Product Strategy

This sounds to me like your sales team doesn't believe the target market is big enough and/or the right market. It's hard to believe in a product strategy unless you agree on who it's for, so the first thing I'd do here is to get everyone aligned on who you're building for & why, and then articulate why your strategy is the best way to win in that market. 

The only stakeholder that must have buy-in for your product strategy is the one accountable for the results of your org or area. That may be a C-level exec or VP or GM or a discipline lead. Once they believe in the strategy as the best path to hit their goals for the business, what remains is largely a communication challenge. Keep in mind that getting alignment with your primary stakeholder may require you to get the approval of multiple other stakeholders along the way. For my thoughts on how to do that, see the first question on the list. 

I generally believe product strategies should be evaluated more frequently the earlier a product is in its lifecycle. A zero-to-one team I worked closely with found the right pace to be testing a new direction & goals every month or so, whereas a scaled team I led had sufficient visibility to establish a high-level strategy that lasted well past a year.  At Patreon, we aim to set strategies & goals that cover 6 months or so for each team. In tech, unless you're working on a platform or infra initiative that is largely independent of evolution in user need, I'd generally recommend somewhere between 3-6 months for early-stage or growth companies and 6 months to a year for more mature companies. At each of those milestones, I'd suggest confirming your core assumptions about your customer, the problem space, the competitive landscape & your strategy to maintain or grow your market position. If any of those elements change in a fundamental way during that window, you should consider whether you need to update your product strategy even if it's not quite on schedule.

This is a natural question and I would specify the question a bit to say "how do we validate that our product strategy is the right one for us?"  Might seem like a small delineation, but the truth is, no one strategy is right for every company or product. What works amazingly for one company could yield paltry results for another.  For that reason, I'd say the best starting place to determine whether you're developing a strategy that is right for your situation is 1. To be clear on the first principles you're designing around 2. Try your hardest to maintain an environment of intellectual honesty that normalizes healthy friction (by healthy friction, I mean people care, are not afraid of unnecessary repercussions for sharing original ideas, and communicate in a compassionate way with one another)  3. Have a bias for action instead of perfection Every strategy looks great in a deck or on a whiteboard, but you have to be willing to put something out there and see what the world tells you. To paraphrase Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. If you've designed your strategy from your principles, aligned them to your goals, brought people along the journey with you, and aren't afraid of changing your mind due to feedback (👊🏾 ), you'll be able to inch yourself closer to what's best for your company.

First, define "right" by establishing clear goals – is it product-market fit? Is it growing an existing product to a certain milestone? These will help you determine the right form of validation to apply to each stage.  For products that haven't yet achieved market fit, early & rapid customer feedback cycles are the best form of validation I've seen – push your target users to tell you over & over again in surveys & interviews that what you're building is something they must have, ideally by getting them to sign up or even pay you before you've even built it.  Once you have a clear sense of your goals after product-market fit, figure out what inputs drive those outputs – for example, if your goal is 10x growth in total customers in a year then maybe you need to significantly grow your weekly signups. And if your product initiative is to reduce the number of steps in your signup flow, then your target metric is likely to be improving conversion at the end of that flow. Once you implement your product initiative, test whether it's hitting your goal and iterate rapidly until you find the best path forward.  Pick the right input metric for each product initiative based on the goal for the initiative & track it closely to figure out whether your product strategy will get you to your goals. 

The more differentiated & sticky your core value proposition is, the less you'll need to worry about market trends, as you'll have more and more of a market all to yourself. Make this your goal. Few companies find themselves in that position. For the rest, market trends give us a better sense of consumer demand – what's driving it, how it's evolving, what it's most responsive to. Understanding those deeply will help you develop the customer & market intuition you need to create a differentiated product strategy.  That being said, keep in mind that what's happening in the market is generally a result of product strategy decisions made by competitors years ago and is not always representative of where a market might be headed. For that, you'll have to get to know your customer and their problems deeply and deliver a compelling solution that they can't live without. Understanding what's happening in the market can help with that but it's a poor substitute for high-quality customer development.

For us, product strategy stems from company strategy, so it's first important to have a firm grasp on where the company strategy is headed holistacally, and why. Additionally, we serve as a partner function for the entire ProdDev org, so rather than owning a specific segment of the product, we're responsible for helping the company zoom out a bit to identify key areas that could make sense to invest in.  As a result, when working with our exec team it's critical to understand both the company strategy & priorities, functional strategy & priorities, as well as the audience we're communicating with. Similar to working with customers, no conversation is one size fits all. It's critical to understand how to communicate at the right altitude, align your recommendations to existing priorities, and understand how to listen / iterate on feedback to achieve the best outcomes.  Some specific advice for influencing leadership, whether at the executive or other levels would be: 1. Clearly define how your suggestions accelerate the achievement of goals you know they care about 2. Proactively provide the appropriate framework / structure to assist their analysis of your recommendations 3. Invite / proactively think through the devil's advocate perspective to your recommendations 4. Possibly most important of all, be clear about what you're asking them to contribute to / decide on

I encourage my teams to start by understanding their objectives, plans, assumptions & approach to risk management. We listen carefully and figure out where the gaps and opportunities lie and how impact & success is defined & measured.  Then, as we develop our strategies, we share early & often – at minimum at the key stages of defining what our product strategy might become: * Defining the customer problem & the opportunity size * Proposing the right solution & the necessary investment * Defining the go-to-market plan * Adjusting & iterating post-launch at our Mike Tyson Moment ("everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth")

Love this question as well, and I'll approach it from a couple different perspectives. First, I'd acknowledge that some markets are so big or fast growing that multiple amazingly successful winners can emerge. As of today, Apple is worth $2.8T and Microsoft is worth $2.25T. While I'm sure both companies wouldn't mind adding their other's market share to their portfolio, I also think any reasonable person would consider both outcomes desireable. This example is not to say there's not need to play defense if a market is large or fast growing enough. Quite the opposite, both companies needed to battle furious competition until they helped the market consolidate from multiple dozens of players to a handful. That said, the example highlights that the way we strategize & define "defense" is contextual to a variety of factors, and changes over time. Second, there's the old adage that the best defense is a great offense. While not perfect, there are a couple ways to translate that sports parlance to business: 1. Recognize if you have a better mousetrap 2. Identify ways you can uniquely innovate  Keeping Apple & Microsoft in mind, they've demonstrated the ability to innovate on multiple dimensions - product innovation, distribution channels, platform ecosystem and more. For Airtable, having a clear idea of the type of market we are in, the maturation stage of that market, and our unique / potential pillars of innovation are all inputs into how we play offense & defense. Clarity within these dimensions enables us to lean into or away from potential product investments. While it can be tempting to try to build every capability each perceived competitor has, being rooted in your unique advantages and your perspective of your environment can guide how you think about which areas make sense to defend, and which areas are ok to ignore. Last but not least, keep your customers first. Sounds simple, doesn't always turn out to be. As company's scale, it can feel harder and harder to track the challenges customers face. Create systems that incentivize people to maintain a customer focus, and fight the urge to over-index on short term, unsustainable wins. As best as you can, set customers up for long term, sustainable, thoughtful success.