As a product leader, you have the responsibility to plan strategically for your company to grow its customer base and revenue. Thanks to years of other people growing companies, there are ten standard playbooks for how to accelerate your company’s trajectory. Simply because they are standard doesn’t mean that you can’t execute them in your own special snowflake way, but it’s relatively hard to reinvent the wheel. The list below is designed for leaders who are thinking about what the next phase of their company should be so that you can make sure you’ve entertained all the options. It’s very easy to think of one path and fall in love with it without exploring alternative routes. You may have a little John Frost (author who wrote two roads diverged in a wood poem) in you, and it’s worth exploring the roads less taken, it might just make all the difference. Each of the 16 options, can be used to accomplish at least one of the three primary business objectives: Add New Logos (growing your total addressable market or serviceable one) Improve Retention (increasing lifetime value or money per logo) Decrease Costs (reducing customer acquisition cost or operating expenses) It's important to note that for each goal, there are many strategies which can assist in accomplishing it. Unfortunately, not all strategies are correct for each company. Therefore, please see the attached video powerpoint deck which outlines tips for how to make that strategy successful and the conditions when it is a favorable option. If you manage a portfolio of products, different options will be applicable to each one depending on the current situation it is facing. --- Tami Reiss is the SVP of Product Strategy at ProduxLabs and the CPO in Residence at Insight Partners. She writes about how Product Leaders can do more to focus on what's important for a company's growth and streamline internal processes to yield results. You can follow her on Medium or @tamireiss on Twitter.

1. 16 Strategies for Growth
Tami Reiss

2. Tami Reiss
SVP Product Strategy, ProduxLabs
• CPO in Residence at Insight Partners Product CoE
• 15 years+ of Product Management in-house and
consulting experience across dozens of B2B tech
companies
• Founder of Just Not Sorry

3. Always use CURRENT DATA
and COMPANY DIRECTION
to choose a strategy…
here are 16 choices

5. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Add features that customers love
• Differentiate yourself as THE BEST
• Become the standard
• Watch your back!!!
• Your company is already in the top right
quadrant of Gartner and Forrester
• The competition can’t move very nimbly
• You have strong Product + Tech teams
Innovate to be Best in Breed

6. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Create a stand-alone product that serves
additional needs of your target market
• Integrate the products for leverage
• Price them separately and together
• Your core product is already best in breed
• You have a deep understanding of your
customers and their needs
• You sell to companies with procurement
protocols, and you are an approved
vendor
Build + Bundle Complementary Products

7. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Think about what else your customers
want to expand your impact
• Find a company that only serves that need
• Integrate ASAP to be cost effective
• You have cash and smaller companies don’t
• Your competitors are way ahead in a
particular area
• The smaller company has proprietary
differentiation in their niche
• The acquisition comes with new customers
Acquire Complementary Products

8. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Choose an area where Build/Buy is bad
• Partner with the best in breed first
• Target partner’s customers with specific
marketing around integration
• There are established players in your
market that fulfill specific tangential
needs
• Partner has an existing integration point
• The partner also has a place to promote
the integration with your product
Integrate with Partner Products

9. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Take some of your special sauce and
repackage it for a different type of customer
• Leverage consolidated operational teams
to keep additional costs minimized
• New markets have different needs that are
similar enough to what you already do
• Your existing technology can be packaged
differently with minimal effort
• You’ve captured a good amount of your
TAM already and going up market is hard
Develop Tangential Product Lines

10. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Develop features necessary for the
enterprise (security, user mgmt., etc.)
• Create a new sales team and playbook
for the larger customers
• You’ve established yourself in the
midmarket as a strong player
• Employees or teams within the
enterprise have started using your tools
• Your tech is already enterprise grade
Go Up Market

11. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Develop features that allow for easy
enrollment and setup
• Create a separate sales incentives and
automated marketing to keep CAC low
• You’ve captured most of the top tier of
your target market
• Smaller companies in your segment
often grow into larger enterprises
• Your product is sticky and will evolve
with a company’s needs
Go Down Market

12. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Look for new markets where you have
existing satisfied customers
• Develop new buyer + user personas
• Add features + repackage for new target
• The user flows your currently have can
easily be reused by other user types
• Your current market is saturated
• The new market is dominated by older
players who aren’t as nimble
Attack New Markets / Verticals (Reposition)

13. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• You dominate your current market and there
isn’t a local player who owns the space
• The user flow doesn’t change by geography
• Localization isn’t very difficult
• Target a geo that is most similar to your
current one without a home team
• Dominate in the second geo and LEARN
• Expand to many more locales
Expand into New Geographies

14. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Create automation for both new
registration and churn flows
• Shift easy to please customers from
high cost staff  “product-led growth”
• Reduce CAC and OPEX
• Your product is simple to explain and
very easy to get started
• After setup, the product is very sticky so
cost of retention isn’t high
• Offering a discount has high potential to
improve conversion or retention rates
Create a Self-Service Channel

15. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Find partners who can sell into or
service your clients instead of you
• Dedicate a partner enablement team to
find, support, and nudge partners
• There are services companies that are
trusted advisors to your target customers
• Your product works best when integrated
• Competitors have more cash on hand to
hire developers and sales teams
Establish a Partner Channel

16. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Your product can be the hub for many
other business or social functions
• You are the source of truth of a type of
data for a business or organization
• Network effects can be leveraged
• Establish APIs and developer resources
• Co-develop the first few integrations
• Have other companies build things that
aren’t part of your core value prop
Become an Open Platform

17. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Increase your prices annually
• Add a much higher pricing tier for larger
companies that get more value
• Your product is indispensable to your
customers and is underpriced
• Larger enterprises won’t consider you
because you don’t have the cash to
develop the features they need
Increase Your Prices
*really improves LTV

18. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Find startups trying to steal your clients
• Make them an offer they can’t refuse
• Find ways to consolidate OPEX
• There is minimal overlap of customer base
• You can streamline operations quickly
• The technology you are combining serves
additional use cases
• You’re looking to increase your valuation
Merge with Competitors

19. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Make it easier for your customers to get
maximum value out of your products
• Add features that save your customers
more time and/or money (and show them)
• Retention is your primary concern
• You know which parts of the product
correlate with retention and many
customers aren’t accessing them
Improve Product Value Realization

20. Best option when:
Tips to achieve success:
• Evaluate which products are not
profitable enough and distracting
• Sunset them gracefully with customers
• Sell the technology/team
• It’s not part of your core business value
proposition and is wasting resources
• Certain products aren’t generating cash
that warrants their investment
• Competition in the field is strong
Sunset / Sell Off a Product Line

21. What to do after selecting a strategy

22. Validate that your selected strategy is the right one
Executive visibility
Operational
predictability
Team efficiency
Strategy
deployment
1
2
3
4
5
DEFINE YOUR TARGET CUSTOMERS /
MARKET
TEST THE IDEA OF YOUR SELECTED STRATEGY
WITH A SMALL SET OF EXISTING CUSTOMERS OR
PROSPECTS
DO NOT IGNORE THE DATA WHEN IT DISAGREES
WITH WHAT YOU ANTICIPATED (OR WHAT YOU
TOLD THE BOARD)
REPEAT THE ABOVE UNTIL THE DATA LOOKS
GOOD
EXECUTE ON THE STRATEGY WITH THE MOST
POSITIVE OUTLOOK
MONITOR IMPACT AFTER LAUNCH TO SEE IF IT FOLLOWS
EXPECTATIONS
6

23. Summary

24. Product Operations Guides Which Strategy To Pursue
• Product Operations Data & Insights is the key to setting Product
Strategy
It provides the insights and visibility to maximize your top- (revenue)
and
bottom-line (profit) and track progress against targets.
• There are many strategies to achieve your goals
Think broadly when selecting a strategy, the first thing that comes to
mind is often not the best path forward. Right now you are probably
focused on retention and cost.
• Test your strategy before you widely implement it
Run fast experiments with existing customers or prospects to see if your
intended strategy accomplishes your goals, then monitor data post
execution.

25. We’re here to help!
25
Please reach out with any questions info@produxlabs.com
Denise Tilles
VP OF PRODUCT
Melissa Perri
CEO
Tami Reiss
SVP PRODUCT
STRATEGY

26. Creating Value & Enabling Growth
Through Effective Product Management
EMAIL info@produxlabs.com
WEBSITE www.produxlabs.com
TWITTER @produxlabs