Stephen Baloglu

Great question and glad to see people taking a customer-led approach to product launches. There are a few strategies I recommend here and they fall into 4 areas. Review the foundational research and insights that already exist - What you’re launching was built based on deep customer research and …ensure you’re clear on the insights that drove what you’re bringing to market in the first place. If gaps are identified, now is the time to identify and close them. It’s better late than never on the f ...Read More

Organization readiness can be measured at different altitudes…e.g. Super high level and broad: does the business have the right strategy to win? vs. tactical: are we set up for a successful product launch and meet near-term goals? And points in-between. Let’s assume the big strategy pieces are figured out and set up for success and we’re focusing on the more near-term tactical pieces of a successful launch. There are a few areas that I focus on to assess launch readiness. For all of these, the k ...Read More

As we all recognize, the voice of the customer is one of the most powerful influences on shaping strategy and, ultimately, the product roadmap. Over time, methods for gathering meaningful, representative feedback have evolved, but nothing replaces direct, human connections with customers. Here are what I consider the top five customer feedback loops today: Customer Interviews: Nothing beats direct conversations with customers. These provide rich, nuanced insights that often reveal underlying mot ...Read More

Developing your team and how x-functional teams work together may seem “less pressing”, but while these things do not typically have urgent deadlines, they are extremely important. Here are a few strategies I use to effectively develop the team as well as meeting business goals. OKRs for personal development. We use OKRs to set and measure goals. Whatever goal setting/tracking model you use, make room for you and your team to add individual career goals. We typically all have a learning goal eac ...Read More

Success…you know it when you see it. Well, we all may see it a different way. So, for me, it’s all about establishing what success looks like with stakeholders and leadership (early and often), ensuring reliable measurements of success metrics are in place before launch, and taking an honest and candid approach to evaluating the launch. We use the Go-to-Market strategy document to align the team on objectives, measures of success and goals/targets. As we prep for the launch, we ensure dashboards ...Read More

I’ve worked at multiple companies that have had long-tenured product teams as well as startups where we’re all fresh to the team. So, i’ve seen both sides here. In the case of long tenured teams, you have the opportunity to reignite fresh, day-1 thinking across the team. But, one of the biggest challenges to joining a team that has been working on a product for a long time is having an equal seat at the table to partner on product strategy. They’ve “seen it all” and “already tried that and it di ...Read More

Who doesn't love low hanging fruit...but sometimes it can feel like we're not delivering on the bigger picture and innovating to take a bite of a big, juicy opportunity. My favorite framework to overcome this is an investment portfolio approach where a mix of resourcing is spread across different risk/return investments. From core, incremental improvements to low risk experiments and ultimately higher risk big bets. For an established product, that might look something like 70/20/10.To put more ...Read More

To create a winning product, you can’t just build a roadmap based on feature requests in customer feedback. As a product marketer, you need to understand motivations, job to be done, pain points worth solving and unmet needs In my opinion, there’s no difference in the types of roadmap items you can prioritize based on customer feedback and it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Innovation is fundamentally informed by customer feedback. It’s a matter of how deeply you listen to customers, how clo ...Read More

Never go into roadmap planning empty handed! Great product development takes time and these planning cycles set teams off to work. Whether it’s a 2-week sprint or a 2 quarter cycle, you want to make sure that work is directed in the most valuable direction for the business and your customers. And that it gives you what you need to deliver a compelling story to customers. Product teams may use different frameworks such as RICE scoring, Kano modeling, there are many others. So, be ready with relev ...Read More

“No, don’t do it! Don’t create a massive spike in traffic and run-up in sales that blows through your numbers.” said no one, ever. But really, I get it, you’re not looking for empty calories, you're building a business. Here are a few thoughts. 1. Understand what might drive a short-term spike that doesn’t carry through. Is your media spend too front-loaded? Do you not have the right product-led growth motions to create sustainable growth? Are you taking pricing action along with a product launc ...Read More