Becky Trevino on multi-product strategy, product-message fit, and partnering closely with Design & Engineering
Product State Q&A
Becky Trevino is the Chief Product Officer at Flexera. She formerly held leadership roles at Snow Software, Rackspace, and Dell. She’s also a Product Mentor at Sharebird and Product Ambassador at Product Marketing Alliance.
LinkedIn
EC: How does product strategy change once you have multiple products?
BT: Product strategy needs to be completely overhauled once you shift from one product to multiple products. As the saying goes, ‘What got you here won't keep you here.’ The same applies to product strategy.
Why is this such a big deal?
Shifting from one core product to a second product line is the biggest shift in a company’s history.
When there is only one product line, life at a company is amazing. At this point, company strategy = product strategy.
In this idyllic period of focused growth, the entire company — Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Finance — are all focused on selling the core product to the ideal buyer of that product. This is why the messaging and websites of startups are so good compared to most mature multi-product organizations.
While life as a one-product company is amazing, most SaaS companies hit a growth wall they must overcome. Typical strategies to do this include building or acquiring products that move the company into adjacent markets, shifting go-to-market (GTM) teams down/upmarket, and/or opening up new GTM channels such as Channel and Alliances.
This is typically the moment in time when we break the idea of company strategy = product strategy. Now company strategy = multiple product line strategies.
In this scenario, the broader company needs to figure out how to sell and talk to multiple personas, and markets, at the same time. Sales typically begins hiring overlay Sales people and Marketing moves up to solutions messaging.
Product and Engineering have an even harder time. We must build a common thread between the multiple products and markets we serve. Our strategy must yield a 1+1=3 where if you buy more than one product from us the value is greater than if you didn't.
To do this, the Product and Engineering leadership need a unified vision across the organization — and a detailed strategy plan on how to shift from the current state to the end state. And this is the hard part. To get this unified vision, Product teams need to push past the core product line that built the company and continue to protect it while nurturing the second business into growth. This requires a tremendous amount of work and coordination to do right as it’s not easy to get the core business to shift.
Beyond the unified product strategy with a clear point of view on the 1+1=3, it's at this point that most product leaders start embracing the idea of shifting from product to platform. In an ideal world the platform is the enabler of that 1+1=3. But once you reach this point, you start heading down a shift from a product to a platform-based product organization, and your strategy and engineering execution plan needs to adapt to this new model.
EC: How do you know when you have a messaging problem?
BT: Messaging problems are really hard to diagnose, especially at the product line level.
Here are three things I look out for:
Event #1: You’ve introduced a new product line
As I referred to in question 2, there is messaging risk when a company introduces a new product targeting a new persona. In general, most companies build their entire messaging architecture around their first core product and initial ideal customer profile (ICP). Then a new product and persona comes, and blows it all up.
This requires us to treat the introduction of new product lines as large messaging events that go beyond simply a Tier I launch of a large product. We must think of them as opportunities to revisit our overall company positioning, brand, and messaging architecture.
Event #2: Product Line is missing Financial Targets
If you’re a Product Manager and your product isn’t meeting its budgeted financial targets, messaging may be a reason. I’d start by looking if the product meets the needs of the core customer you are targeting. If you have verified that it does, I’d then work with Product Marketing to understand if you have product-message fit.
To me, problem-solution fit (primary job of PM) and product-message fit (primary job of PMM) are the two key components to get right to ensure we have product-market fit.
Event #3: Your internal Sales team can’t speak to the value of the product in less than 60 seconds
When the sales team is confused and can’t articulate the value of a product, they don’t sell it. In a multi-product company, this means Sales meets its quota without having to take your product into consideration. When your product is the only product they have to sell and they can’t articulate the value or make the end user care, then they miss Sales targets and your company has a huge problem. (Note: This is rare to see outside of startups.)
One quick way to know if messaging is the reason behind sellers being unable to articulate the value or missed Sales targets is to see whether they can articulate the same value prop you built the product for in less than 60 seconds. If they cannot, either message or product is off, and you need to figure out how to fix it.
EC: What do aspiring product leaders need to understand about partnering with Engineering, Design and customer-facing teams?
BT: My #1 rule as a Chief Product Officer: Either build a strong partnership with Engineering and Design, or leave the job!
Why?
At Flexera, where I serve as CPO, Product Management (PM) owns the ‘WHAT’ and Engineering + Design own the ‘HOW.’ This means that without Design and Engineering PM's at Flexera simply cannot get Product out the door. And if PM can't ship product — we do not add value to our customers, partners, or business.
When I think of the relationship with engineering and design in this simplified way, it reminds me about the importance of preserving a strong partnership with these two teams.
Here are four ways PMs damage their relationship with Design & Engineering :
We don't share credit. Often, PM is the representative of the team's work to internal and external audiences. When PMs fail to acknowledge the work of everyone, they erode trust with engineering and design. Always give credit.
We see ourselves as the ‘CEO of the Product.’ I love the intention behind the PM is the CEO of the product when it comes to thinking about a product's commercial success. However, some PMs take this to mean that Engineering and Design are subservient to PM. That's false. I love the thinking of Aakash Gupta in a post a few years ago that described engineering as ‘the lead singers of the band.’ When we see Engineering as such, we remind ourselves that a big part of the role of Product is unlocking the magic of engineering and design — to build experiences we never imagined possible.
We do not deeply understand the problem we are looking to solve. Zero Engineering and Design teams want to work on products that no one is going to use. Everyone wants to build a winning product. When engineers and designers pour their hearts into building a product only for what they built to not get adopted, the PM loses the respect of the team. It’s the PM’s job to get the ‘WHAT’ right. To avoid this scenario, it's critical for PM's to deeply understand the problem they are looking to solve and ensure it's a problem worth solving.
Not celebrating wins and sharing product news: A big part of the job of Product Management is sharing information with Engineering and Design on who is using the product (e.g. Talk about big deals won), sharing insights from Sales calls and/or analyst discussions, or even what you learned at the latest customer event. If we’re not sharing what we’re hearing, then we’re not building the feedback loop we need with Product and Engineering.
When it comes to customer-facing teams, that’s an entirely different process for stakeholder management. In most B2B Sales companies, critical customer-facing teams for you to have a relationship with include Product Marketing, Support, Sales, Customer Success, and Solutions Consultants (Pre-Sales).
As an aspiring product leader, I’d have a plan for how your team connects with each of these groups. There are a lot of them and fewer of you so prioritize by pain point and impact in your organization.
“Shifting from one core product to a second product line is the biggest shift in a company’s history.” - Becky Trevino
