How do you keep your product competitive and few steps ahead than the nearest competitor? And how do you know if the plan is successful?

Great Question. I focus on three key areas: continuous innovation, deep customer understanding, and strategic differentiation. Here's my approach:

1. Continuous Innovation:

   • Maintain a robust product roadmap with both short-term improvements and long-term visionary features.

   • Allocate resources for R&D and experimentation with emerging technologies, and encouraging ideation from all levels in the teams (product, design, dev). How you allocate varies based on your product stage.. but try to carve 20% for new experimentation in your capacity is a good start.

2. Deep Customer Understanding:

   • I have this rule of talking to at least one customer every week to learn about their pain points and unmet needs while keeping in context of existing product vs new product discovery. If it is an existing product then creating a customer advisory board (CAB) is also a great idea if you are working on B2B products.

   • Analyze usage data to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.

3. Strategic Differentiation:

   • Strategy is about how you will differentiate. To do that you need to continuously assess the competitive landscape to identify gaps and opportunities.

   • Focus on developing unique value propositions that set the product apart and align your proposal with the core strength of your company/team.
     

     To determine if the plan is successful, I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative metrics. It's crucial to establish baseline metrics before implementing the plan and to regularly review progress. I typically set quarterly check-ins to assess these indicators and make necessary adjustments to the strategy. Success is often indicated by positive trends across multiple metrics, rather than just one or two isolated improvements.

     
     Remember, staying ahead of competitors is an ongoing process. It requires constant vigilance, adaptability, and a willingness to challenge assumptions and pivot when necessary.

I would encourage you to refrain from overly focusing on your competitors. You can drive yourself and your team crazy tracking all the new features your competitors are shipping but that doesn't mean you ignore them either.

I will give you one example from my startup journey. We had a few competitors with one that we saw in most deals. We won our fair share as they did too but they started winning more when they shipped a new feature and this went on for a few months. We looked at the new feature and thought it wasn't a great (ie no one would use it) which was validated by some customers who churned off that competitor and came to us. But when we asked for feedback after losing a deal, the prospect would mention this feature and it didn't matter if their users would use the feature as the buyers loved the feature. We eventually added this feature and did the bare minimum to claim we had it and never lost another deal for this reason.

You want to lose less and win more. Losing less (to competitors) requires you to understand what your competitors are doing better than you and taking those off the table. Winning more requires you to understand what you are doing better than your competitors so you can highlight that more in your marketing. You will know if your plan is working or not by analyzing win/loss reasons.

More than anything else, you should practice continuous discovery and develop deep empathy for your customers. I would spend more time on this than worrying about competitors.