Creating a Strategy? Start By Generating the Best Ideas

Tami Reiss is the founder of The Product Leader Coach where she works with product leaders and teams to realize their potential by focusing on their strengths.

Now that you’ve set your vision and gathered data to understand the state of your product portfolio, it’s time to think about how to go beyond your current situation.

First, identify key customer segments and their needs. Review the data and see where you are winning and retaining customers. Is there room for improvement? As you surface cohorts that are not doing as well (low retention, engagement or NPS), are there any which you think can be flipped in your favor? Choosing where precisely your product portfolio should move the needle is what will guide what strategy you select.

Then, connect with your fellow executives. Make sure that the segment and need you’ve identified as important to improve is something that resonates with them. Then listen to the issues their teams have surfaced that product might be able to assist in alleviating.

List of execs for you to align with:

• CEO, COO, and CFO (though probably talk to them after aligning with everyone else below)
• Head of Sales
• Head of Engineering
• Head of Customer Success / Service
• Head of Onboarding
• Head of Marketing + Product Marketing

Now you’re ready to choose a strategy. Hooray!

Below are the 16 Product Strategies for Growth that every leader should know. You should run through the list as you are generating options to make sure you’ve exhausted all paths available to you. If you know you want to add new customers, grow lifetime value, or increase profitability, look at those columns to find strategies which produce that result.

The most common strategies are targeted at adding new customers and tend to be options that will expand the market for your product. You’ve probably thought about going up or down market, expanding to new geographies or verticals, or building out new features or complementary products to fulfill additional customer needs.

Often, product leaders focus on what can be created by the current or expanded in-house team. We forget to evaluate options like partnerships and acquisition opportunities to increase available offerings. Similarly, you could consider becoming an open platform for other companies to build auxiliary products. Remember, some of the most successful companies (Salesforce, Facebook, Apple, etc.) only got to their current state by leveraging the strengths of others. Where would the iPhone be without the AppStore? If something isn’t core to what you do, look into alternative options to building it yourselves.

The last group of strategies focus on optimizing LTV/CAC (the ratio of Lifetime value of a customer to the cost of acquiring them). This is a proxy for profitable growth which should be considered as well. What can you be doing to better retain existing customers or to lower friction to purchase your product? Is the price of your product well correlated with the value you deliver to different segments? Keeping these questions in mind and running through the full list of options above will guide you to the best strategic choice.

Also remember… Don’t choose your strategy in a vacuum! Go back to your executive peers whom you chatted with about the priority problems and check in with them about their thoughts about the strategy you are leaning towards to solve them. They have insights into what is possible given their team’s constraints and have direct visibility into prospect and customer behaviors which will impact the success of your plans. As a product leader, you have the skills to balance their opinions, the data you’ve collected, and the cost of delay to make the right choices.

Hi! I’m Tami, the founder of The Product Leader Coach where I work with product leaders and teams to realize their potential by focusing on their strengths.

If you enjoyed this post, I am available for product leadership coaching or team training. Learn more about my services and upcoming children’s book.