Discover the ultimate b2b saas funnel for Product Management

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hi everyone welcome to today's webinar where we'll be talking about how to stand out as a B2B product manager let's get started a little something about me my name is Richa Bala currently I'm based in Amsterdam where I work for booking.com one of the world's largest online travel agencies a lot of you might not know this but booking.com is actually a two-way Marketplace meaning that there is of course a really strong consumer side of the business which Travelers like you and me can use to book our hotel stays and our flights but there's also a very prominent partner side of the business or a B2B side of the business which is where I work I work on a reservation side which means that whenever you go and book your stay through booking.com my job is to ensure that that reservation information gets communicated to the property you're staying at immediately so they're aware of your upcoming visit and they can prepare for your visit ingly before moving to booking.com I I was based in a city in India called Hyderabad where I used to work for a B2B SAS company called canesite game site is a customer success platform and I managed their customer experience Suite of products before getting inside I also spent a couple of years at standard and post uh SMP Global which is best known as one of the top three big three credit rating agencies I worked at SMP for their credit analysis business as a product manager and also in their cross-reference business as you might have gathered by now I've spent a pretty significant part of my career working as a product manager for B2B products which is why the topic today is especially very close to my heart now what can you expect as outcomes of this webinar essentially three things firstly we'll try to understand what is it about B2B product management that makes it so unique and different from b2c products secondly we'll try to understand what are the skills needed for B2B product management and is it even the right fit for you thirdly and lastly we'll touch upon what are the little things that you can do to take your B2B product management skills to the next level how can you scale your skills all right so in the first section of the webinar we'll try to uncover and answer the first two questions what is it about B2B product management that makes it so unique and is it even the right fit for you to answer this question we'll go through the customer uh customer journey of of a B2B product we'll try to understand how is it different from the customer journey of a b2c product and also the skills that are necessary for a b to BPM in order to succeed in each stage in the interest of time we'll not cover the entire life cycle in a lot of depth we'll only try to understand the most prominent differences between B2B product management and b2c product management as it relates to this life cycle all right so let's get started we'll begin our analysis by looking at the consideration and evaluation stage of the life cycle where essentially the customer is out in the market looking for a new product and at this stage the customer is evaluating the different options available to them at this stage what makes B2B product management so unique is the concept of the user versus the buyer persona to better understand this let's talk about Spotify or Netflix as an example who is a user and who is a buyer for Spotify as a Spotify user I am the buyer meaning I pay for this I pay for my Spotify subscription out of my own pocket and I'm also the user so it's safe to say that for most b2c products the user Persona is also the buyer persona but that's not always the case for most B2B products for B2B products the user Persona is typically the end user who is also most focused on the operational and tactical excellence and ease of use of the product whereas the buyer personas usually somebody more strategic somebody who's more interested in more higher level strategic goals like return on investment is this product going to help my company save time save money make money so essentially B2B pem is successful B2B PM understands that a successful product appeals not just to the end user but also the buyer persona and so a successful B2B PM is able to prioritize problems and outcomes that alleviate concerns of both of these different personas next is the purchase stage where the customer is actually in the process of purchasing a new product here there are two very essential differences that arise between B2B and b2c product management the first is the concept of ACV or average contract value and second is the presence of a sales team let's tackle them one by one what is meant by ACD ACV refers to average contract value or the average value of the average monetary value that another business is paying to your product or to you or to or to or to your company in exchange of your product or your service the BTS the b2c equivalent of this is average order value or aov and how you can better understand that is by understanding essentially the cart value when you're checking or checking out or buying something off of Amazon or any other e-commerce platform generally speaking ACV or average contract value of B2B products tends to be much much higher than the average order value of a consumer product it usually runs in millions which is why number one there is usually a sales team present for most B2B products which is responsible for converting new customers new leads to potential customers this is also the reason why the sales cycle for B2B products tends to be much longer and this phase also is highly evaluative and competitive because your customers are really evaluating your products against your competitors to finalize the product which has the best return on investment em understands that it's very crucial to support the sales team during the stage and so a B2B PM makes extra effort to ensure that they understand the sales process how leads are generated and move through the pipeline and The crucial role that sales teams play in the success of a B2B product a success of B2B PM also educates the sales team about the clear product Market fit so they help so they help the sales team understand who the right Persona or the who the right business is to Target for their products and also onboard them and educate them about product updates and enhancements the next stage of the customer life cycle that we'll be talking about today is the onboarding phase this is the phase after which uh this is the phase after your custom has essentially purchased your product and now they are getting ready to use your product this is also one of the biggest differences that exists between B to C and B2B product management on the B2B side there exists a huge post sales team which are responsible for continued relationship with the customer after the sales is done the relationship that your post sales teams share with the customer is highly crucial it's very high touch meaning it's very Hands-On and highly personalized usually this manifests uh in the form of an account management team which are usually in touch with your customer throughout the lifetime uh that they are your customers and also customer success teams and Professional Services team that ensure that your customer get the most value out of your B2B product on the other hand the post sales relationship of most consumer products uh is likely more Tech touch meaning it's a lot more transactional whereas B2B Pro in B2B products the post sales relationship is highly High touch and far more personalized a B2B a successful B2B PM understands that the post sales team play a very crucial role in the success of your product they view their post sales team as a treasure Trove of insights that they can get uh from these teams as far as uh the as far as understanding what's working well