Optimize Your b2b Sales Pipeline Management for Product Management

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hi everyone i'm shobha subramanian and i'm thrilled to be here today this is my devil presenting at product school and it's a topic that really interests me and intrigues me at the same time a little bit about myself and i thought i'd show it as a roadmap since that's what vpns do i started my career coding on main prints a skill that i recently learned was very valuable to the state of new jersey since then i've transitioned from being a business systems analyst to a business consultant and to more product ownership roles and then on to being a product manager at visa and now more recently at uber it's been a fun journey but there's more to it along the way i found things that i love like sports movies i picked up some hobbies i'm an avid hiker i loved running and i'm also a pet parent in this photo that's my boy hector who walks me three miles every day today we're gonna talk about b2c and b2b products and product management and some of the key challenges faced what are some things that are similar and what are some things that are different just a quick slide on things to keep in mind there's no one-size-fits-all you'll need to tailor these to your specific needs the content and examples in this presentation may be more from software products because that's where my experience is but it can be extended to non-software products as well and finally there are some schools of thought that may tell you otherwise but it's not the job function that is different it's more the nature of the customer base that is different so i wanted to start with a quote um i found this very intriguing it's from dave carnegie he says personally i'm very fond of strawberries and cream but i have found that for some strange reason fish prefer worms this is just to say that no matter how well you think of certain idea it really what matters is uh the customers who are going to really use your product is what they want that matters so we'll go into some of the um the next slides and and we get through uh uh the differences uh between b to c and b to b products but we'll start with some basic definitions b to b products are essentially business facing and they are there to solve a very specific business problem for example crm platforms like salesforce or business analytics tools like heap or amplitude are there to solve very specific business problems on the other hand b2c products are consumer oriented and are therefore there to solve a particular need or want of the customer for example a fitness app like strava or beverage ordering service like the starbucks app they all satisfy a particular want or need of the user in general a keen product sense is key for both flavors of product management and by that what i mean is in essence in essentials and in basic principles of product management across the board hold good right it's not very different from b2b and b2c product management now let's talk a little bit more about the main differences between these two types of products let's start with this slide on customer acquisition b2b products are typically sales driven in terms of customer acquisition by that what i mean is that b2b product managers need to understand the sales processes and how leads are generated and how they move through the pipeline etc sales are also an invaluable source of information since they interact with the customers day in and day out they help understand their needs and problems and therefore they are very critical to highlighting areas of improvement but as a pm it's important not to get into building every one of those asks that come through without reflection there's going to be constant pressure from both sales and existing customers to deliver on certain features that they are looking for the better way to look at it is to understand the underlying problem and whether a solution to this problem fits the overall strategy for the product and can it be built in a scalable way customer acquisitions on the b2c side are however through more viral means and word of mouth also through ad campaigns and other forms of direct marketing most companies don't even have sales teams just marketing or growth up performance marketing teams most pms in this space therefore have a very good understanding of the attic space and they also know how to use usage data and trends to green insights moving on to the next slide this is about customer support and outreach when it comes to customer support most b2b companies will have a team of account managers or customer success managers who will stay in touch with the customer additionally there may be like training sessions or other professional services or contractual agreements to ensure that the customers are deriving the most value out of the product therefore customer support are also a critical stakeholder in the b2b space they are able to provide valuable insights into the actual usage of the product and pain points and gaps and such for example if you are a pm for the omnichannel commerce product of a company and for some reason the in-store hardware malfunction at a customer's location there may be several reasons for the malfunction it could be a wrong installation faulty hardware disconnected from the wi-fi network for example we had a very similar instance where the issue was actually due to faulty cables that were causing the malfunction realistically as a pm the only source of information for such values is through the customer support channels in b2c companies however customer supports customer support tends to be more transactional in nature that is to solve a particular customer's problem or issue with the usage of the product customer outreach is usually done through mass communication or campaigns and therefore there is much less direct relationship between the customer and the company reviews and other feedback mechanisms try to bridge the gap and are also easy self-serve options make the need to talk to a support person unnecessary but nevertheless the um the fact remains that the relationship between the customer and the company is a lot closer in b2b products as compared to b2c products moving on to the next slide let's talk a little bit more about stakeholders with b2b products usually the person making the decision to buy is not the person who is going to be using the product for example in large organizations the decision to make the decision to purchase a tool is usually made by a collection of people for example vendor managers procurement partners business development potentially in conjunction with the manager of the end users who will be using the product day-to-day while the users may be involved in some part of the process they are not the decision maker in addition there may be several other indirect stakeholders such as security legal compliance finance and accounting etc like depends on the product and you know essentially getting their buying is just as important as the main stakeholders that we talked about earlier on the other hand with b2c companies the decision maker is more often than not the user there may be some exceptions like if you think of a family subscription to something so essentially the challenge lies in creating a strong enough value proposition such that the majority of the cohorts of your customer base are covered moving on to the next slide this is about