#41 - Product Management in an economic downturn
The global economy is in a slump. Businesses are feeling the heat, with many companies having to reduce their staff levels and cut back on operations. It's not easy to be a product manager in these times, but there are ways you can keep your job and still be successful!
Read on for my ideas on how to do it:
Sharpen your Product Sense
Product sense is the ability to make good product judgments regardless of domain and amount of information given.
It’s a good combination of User empathy, Domain understanding, Design thinking and Creative problem-solving.
In the early stages of your product, you’re likely to have a very clear picture of what the user experience should be. You can see it in your head and feel it in your heart. But as time goes on, and you start to build out more features, how do those ideas hold up?
Listen more intently than ever to customers—and get them involved at every stage of development. Talk with people who use your product regularly; ask them if their experience has changed over time.
Have a clear answer to the questions below
What problem is it solving?
Who has this problem?
Who are we competing against?
How are they solving this problem differently?
How was the current experience using this product?
Compare yourself to competition and again ask
What do we have in common?
In what ways are they different?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of each solution?
Why do some customers prefer us over them, and them over us?
Prioritize Work That Impacts The Bottom Line
As a business shifts its mindset from growth to profitability, product leaders will need to adjust the criteria they use to prioritize product investments. There are three primary criteria you should use:
Relation to the financial outcome — will we be able to directly tie this investment to a direct financial outcome?
Measurability of impact — how easily can we demonstrate the success or failure of this investment?
The immediacy of impact — how quickly will this investment have an impact?
Kill the mile-wide and an-inch-deep approach
Don’t start a new area of the product if you can’t build it with depth. Instead, focus on getting the next level depth in the key areas that have large adoption.
Instead of “building out everything,” pick the targets most likely to drive results. Depending on your business, this is likely to be the highest visibility pages or your core workflows.
Demonstrate value to your existing customers
It’s a downturn and the company needs to preserve cash, We are no longer in growth mode and it’s not about competitive differentiation to win more. It’s about the retention of existing customers and keeping renewals coming in.
Focus on existing customers. Not competitors. Not new customers. Solve the biggest pain points of your current base. Focus on what will help with renewals.
Customers will be extremely cost-conscious in a recession, so it’s important to ensure that your product offers a clear value proposition. Showcase the ROI of your product, as well as a demonstrable ROI that your economic buyer can showcase in their organization.
Ultimately the key outcome you need to drive for your company is to Get to default alive or default investable, a term coined by Paul Graham in this essay several years ago.