Every B2B SaaS organization today survives only by providing customer experience by making them use the product. The most successful companies today put the product at the core of everything they do. Therefore, they are popularly known as product-led organizations. And these organizations are the future of the B2B SaaS business.
‘’Don’t find customers for your product. Find products for your customers.” – Seth Godin
The definition of product-led growth
Product-led growth means that methodology where the product leads organization growth- customer acquisition, conversion, customer retention, and expansion. This aligns the company and teams around the product and encourages product improvements. Product-led companies give the customer the keys to experience the product. Product-led growth influences every team in the business to improve and create a thriving culture.
For marketing, the number one magnet is the product. For sales teams, the product needs to meet what the prospects want. In customer success teams, the criteria is how we can create a product that helps customers become better. For engineering teams, the product criteria is for one with quick time to value or a faster aha moment.
Desirable characteristics to build a successful product-led organization
The product quality and customer experience drive product-led companies. It is to be noted that customers buy products to delight and satisfy their needs. If the product is bad, no amount of external help can help. Investing in marketing, sales, or engineering does not help if the product experience is bad. This is why it is necessary to build an amazing product that retains customers.
Always think about improving your product’s features to provide an excellent customer experience
Companies must improve product features as early as possible. Instead of focusing on product performance during the customer journey, one must look at it from the time of the convention. This can be through product ideation, product building, and in-product customer service. You can also help with customer onboarding and monetary revenue from the product. This builds revenue and improves customer satisfaction with time.
Make your workforce data literate
Companies must train employees to understand data to generate insights by processing data. This will help keep products ahead of the competition. Top and upcoming technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science must be taught to employees. Companies can create patterns and enhance business strategy by using and leveraging these technologies. These technologies can help make a business plan better.
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Invest in your product management team
You need to ensure there is alignment across different functions. Product management needs to receive special focus. Product management is all the tools, processes, and people related to the product. This brings together customer success, engineering, marketing, sales, design, and more functions. When you invest in product management, you can leverage that to enhance the product lifecycle.
Concentrate on providing the Eureka moment for your customers
Product managers need to focus on bringing the ‘aha’ moment to customers. This will happen if product features are designed to hook customers. This will make customers stick with the product and not churn. If customers can know these aha moments and eureka moments, they will become users for life. The ‘aha’ moment is what the user experienced when he or she meets the proposed value of the product, learns how it will work, and values it. It is basically when the user perceives and experiences the product’s value and is considered an important part of the user journey.
Select product-led techniques – A must to uplift an organization during the economic crisis
Customers stay with companies that help them. Products that delight customers and adapt as per changing times are the ones that will stand the test of time. For example- A company that adapts to the remote work environment of COVID-19 has a better chance of earning revenue. One has to become creative and go digital to ensure a better response. Zoom, for instance, grew its users by a hundred times in the pandemic. This is because the product adapted to the need of the hour.
Adapt your company’s operations based on your product with changing times
It would be best to adapt your company’s operations to meet changing times. For instance- SmartKarrot launched a feature on augmented intelligence to ensure customer success outcomes became better. This feature is in line with the need of the hour. You need to change your operations as well. For instance- move to a digital system when it is tough to operate offline. Customers also will enhance this online purchasing and solutions.
As a C-Suite executive, always lookout for a chance to depict your product story
Every start-up founder must be ready to tell their story. This will help them attract the right investments, talent, and technology. You can raise the right funds if you depict your product story properly. A product story is the story of the product. This needs to be done by the product managers since they know their story better than anyone. It is the vehicle for ensuring the product information is communicated across the organization. This is the same story that customers need to know.
Concluding Thoughts
Innovation is a must for organizations that want to become product-led. This can be done step-by-step by understanding your customers, developing a data-literate workforce, and investing in a product management team to concentrate on the most interesting ideas. Once you have done that, it is time to shortlist the ones in for the long haul and build upon them by spearheading the product as your main protagonist!
Dattatraya Shetty is an IT Professional with 2 Decades of experience in areas of Product Development, Implementation & Service Delivery Management. As the Head of Implementations and SOC Compliance in Smartkarrot he is on a mission to provide relishing customer experience.
Published January 17, 2022, Updated May 17, 2024
