BoSEU23 | Rich Mironov | Resolving Fundamentally Different Product Viewpoints

Rich Mironov Fundametally different viewpoints

Business

Resolving Two
Fundamentally Different
Product Viewpoints
RICH MIRONOV
BoS Europe 2023

There are two kinds of
people in the world…
those who divide the world
into two kinds of people
and those who don’t
@RichMironov @BoSConference

There are ten kinds of
people in the world…
those who understand
binary and those who don’t
@RichMironov @BoSConference

There are two kinds of
people in the B2B world…
account-at-a-time focused
and
cumulative/aggregate
focused
@RichMironov @BoSConference

Individual customers, one at a time
• Deal revenue, fastest implementation/fix
• Current quarter
Cumulative installed base/systems impact
• Total adoption, long-term revenue,
repeatability
• This year, next year…
Easy to assume bad intent, incompetence
Fundamentally Different
@RichMironov @BoSConference

@RichMironov @BoSConference @RichMironov @BoSConference

Enterprise Sales
• Independent transactions: close, move on
• Fit product to customer, unique requests
• Customers say (know) what they need
Enterprise Implementation
• Standard product is rarely enough
• Find fastest path to production system
• When finished, move to next project…
software will keep working
Sequential, Separable
@RichMironov @BoSConference

“No white space/slack in Engineering”
“Less important than our committed/
announced roadmap items”
“The product wasn’t designed to do that”
“It probably won’t work, customers
will be unhappy later”
“Incurs major technical debt”
“We have to support that forever”
Arguments That We Usually Ignore
@RichMironov @BoSConference @RichMironov @BoSConference

Product
• Always-limited engineering: address largest
customer groups, revenue velocity
• Every new thing displaces planned thing
• Customers usually misunderstand
problems/solutions
Engineering/Design
• Every new feature grows code base,
increases complexity, reduces ease of use
• No product is ever “finished:” must support forever
• SW/Architecture designed for specific purposes
Cumulative, Long-Lived
@RichMironov @BoSConference

“This is a huge revenue opportunity”
“Can’t be hard to implement… probably 10 lines of code”
“There are lots of other customers who want this”
“Don’t worry… they won’t really use that feature”
“They need special pricing or packaging”
“We won’t need ongoing support"
Arguments That We Usually Ignore
@RichMironov @BoSConference

Frictionless SaaS worth 6x-15x revenue
• “Build once, sell many” with >90% margins
• As few touches as possible, no specials
Custom/professional services worth 1x
• Eventually compete on cost
• Little actual re-use across projects
Investor View
@RichMironov @BoSConference @RichMironov @BoSConference

Example: Enhancement Request
@RichMironov @BoSConference

Cumulative Impact
@RichMironov @BoSConference

Example: Cloud Migration
@RichMironov @BoSConference

Outcome: Product Sprawl
@RichMironov @BoSConference @RichMironov @BoSConference

deal-driven
(plan)
architecture,
quality, scalability,
security, tech
debt, devops…
validation,
discovery
planned features,
visible UX,
revenue drivers
Healthy B2B Investment Portfolio
@RichMironov @BoSConference

deal-driven
(actual)
architecture,
quality, scalability,
security, tech
debt, devops…
validation,
discovery
planned features,
visible UX,
revenue drivers
Reality of One “Special”
@RichMironov @BoSConference

sales-led /
deal-led
architecture,
quality, scalability,
security, tech
debt, devops…
validation,
discovery
planned features,
visible UX,
revenue drivers
Established Behavior
@RichMironov @BoSConference

C-level visibility fights
“commitment amnesia”
Executive Scorekeeping
@RichMironov @BoSConference

• Fundamental challenge for B2B/enterprise exec teams
• Assume good intent, try to listen
• Long-term doesn’t bite you – until it does
• Cost of “specials” skyrockets after customer #5
• Must align comp plan with long-term goals
• Product companies should partner
with service companies
Takeaways
@RichMironov @BoSConference

Rich Mironov
www.mironov.com
+1-650-315-7394
rich@mironov.com
@richmironov

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