purchase and decisioning and how it happens typically across bit b and b to c b to b products by nature are evaluated in a very rational way and go through a very long rigorous purchasing process so one expects that the decision is also very rational and value driven in addition there may be some external factors as those driven by the ecosystem of products that is being used by the customers in the customer's location but that may also impact purchasing decisions again there may be some other differences based on how decisioning happens at smbs versus enterprises nevertheless it's usually not one person's decision with b2c products more often than not the purchasing decision is driven by emotion perception of value or affinity groups therefore product positioning and finding the right product market fit is felt more acutely in these companies moving on to the next slide let's talk a little bit about usage and monetization of the products there are some obvious things about b2b they deep with fewer customers and typically tend to be priced higher than a b2c product the pricing of a b2b product is done through contracts and licensing and tends to be value driven most b2b companies adopt like several ranges of pricing to cater to different segments of their potential customer base typically enterprise customers have custom pricing plans and also since the sales cycles tend to be long lasting months even the most of the contracts that get signed come up with like terms and clauses that relate to termination of the contract and therefore there is a little bit more predictability towards the revenues that it's going to generate on the other hand for b2c anybody is a potential customer it's typically free or very competitively priced therefore b2c companies have to come up with very creative ways to monetize their product usually it's through ads or sponsored content also pricing tends to be very much same across the board usually you don't see very much like you know variations across the product and how it's priced the path to profitability is determined by reaching a certain critical mass of users all right moving on to our favorite topic which is roadmaps um bread and butter for pm so this is something that always generates a lot of interest in b2b several stakeholders are there to provide feedback good actionable feedback and also provide us with a channel to get in touch with their user base but that also means that there may be several feature requests that may arise from sales cycles existing customers or support for example for some examples there are certain cases where a sales cycle may request that a particular feature become available so that a contract can be signed and in those cases it's really a question of how that feature fits into the overall roadmap for that product also in these cases the customer tends to look for visibility into the roadmap so they are trying to find out when their feature what they are looking for becomes available in the products roadmap uh let me give you an example on this for for example there may be say certain manual steps involved in onboarding a merchant onto an e-commerce platform subsequently these will need to get automated so that the product can scale the users of the platform will look for visibility into when those steps get automated so that the processing processes on their end may be streamlined with b2c new features typically originate from analyzing user cohorts and usage patterns identifying gaps and features through user research and adapting to the changing preferences of the customers for example and all of us might be familiar with this but facebook adapted to repeated questions from customers for a dislike button by coming up with reactions which was a a big hit so just wanted to wrap up that section with saying this is a very famous quote you can just ask your customers what they want and you can try to build that and give it to them by the time you get it built they'll want something new so this is this is a pretty tough job for a pm but it's it's the same across the board i don't think it's very different from b2b or b2c it's just a challenge that we have to conten contend with i have another slide here that talks about a few more things that are different um from b to b and b to c but i thought i'll skip this in the interest of time these are pretty self-explanatory and i believe the presentation is going to be shared so feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions on these but moving on to the next slide and let's shift gears a little bit and talk about what's similar ux is super critical gone are the days when you could just get away with subpar user experience on b2b products the bar is high and better usability and intuitiveness goes a long way in reducing support costs training needs and increasing operational efficiencies building hypothesis and testing or validating their like iterations or experiments is also becoming pretty standard across both worlds there's absolutely no substitute to listening to your customers that's a no-brainer you just have to listen to your customers and finally communication is key constant communication helps ensuring that all your stakeholders are aligned and that's a very critical part of a product manager's role now let's talk a little bit about some challenges and risks faced by b2b and b2c product teams with b2c the challenge is to build something that's meant for everyone to be able to reach them and convince them about the value of the product that you have built with most b2b products though the biggest challenge is especially for pms is not to become order takers the ability to execute on your product strategy and yet be able to make trade-offs as the need arises is a bread and butter for the b2bn talking about risk for b2c market risk is one of the most important to address the inability to find product market fit is the biggest startup killer in addition success is typically measured by reaching certain milestones and it is not one big bank release for b2b it's all about hitting the ground running with a minimum viable product to ensure that the product is at least at par with competitor products the minimum viable product becomes very critical therefore execution strategy and hitting the major release milestones become super critical for b2b products finally i wanted to leave you with some points to ponder while viral growth was originally more of a consumer growth mechanism it has made its way to b2b as well for example um when a zoom customer has a video call and they have a participant who's from a company that's not yet using zoom for example or when you know you're participating with some external vendors or suppliers and you invite them to join a slack group and essentially their company does isn't on slack yet right so all of these are indirectly creating a bus for the product and therefore it's a viral growth mechanism for these companies as well and another very interesting thing is about marketplaces um marketplaces have both sides there is a site that's more b2b and then there's a site that's more b2c for example at uber or amazon that also means that they bring together some unique product requirements as well as some challenges and risks so that concludes my presentation i hope that was helpful a quick note of appreciation for saskia and janet from product school for coordinating this session thank you so much [Music] you