An AI-generated picture based off the idea of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman sitting in his bar in Casablanca in the move Casablanca.

The Fundamental Things Apply

Welcome back to the semi-weekly/bi-weekly/sometimes weekly email missive from me, Nils Davis, about the Secrets of Product Management.

Back to basics

Product management is complicated, but at its core, it’s simple:

  • Find market problems, create solutions, and take those solutions to market.

I call this the Secret Product Management Framework because it focuses on the fundamentals that drive success—even in the face of today’s challenges.

At its heart, the framework answers the question: How will we create a customer?

You might wonder, “Where’s the financial focus in this model? What about profit? What about the business?

The truth is, the financial side only works when we prioritize creating and retaining customers.

As Peter Drucker famously said, “The fundamental purpose of a business is to create a customer.”

 

 

I call it the Secret Product Management Framework

The simple version is:

  • We find market problems, create solutions, and take the solutions to market.

Or, a bit longer version:

  • We find market problems worth solving, create solutions that are the superior alternative for some segment, and take the solutions to market to that segment.

I felt it was a good time to reiterate this simple model.

Especially in the face of all the challenges that product managers and the discipline of product management are facing right now.

It’s customer-first

The Secret Product Management Framework answers the question of “how will we make a customer?”

At first glance this doesn’t sound very “business-focused”.”

How do we tie that into the financial side of the business? Where is “profitable” and “to serve the business,” and things like that?

The thing is that people who focus on “the business” often fall into the trap of thinking only of the financial side.

You can’t put the cart before the horse

The challenge is that the financial side only can happen if the other side – creating (and retaining) customers – happens. And how do you do that?

You solve a problem worth solving for some target group of prospects, with a solution that’s superior to their other alternatives.

That’s it. If you do the one thing, you get the other thing.

Or, you can get the other thing.

If you go from the other end – the goal of let’s make a lot of money – you will not get the result you want.

Goal vs strategy

In a nutshell that illustrates the difference between a goal and a strategy.

  • The goal: Make a lot of money.
  • The strategy: Let’s find a problem for this set of people which we can solve better than their other alternatives.

(Or the strategy might be, “let’s find a group of people for whom this thing we can build is their best choice for solving an important problem.” This is a harder strategy to run with, since you are already constrained by the solution. Generally, it’s better to find the problem first and then figure out how to solve it. Neither is a) easy or b) guaranteed to work.)

I’m a big believer in simplification. I want to simplify everything, because as PMs and technologists and human beings we tend to complicate – and sometimes even complexify – things.

Simpler is helpful (sometimes even if it’s too simple)

If we have the option to simplify things we should take it. Even if our simplifications are in fact over simplifications. If they are useful in the first level of analysis, they are probably good enough.

In any specific business you’re going to go into more details about all these things, of course.

But you still need to have a product that solves a problem for a particular target set of prospects, whom you can reach with your marketing and sales message.

Three things you can start doing today to put these ideas into practice

  1. Be sure you can articulate who your target segment and how the problem you solve is impacting them today (before they have your solution).
  2. And you can describe the problem very well, in terms that resonate with how your prospect experiences it, right?
  3. And how, as a result of your solution, your successful customers have experienced a transformation. Note: This is not about your product or its features – it’s about the change the customer has experienced as a result of your product.

If you can’t do those three things, then you are unlikely to be able to go to market successfully, no matter what else you are doing right.

The fundamental things apply, as Sam sings to Ingrid Bergman (and Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca.

 

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