quickly.
The second aspect is identifying the market segments / target customers for whom the problem will be solved. I have this clearly identified within the Party of Four model as “market segments.” In keeping with the chewing gum example (in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m referring directly to Stride gum). Now, this isn’t your parents gum that’s been around for 50 years, so I would pinpoint their target customer as a younger crowd - maybe 18-40 or something like that.
You could go on about additional characteristics of their target market - more than likely it’s predominantly Male if you look at the front page of their website. More of a professional type than blue-collar worker, so they are probably looking for folks that are college-educated, etc… Anyway, you get the picture.
Then you move in to how the problem is going to be solved. Remember, the problem is chewing gum not lasting long enough - so the problem is solved by Stride, probably using a proprietary formula / technology or unique composition in order to allow each piece of gum to actually last longer than other competitors in the market.
You should also discuss (provided the company is larger than one product) how the product aligns to their parent company (Cadbury Adams) as it is right in the candy / gum / etc… grouping of products. They already have a line of gums in Trident, etc… so they have to be careful not to cannibalize their existing business by marketing very carefully and effectively.
Now that you have gotten through all that, you need to clearly assess why the opportunity is attractive at all - obviously, if the marketing is successful and this product catches on, everyone wants to have their gum last longer. Nothing pisses me off more when I pay money for a pack of Juicy Fruit and each stick of gum lasts about 30 seconds.
Identifying key competitors takes the Party of Four model a little bit further than what it is today. Of course, there are a lot of players in the chewing gum space - Trident, Juicy Fruit, Bubbalicious, etc… So - Stride would probably remove any direct competitors (like bubble gum manufacturers) and stick to a more everyday / lifestyle type of gum. It’s not a breath freshener play - Excel and Clorets may not be viewed as direct competitors. This needs to be evaluated carefully in order to help ascertain what’s going to be unique about the product in the market place for the target customers - which leads to a strong value proposition.
When creating high-level / rough financials, it’s critical to be conservative. Don’t go out guns blazing and state you are going to clear 20mm in first-year revenue, because there is just now way. Get your cost measurements under control and start to figure out how you are going to price the market and how many units you think you are going to move in the first fiscal year. Someone from Finance should be a part of your cross-functional product team, so they can really help you out here to get the numbers right - especially if you are like me and you’re not the strongest in accounting and finance.
But most folks with any business experience should be good enough to sketch our a strawman model, which is all that’s needed at this point.
Remember to keep in mind who the audience is for this type of document - and that it’s going to keep evolving and changing as you go throughout the evolution of fleshing out the business case with other cross-functional team members, senior management, and possibly the Board of Directors.
But don’t let folks tell you this isn’t important - it is. Even if it seems like a lot of work and overhead, this business case approach (even though it’s really rough sketches at the beginning) will help you out a great deal down the road.
Changing Product Direction
From time to time you need to tweak and change your product’s direction. Essentially, this means that you’ll be trying to work in new things, but also change existing things at the same time.
So, how does this impact the organization? Well, in a lot of ways. Namely, it’s the swapping and changing of certain key features that currently exist and changing those out for new features that better match the revised vision.
Really, this is just all about one thing: alignment. Competitors will come and go, but to make a product truly great, it has to align to your overarching vision - the identification of the solution for how to solve your chosen market problem(s).
Now, in theory this is very simple. Turn some knobs here, change out some labels over there - easy, right? Well, not really.
Successfully shifting a product from one chosen strategy to another (regardless of the size of that shift) can face some adversity within the business. People are inherently adverse to change, which is really where the challenge lies. Everyone will be OK with things until features start to get severely changed (or, in many cases, dropped) because they may feel things are working out really well as they are - or maybe, the didn’t understand that a product strategy shift would mean so many new and/or different things.
So, how can you as a product manager help to ease this transition to the new strategy you may have created (or not)? You kind of can’t - just let it run it’s course. Clear things up for people as much and as regularly as possible.
The other thing you can do is communicate early and often. This is something I struggle with because I always ask myself, “why are people interested in what I have to say?” I am slowly coming to the realization that it has nothing to do wit me as a person, but me as a product owner. If you are in charge of the product (and thus, the associated strategy) that’s changing, everyone will be interested in what you have to say.
Why? Because it directly affects them and what they do.
Make the change - buy in to that change. Execute it. Remove features, change features - sometimes more drastic changes are required. It will make the product feel awkward. It will feel drastic, and in some cases downright wrong. But you have to buy-in and you have to commit. Otherwise, you are failing to properly execute the product strategy you believe will make it successful in the end.
