A rapid energetic often improvised verbal outpouring; especially one that is part of a comic performance.

– Merriam-Webster definition of “riffing”

I once delivered an improvised and somewhat comical keynote speech on product differentiation to the Ottawa Product Management Association.

Following some good presentation advice, I spent 45 minutes telling stories:  stories about Apple, stories about my experience at Nortel with a product called COMPANION, stories about sugar, and stories about stairs, elevators and escalators. 

My objective was to convince the audience that product managers have a central role in giving customers a reason to choose their product. Marketing can communicate that reason, but the product and the experience around it have to deliver.

After sharing my stories and a bad joke at the organizer’s expense, I wrapped up with seven pieces of advice. They remain useful questions for product managers and the leadership teams deciding where to invest.

  1. Differentiation isn’t so much a goal as an outcome of customer-driven design (thank-you Jony Ive).

    Start with what customers are trying to accomplish and where they encounter difficulty. A product that makes an important task easier, more reliable or less costly gives customers a reason to choose it. Being different for its own sake offers no such guarantee.

  2. Not all competitive advantage comes from the product itself. If your product is a commodity, like sugar, focus on cost, operational excellence or customer service. The underlying product may be similar, but availability, delivery, convenience, and the experience of doing business with you can still influence the buying decision. Be clear about where your advantage comes from and invest accordingly.

  3. A marketing budget can't compensate for a product that doesn't deliver. Product managers have a central role in developing a differentiated value proposition (in other words, it doesn’t matter how big your marketing budget is, sugar is still sugar!). They need input from marketing, sales, operations, and customer-facing teams. Together they need to answer two questions: why should a customer choose us, and can we consistently deliver on that promise?

  4. Gather customer input, but beware the tyranny of the lead customer. A large customer can provide valuable insight, and enough revenue to make every request feel like a priority. But designing around one account can pull your product away from the needs of the broader market. Before committing, ask whether a requested feature solves a common problem or creates a custom solution you will need to support.

  5. Customers don’t really know what they want (thank-you Steve Jobs). Customers can tell you about frustrations, unmet needs, and the workarounds they use to get things done. They may find it harder to pinpoint a solution that they haven't heard or seen before. Your job is to understand the problem, develop ideas, and give customers something concrete to react to. Listen carefully without expecting them to do the product development work.

  6. Use shorter feedback cycles to learn before committing too much. Lean innovation and agile design can help teams test assumptions and improve a product through customer feedback. An early release should help you learn what to do next, while still meeting appropriate standards for quality, reliability and customer trust. Decide what you need to learn and how the results will guide the next investment.

  7. Don’t obsess about being unique. Being differentiated means being meaningfully better for the customers you want to serve. You don’t have to outperform every competitor on every measure. You do need to understand which differences matter enough to influence a customer’s choice. A longer feature list is only useful if those features make the product more valuable.

And because I invoked Apple and Steve Jobs during my presentation I finished with “one more thing . . .”

Don’t just aspire to keep up with someone else’s great ideas.  The job of a product manager is to create something useful and differentiated through superior customer value and user experience.  Feature parity is feature parody.

For leadership teams, that means making choices about which customers to serve, which problems to solve and which capabilities deserve investment. Those choices should guide the product roadmap—and connect it to the organization’s broader strategy.

 

Is your team clear on where to compete and what deserves investment? Stratford helps leadership teams work through those choices through strategic planning and digital strategy.

 

This article was published more than 1 year ago. Some information may no longer be current.
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