Short thread on the strategy questions you need to answer for B2B products:

(a strategy primer in 10 tweets)

Your B2B product strategy must rigorously answer these 3 questions:

1) What customer segments are we targeting?

2) What differentiation will we create for them?

3) How will we reach these customers?

It really is that simple.

No fancy frameworks or data deluge necessary.

But the answers to these questions do require deep insight into the market, org dynamics, buyer psychology, customer goals, tech evolution, and lots of creativity.

Rigorous strategy is not easy.

How can you bring rigor to your strategy work?

For that, you need to answer these questions systematically, with data, market research, customer insights, and instinct:

a) What is our product’s current situation?

b) How attractive is the market and how is it evolving?

c) What do various customer segments need and how acute are their needs?

d) What are our competitors’ target customer segments, strengths, and weaknesses?

e) What existing assets will we utilize to create differentiation?

f) How will we execute towards this strategy?

Finally, once you have a B2B product strategy, how do you evaluate whether it is sound?

Here are the tests for evaluating strategy (especially useful for founders/CEOs/product leaders)

1) Is it clear which of these approaches is the primary recommendation of this strategy?

- Industry-wide differentiation

- Cost effectiveness across many segments

- Strong differentiation for a specific segment or two

(ref: Porter's 3 Generic Strategies)

2) Is the strategy specific about the differentiated capabilities that will be built? Can you visualize it?

3) What current Powers does this strategy leverage?

4) What new Powers does this strategy create (for the product or the company)?

(ref: Helmer's 7 Powers for 3 & 4)

5) Is the strategy supported by a credible execution approach?

6) To support its recommendations, does this strategy rely on inspiring but obvious proclamations, or on concrete non-obvious insights? The former is a red flag. In a good strategy, you want the latter.

7) To what extent is this strategy just saying: “we will aim to be the best”?

(ref: Understanding Michael Porter by Joan Magretta)

8) How unique is this strategy? Would other competitors in this space have a similar or same strategy? Would the opposite of this strategy be a viable strategy for a different player?

(ref: @RogerLMartin's work) https://hbr.org/2015/05/the-first-question-to-ask-of-any-strategy

Lastly, when defining the product or its features, use Amazon's 5Qs framework:

1) Who is the customer?
2) What is the problem/opportunity?
3) What is the main customer benefit?
4) How do you know customers want this?
5) What is the customer experience?

(source: @usamanaseem)

~

These things are often presented as strategy (but are not)

- Roadmap
- Goals
- OKRs
- Vision
- Annual Plan
- Quarterly Plan
- Resourcing Plan
- A prioritized list of things to do

This is often done with the "Strategic" prefix e.g. Strategic Plan, Strategic Goals, Strategic OKRs

Maturity stages (simplified) https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1383804314141876236

Good Product Strategy,
Bad Product Strategy https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1244810075908128768