1.
Challenges of (Lean) Enterprise
Product Management
Rich Mironov
CEO, Mironov Consulting
23 Aug 2016
1

2.
• Veteran product manager/exec/strategist
• Organizing product organizations
• Smokejumper VP Products
• What will customers pay for?
• 6 startups, including as CEO/founder
• “The Art of Product Management”
• Founded Product Camp
About Rich Mironov
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3.
Conversations, market information,
priorities, requirements,
roadmaps, epics, user stories,
backlogs, personas…
product
bits
strategy, forecasts,
commitments, roadmaps,
competitive intelligence
budgets, staff,
targets
Field input,
Market feedback
Segmentation, messages,
benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
Markets &
CustomersDevelopment
Marketing
& Sales
Executives
Product
Management
What Does a Product Manager Do?
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4.
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5.
• Identify pain/need (e.g. user journey, interviews)
• Describe/position a possible solution
• Validated learning (mock-up, smoke test, MVP)
• Iterate to improve concept
• Early sign-ups (crowdfund, ask for the order)
• Iterate toward revenue product
Consumer-Focused Lean Validation
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6.
• User is buyer
• We can talk to lots of target users (with plenty left)
• We can run A/B tests with product variants, sign-up
variants, pricing options, alternate messaging…
• Identifying need >> building solution
• User can commit ahead of shipment/value/use
Often-Unstated Assumptions

7.
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• Proposition A/B testability?
• Buyer’s decision risk?
• Purchase complexity?
• Buyer’s success metric?
• Target audience size?
• Product technical risk?

8.
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• Proposition A/B testability?
• Buyer’s decision risk?
• Purchase complexity?
• Buyer’s success metric?
• Target audience size?
• Product technical risk?

9.
growth hacking

10.
• High-powered (expensive) sales teams
• Small numbers of customers (100’s – 1000’s)
• Big ticket deals, long sales cycles, lumpy revenue
streams
 Subjective (political)
win/loss attribution
Enterprise Sales

11.
• Few prospects, some already in funnel
• Heavily over-surveyed/over-marketed
personas (corporate CIOs)
• Can’t afford A/B testing with serious
prospects
• Sales wants to control every interaction
• Real decision makers not obvious
• Complex incumbent systems
• Need to show hard ROI/efficacy
Enterprise Validation Challenges
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12.
Marketing/Sales Funnel
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Target audience
Aware
Interested
Evaluating
Buyer
Repeat Buyer
• Might take years with
dozens of touches
• Message and product
mostly stable throughout

13.
• “Closing” meetings
• Organized by Sales
• Goal is to close
• Anticipate/answer objections
• Never raise new issues or ask about new needs
• Listening/learning meetings
• Organized by Product Management
• Open-ended questions
• Dig for blockers, issues, ideas, new concerns
• Trial-close unbuilt products, unproven solutions
Two Kinds of Customer Meetings
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14.
• “A legacy system is any system that works.”
- Bob Epstein, Sybase co-founder
• Every enterprise is already (sort of) operating
• Uniquely confusing assembly of old systems, mis-designed
processes, inherited policies, acquired divisions, accidents
• We have to displace exactly one piece
Detailed Systems and Process
Contexts Are Essential
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15.
No corporation ever fully replaces
any production system
Your product
fits here

16.
• Bottom-up, land-and-expand, departmental
• Jira, Slack, product-level marketing, recruiting, productivity, travel, events
• Strategy: start with workgroups
• All-or-Nothing Major Systems
• ERP, finance, corporate HR, security architecture…
• Evaluation process, RFP, references substitute for real trial
Can Customers Directly Try/Test
Your Product?
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17.
• Mironov’s Theorem #2: whenever enterprise
customers are really interested, Sales and Execs
will convert “learning” into “early revenue
commit”
• “Beta,” “early access,” “preview,” “early adopter”
• MVP is whatever we can
sell to someone sooner
Co-Opting “MVP”
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18.
Solo/SMB accounting vs. enterprise accounting:
Validation approach, provability, mean-time-to-joy?
Collaborative Example #1
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19.
Single-family health insurance vs. F200 group policy:
Validation approach, provability, mean-time-to-joy?
Collaborative Example #2
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20.
• Every enterprise security company has the same
benefit headline
• “We will stop x% more bad stuff than competitors”
• How do enterprise customers choose?
Collaborative Example #3
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21.
• How many of your users logged in this week?
• Strong predictor of Trial  Paid
• Strong predictor of Paid  Renewal
• Onboarding success, feature usage, problem
identification
• Finally, a non-vanity enterprise metric
Instrumenting (Cloud) Apps
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22.
Prioritizing Based on Use
25Des Draynor, Intercom: https://blog.intercom.io/prioritising-features-wholl-use-it-how-often/

23.
1. Product/market fits into complex environment
2. Dozens of in-depth interviews replace
hundreds of pre-sale A/B tests
3. Intense pressure for one-off features
4. Must understand buying process/players
5. Market adoption happens slowly
6. Usage metrics typically post-sale
Enterprise Lean Takeaways
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24.
CONTACT
Rich Mironov, CEO
Mironov Consulting
233 Franklin St, Suite #308
San Francisco, CA 94102
RichMironov
@RichMironov
Rich@Mironov.com
+1-650-315-7394