for the product and what's not working well for the product what the unaddressed needs of the customers are next we'll talk about the phase of the customer Journey where your customers actually using your product with this is the use and experience part of the life cycle one of the most prominent experiences that both B2B and B to cpms face in this stage is feature requests coming from customers so as you can see feature requests are common in both B2B and b2c products and your customers usually land up saying something like we're not going to buy your product unless you build this for us or we're not going to renew our contract with you unless you improve this or you incorporate this into your roadmap however in B2B products because the average contract value or the ACV is so high the feedback from your customers tends to have a greater influence on your roadmap than in b2c and what this means for a successful B2B PM is successful B2B PMS have again a very clear understanding of their product Market fit because if there is no clear product Market fit you keep having this leaky bucket of your customers churning and your product not being the right fit for them successful B2B PMS also have a very very clear definition of the product vision and strategy that is not only well understood by their internal stakeholders but also by their external stakeholders meaning their customers successful B2B PMS also understand that decision making needs to be multi-dimensional meaning that decisions cannot be made on opinions alone or on data alone it has to be a well uh well oiled balance between the two and of course keeping a constant pulse on customer pain points and needs always helps because PMS are then better able to anticipate and prioritize some of these feature requests lastly we'll talk about loyalty and advocacy for your customers to be loyal to you to continuously renew their contracts with you and to be advocates for you as a PM you need to have a high level of user empathy for for the customers of your product however in B2B this developing user empathy is extremely challenging this happens essentially because of two reasons firstly your end users and your customers are multi-disciplinary what I mean by that is no two users of your B2B product are the same they could have different they could be different on the basis of the content of the work that they do their organizational structure the level of Engagement that they might have with your product the second thing is that they might not always be able to readily provide a transparent feedback about your product and again this can be because there's a severe time crunch or because they're dealing with sensitive data and for that reason they're not allowed to share transparent feedback with you another thing to keep in mind is because most of the B2B products are somehow geared towards operational excellence enhancements cannot have a steep learning growth because otherwise they tend to disrupt the workflow of your users and so a successful B2B PM understands that yes building user empathy requires a lot more conscious effort and product Discovery needs to be done in a lot of creative ways involving different ways of research alternate data sources Etc successful b2bpms also understand that the release Cadence needs to be well paced it cannot be too aggressive and changes cannot be too radical they have to be iterated in nature customers need to be trained about big changes that are coming up especially on code flows now we're nearing towards the end of the first section of the webinar I think it's fair to say that in some in summary B2B product management tends to be a lot more High touch a lot more personalized but it's also more risk-averse and more expensive as compared with b2c product management and thus a successful B2B product manager in summary requires these five critical skills in their toolkit the ability to communicate constantly and clearly the ability to prioritize effectively the ability to minimize risks the ability to build trust and convince smart people around them and the ability to develop High empathy great so let's tackle the second section of the webinar where we'll touch upon what can you do as a b2bpm to scale your B2B product management skills how we'll go about this section is we'll individually review each of the skills that I called out previously and then because there's a ton of really valuable information on the internet about what you can do to take each of these skills to the next level I'll call out that one single thing that was the game changer personally in my career and I'll also explain why it worked for me um and then what you can do to successfully Implement that recommendation we'll start with how can B2B product managers minimize risks the best way to do this is to have a focus group of experts and meet with them at a regular Cadence what I mean by a focus group of experts is basically representatives for your product from Individual departments within your company and it's even better if you're able to include some customers into this Focus Group the idea with this focus group is to meet with them at a regular Cadence and have a continued discussion going on about some of the ideas some of the problems and the solutions you're working on why this works really well is that your idea gets vetted at each stage of the development life cycle and you're also able to build a group of advocates for your product who can then ensure that your product is set up for success and it's being built in the right way the next skill to focus on is how can B2B PMS communicate effectively again there's a ton of really valuable information on the internet but what was really the game changer for me was being able to proactively anticipate and prepare for the types of questions different stakeholders ask you and basically be proactively prepared for answers of those questions and what what worked really well for me was a stakeholder map a sample of the stakeholder map is already available on your screen this exercise really helped me tremendously in anticipating and you know better communicating my message the next skill to focus on is how to prioritize effectively again the game changer for me personally was having a very clear uh definition of what the product Mission what the product Vision strategy and the North Star Wars and ensuring that the stakeholders around me were all aligned around that common mission and vision this helps because your stakeholders also know and understand what is important for you and then they are able to support you in executing that product vision next up how to build trust with your stakeholders the game changer here is really shadowing your users or asking them to demo to you how they use your product this is really crucial because it really dispels a lot of notion for you as a PM and shows you how your products are actually being used by your end users that knowledge is extremely crucial in ensuring that you make the right decisions about solving the right problems and lastly how to develop High empathy for me personally what worked really well was taking a genuine interest in how my stakeholders day-to-day looks like and understanding their motivations and fears for this specific scenario one book that really helped me tremendously was the culture map by Aaron Meyer I highly recommend this book because it has a lot of actionable tips and tricks in better ensuring that you're able to build a better relationship with your stakeholders and you're able to communicate and collaborate with them better and that was it guys thank you so much for attending the webinar today I hope that these tips and tricks prove to be successful and useful to you and I'm always up for a conversation my LinkedIn is right here so let me know um if if the conversation if the webinar today was useful to you thank you and have a great day [Music]