B2B: Three Twists on Traditional Product Management
Meeting the needs of a market and building products people love are universal principles.
However, those principles take on a few unique twists in B2B (B2B2C).
Here are three that should always be top-of-mind.
1. Product Intent
The dialogue in the product management profession starts and ends largely with “build amazing products customers love.”
No argument there! However, if you’re not building those “amazing products” with broader intent, your risk of missing the value mark goes way up.
In B2B, you have to build products that make people better at their job. But it doesn’t stop there. You have to make them better at their job in ways that have strategic value to their organization.
In other words, the customer’s C-suite needs a lot of reasons to love your product too. As long as they deliver measurable outcomes that impact something strategic, you’re golden!
2. Gathering Business Requirements
Business requirements are a ubiquitous term in product management. The artifacts however, tell a different story. Most business requirements are largely written through the lens of the product, making them more user and product requirements than unbiased customer business requirements.
In B2B, business requirements have to be gathered from the top of the customer organization down. Back to #1, it’s the easiest way to guarantee your products are making people better at job tasks that have strategic value all the way up the food chain to the C-suite where purchase and renewal decisions are made!
3. Solving Problems & Defining Solutions
When it’s all said and done, our products have to solve problems. In B2B though, we have to solve problems that result in business outcomes with measurable value beyond the users, per items 1 and 2 above.
In B2B, quantifiable business outcomes and solutions are synonymous.
If you’re only solving user-problems without measurable business outcomes as your bullseye, chances are you’re solving nice-to-have problems with little value beyond the users.
If you want to deliver, market and sell B2B solutions that hit the value mark every time, there’s only one place to learn it. The School of Product Management.
