How do you determine how much of your roadmap should be focused on existing customers vs prospects?

This question is impossible to answer in the abstract. It depends entirely on where you are in the technology adoption lifecycle. If you haven't read "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside the Tornado," go get them immediately and work your way through them. They are relatively short reads and timeless classics you will want to re-read throughout your career. As you will learn, at some points in the lifecycle you might focus 90% on new customers, at others 90% on your existing base (and no, it's not a ...Read More

Great question! This is something most product teams wrestle with when only looking at the roadmap from a features perspective to balance what to build for existing vs prospective customers. What I’ve found very useful to address this is to revisit the product strategy and business drivers for the product and align the roadmap accordingly. For example, if you assess your product strategy and look at the data for your business drivers, you may see a trend that customers really start adopting your ...Read More

In a perfect world, you want at least 80% of your roadmap to be applicable to both! But, we don't live in a perfect world, do we?  Some startups focus on a small number of customers and really customize the product to the desired features of those early users, but I like to first go broad in appeal, and then deep into a few features that are highly impactful to as many users as possible. If you want to reach a new type of user, solve a new use case, or enter a new market, you will have enough of ...Read More

I typically start from what are the annual business targets set by the company to answer this question. Oftentimes, the sales organization, CEO, and professional services organizations have targets around expansion, new logo acquisition, and win rate which will help portion out what the backlog needs to be to support the business goals.  In absence of these targets set by leadership, I would use a RICE framework (https://www.intercom.com/blog/rice-simple-prioritization-for-product-managers/) to ...Read More

When prioritizing your roadmap, focus on the initiatives that will have the biggest impact on your strategy and goals. If you have a retention problem, focus on improving that before worrying about new prospects. And if there is a lot of opportunity to expand with your current customers, focus on that as well. It's generally easier to expand existing accounts than land new ones. It's usually a warning sign if you need to build a very different set of features to meet the needs of prospects vs ex ...Read More

In general, a product roadmap should be shaped by product strategy, vision, and goals rather than prioritizing initiatives or features based on whether they benefit existing customers or prospects. However, there are scenarios where a focus on existing customers may be justified. High-value customers at risk of churn, which could threaten the company or product's survival. In such cases, addressing the needs of these customers may take precedence over other priorities. Early-stage companies buil ...Read More

It depends on your company’s stage, but a healthy roadmap usually balances both existing customers and prospects. Earlier-stage companies should prioritize features that unlock growth and new deals, while more mature businesses should focus on retaining and expanding existing customers. More generally, here's how I'd think about it: Think portfolio, not either/or Don’t fall into the trap of choosing one over the other. Treat your roadmap like a product portfolio to get flexibility and balance ac ...Read More

Most roadmaps indeed focus on both. The balance of prioritizing prospects versus existing customers will depend on the business objectives your product roadmap is designed to support. For instance, if the business leadership team is leaning on you to improve customer retention or promote edition upgrades, it might be necessary to prioritize existing users. On the other hand, if the goal is net-new user acquisition (in other words, the aim is to build a larger customer base), it might be more ben ...Read More

This is a difficult question and generally depends on the guidance which comes from upper management and business. If the company is focussed heavily on growth, and your product is a part of the growth initiative then your roadmap chunk would be heavier on the prospects Vs the exiting customers. Whereas in other cases where the company is focussed on user retention and getting more value/customer then it might be heavy on the existing customers. Here are the two factors which primarily influence ...Read More

This is an interesting question, but it's rarely a decision an individual product manager makes. Even if you're the only PM in your company, there will be PMMs, business development, sales, not to mention your leadership team who are all part of setting the priority/direction for the company. There isn't any point in you building a feature for existing customers if sales is focused on signing up new users. If you're company is new or young, customer acquisition is likely the bigger priority. In ...Read More

The short answer is it depends. There is no magic formula that you can apply to determine what percentage of your roadmap you should dedicate to existing customer needs versus prospects. You have to strike a balance generally speaking between keeping existing customers happy and attracting new ones. The only exception where your roadmap is likely skewed toward the prospect's needs is when your ideal customer profile is shifting away from the current customer base and leaning toward the prospects ...Read More

To answer this properly, it's critical to know what your product or product line's goals are. What is the lifecycle phase of the product? Is it in its initial growth ramp, maintenance and retention, or God forbid, being replaced? For example, my current company (a startup) has an overall goal of acquiring new logos across all of its business lines. Thus, the majority of the roadmap is going to be laser-focused on that objective; new product and feature introduction, features to reduce on-boardin ...Read More