If It Doesn’t Have Customer Value First, FAHGETTABOUDIT!
No matter what role you play—product management, product marketing, sales, customer onboarding, or account management—if your starting point isn’t quantifiable customer value, fuhgeddaboudit! Nothing else matters. Period. End of story.
I know firsthand how easy it is to get caught up in your own goals—corporate goals, sales targets, marketing KPIs, retention quotas. Before you know it, your view of what the market actually values is as clear as a foggy windshield. And then, getting every department to march in sync? It’s like herding caffeinated squirrels.
The fix? Align every part of the company to the customer’s most critical business goals (that are actually relevant to what you do) first. That way, instead of everyone running in different directions, they’re rowing the same boat, all going in the same direction.
Here’s what “customer value first” looks like for each customer-facing area.
Portfolio Strategy
Forget every product team working in their own little silo. A portfolio strategy starts with the customer’s top business priorities, and then every product becomes a lever for delivering value that actually moves the needle for them. In other words, you’re syncing priorities across the portfolio to the customer’s top business outcomes in an effort to collectively eliminate the biggest obstacles inhibiting their goals.
Product Management
Every feature, every roadmap decision, every investment—tied directly to user jobs that, when improved, create measurable benefits for the customer. No fluff, no filler, just impact.
Don’t start with products, start with user jobs that most need improvement and product priority decisions will be a lot easier.
Product Marketing
This is where the magic happens. Instead of pushing product features, tell your target customers exactly what’s on their minds and make your products the obvious solution that removes their biggest challenges, and boom—you’re a marketing genius.
Convince your target customers you know them as well as they know themselves. They’ll assume your products are great.
Sales & Pre-Sales
Same play as marketing, just in real-time. Listen, relate, and position your products as the key to meeting their goals by solving their problems. Easy, right?
Don’t be so anxious to bring products into the discussion. Listen long enough to create a clear value target for your products.
Customer Onboarding
This isn’t just a box to check—it’s a seamless extension of what started in product management and carried through marketing and sales. Help customers nail the specific job tasks that drive real impact, and they’ll stick around. They’ll buy more too!
Customer Success
Stop playing whack-a-mole with customer issues. Instead, take a strategic approach—figure out their business priorities, quantify what matters, and help them prioritize. Spoiler alert: not everything can be a #1 priority. A customer value first approach will help your customers see it that way too.
Senior Executives
Executives and investors will always set big goals—some realistic, some… let’s just say “aspirational.” What makes those goals easier to hit? Knowing exactly how much quantifiable value your company needs to deliver to the market to get there—and having an execution plan fully resourced to back it up.
Too often, customer value is an afterthought when setting company goals. Let’s flip the script—put customer value first, and everything else will become obvious. Otherwise, FAHGETTABOUDIT!
If you want the most customer value centric training courses for product management, product marketing, sales and customer success, contact us about a personalized workshop for your team. You’ll know exactly what good looks like for you.
