AMA: BILL Senior Director of Product Management, Tara Wellington on Product Strategy

You have a few options in this scenario:  Early market maturity: Work to create and/or accelerate the market creation. For this to be a viable product strategy you need to have a product/market fit as well as a GTM approach that will allow you to find and penetrate early adopters. This strategy will also require the time/money to hold the company over as the market matures and gains strength. If you pursue this strategy, I would get clear on what the barrier is for customer adoption. Is the prob ...Read More

The two things you need to ensure that you can get your exec team on board with your strategy is (1) Clear communications plan (2) A strong, well researched factbase standing behind your strategy.  (1) For clear communications: Start your communications plans early! I bring my exec team in at the very beginning of the product strategy creation process. I hold a product strategy kickoff event to let everyone know we are embarking on a product strategy exercise. I share the timeline for completion ...Read More

I start confidence building with a product strategy before I even write the strategy. You want people to be bought into the process of developing the strategy - this will help them have high trust in the results of the process. Once they are aligned on the process, make sure to include them through the development process, and then through the socialization of the product strategy itself.  If you have done this process well, you should be aligned at the start of your product strategy execution j ...Read More

I would argue that a market problem IS a product strategy problem. Your product strategy should be a clear direction for the product to win within the constraints of the market context and customer context. If you are not growing with the current product strategy, I would start by evaluating each element to where you are struggling:  Market elements Maturity - how mature is the market? Are people ready for adoption?  Market saturation - how strong is the competition?  Size - is the market big en ...Read More

I have observed that the word strategy can be intimidating as well as misunderstood. In its simplest form, product strategy is a process of defining what your options are, and then selecting which option has the greatest chance of success. The most important step is getting REALLY clear on what your options are - which requires a deep factbase that includes market research, customer research, and product insights.  The process that I use is a simple 4 step process that you can apply to most stra ...Read More