S0E3: Zizzer-Zoof Seeds and Product Market Fit

Speaker A: So we're sitting here trying to say Zither Zoof seeds. And, uh, Danielle's having a lot of trouble with it.

Speaker B: Zipper. Zipper seeds.

Speaker A: But it's Zizor Zoof seeds.

Speaker B: Zizar Zoof seeds.

Speaker A: Very good. That's it. Thank you. That's what we're talking about today. Hi, I'm Carl.

Speaker B: And I'm Danielle.

Speaker A: And, uh, this is productly speaking.

Speaker B: We're product managers by trade, and here we explore the world of product management, its people and their stories.

Speaker A: We promise to keep it entertaining and maybe you'll learn something. Shall we give this a go?

Speaker B: Let's do it.

Speaker A: Welcome to episode three where we are going to talk about what to do when you find yourself building Ziss or Zoo seeds. We'll explain what that means in just a moment. Really, about the struggle to achieve product market fit early on. Uh, that's where we're going now in Dr. Seuss's world. Uh, everybody knows about Dr. Seuss and all the crazy things that he has written. He's got a book called the Sleep Book that came out in 1962. And there is this one particular part of it that is absolutely poignant to this point about product market fit and the business in general. There are so many things that you could draw from this. And that goes at the fork of a road. In the vale of Avode, five foot weary salesmen have laid down their load. All day they've raced around in the heat at top speeds, unsuccessfully trying to sell zither Zoof seeds which nobody wants because nobody needs. Tomorrow will come, they'll go back to their chore. They'll start on the roads as they're zoofing once more. But tonight they've forgotten their feet are so sore. And that's what the wonderful nighttime is for. Wow.

Speaker B: I thought I was a Dr. Seuss fan, but I hadn't heard of Zivar Zoof Zizar Zoof seeds until you were talking about this. Yeah, but everybody needs Dr. Zeus.

Speaker A: Nobody needs.

Speaker B: Yeah, Product market fit.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, yeah, so this brings up some points like maybe people really don' need scissors or seeds. Do they not solve a real problem? Well, we don't really know what scissors seeds are. I mean, Seuss doesn't really tell us. It's pretty much a metaphor for whatever a salesperson is selling at this point. Um, there's a lot to be gained from this. Uh, maybe the veil of a vode is not the right market for Ziss or Zoo seeds. Maybe they're just in the wrong place, wrong time. That's why nobody needs them. Uh, does everybody already have enough scissors seeds? Guys, guys, I've got enough. I've already got all the scissors of seeds I could ever need. Please stop trying to sell me scissors of seeds. We've all been there.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's nothing innovative about the Ziza Zoo seed anymore.

Speaker A: And uh, maybe the marketing for Zizu Zoo seeds is unclear and so people don't understand why they need them. You know, why would I need a scissors Oof. Seed?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that's a great question.

Speaker A: And then maybe Zither Zoo seeds just to kind of complete the thought here. Sold through the roof in the dell of Zoof but have clearly fallen flat in Vavode. Perhaps it's time to do loss analysis on why we can't sell them in Vavode, which gets over into the sell side. But as a product manager, being able to understand that loss analysis of why we're losing sales on this product in a particular region can be very valuable. So Danielle, how, how would one start really? Uh, kind of trying to navigate a scenario where you find yourself selling scissors seeds.

Speaker B: I guess for me the product needs to make sure that it's solving an unsolved problem that the customer has or that the user has that you have the ability to provide. Like if you're making bad, if you're making bad Ziza Zoof seeds or making Ziza Zoof seeds isn't something you have the ability to do, don't try and sell them even if there is a market problem. But if you're out there and there's several people selling Zzuf seeds, then they're not going to buy yours if you're bad at making them. So I think there's probably a couple of things to unpack. My go to phrase is always fall in love with the problem. Because if you fall in love with the problem and the people of Vavod have an issue, then you're trying to plug that gap. You're not trying to plug the Ziza Zoof seed. That should also be your sales guys technique of selling. But I'm not a salesperson so I can't talk to that. From a product perspective though, really having empathy for the problem, Understanding the problem to such a depth means that you should really not be falling in love with the solution that you provide, but instead understanding the problem.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great point. Um, one thing we did want to address though was what happens when you've solved the problem but now You've exhausted your defined market. What does that look like? How do you know you've hit that point?

Speaker B: Well, there's two questions there, I guess, of how do you know when you've hit that point and then what do you do about it if you've established that you've hit that point? So in terms of hitting that point, how do you know. How do you know when your product has stagnated and there's nobody else is buying it other than going home with sore feet?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think some of the things you can look for are if you're no longer making sales, you're going home with sore feet, but also so are your competitors. So doing a competitive analysis to kind of get an idea, do you have a competitor who's really starting to gain momentum, who you're starting to lose out to, or are you in a scenario where you're seeing that your competitors are floundering in the same market as well? Because if you start to see that, then I think you're starting to see the signs of exhausting a market. It doesn't necessarily guarantee that that's what happened, but it's a fairly strong sign in that direction. Um, then it could also just be that you're not making sales and maybe there aren't many competitors to do that competitive analysis on. And maybe that says that you've exhausted that defined market. But sometimes you're not going to know that you've exhausted a defined market. And that's kind of problematic because you could keep pouring resources and efforts into that market, into trying to sell into market, and, uh, you're just going to keep going home with sore feet every day.

Speaker B: And don't blame the sales team. I think I've seen this a couple of times before as well, of if the product isn't selling. It's very easy to blame that on the sales team. And it, and it, sometimes it is right. Sometimes the sales folks have hired the wrong person for the wrong job, or sometimes they're just, they're having an off couple of months like that. That is possible. But don't, don't let that be an escape hatch. Um, in terms of like most of the time you hire intelligently and the time sales are doing everything that they can, they're just not getting traction. And that can be down to the product.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a relationship that goes both ways. Because the salespeople are quick to blame the product people when the product isn't selling. Because, hey, the product doesn't do what we said it would do, or the product isn't quite where we are hearing in the market. But that's, that's great feedback though, because that says, well, okay, if you need the product to do this either, this isn't the market we need to go after. Because that's not the strategy that we want to go after, which is very real possibility that a salesperson says, we need features X and Y and you go, but features X and Y are not our strategic direction. So maybe that's the wrong market to be going after. Or actually, yeah, features X and Y would be great and they would help with our strategy. And we believe that features X and Y would appeal to not just this one user or this one potential customer, but that could actually have great appeal. That's a great piece of feedback we need to go do that. Uh, but then, yeah, it's easy for product to go, oh, sales just doesn't know how to sell the thing. Sales doesn't know about how this is doing or they're not, uh, messaging it. Right. And, uh, it's easy to get kind of caught in a back and forth between product and sales and be pointing fingers at each other as to why something isn't working. Uh, when in reality, a lot of times, uh, there's a little bit of blame to be passed to both sides.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's important to know why and get that feedback from the customer. If then, if the sales cycle hasn't been successful, is it really because those features aren't there that they're looking for or is it because they already have a solution? Solution, your competitor's beaten you to it, or is it because they're the wrong customer or the sales guy in the middle was not quite right? Um, one piece that I think is really interesting is the cultural aspect of that sales conversation. Sometimes it's much easier for people to blame not buying your thing on a feature that you don't have than it is for them to just say, no. I've seen and experienced sales folk can often make really good relationships with customers. And because then you have a relationship between the customer touchpoint and the sales folks, this, the customer doesn't want to disappoint the sales folks. Right. Like they could be personal friends at that point, so they don't want to let them down. And so it's easier to blame it on, oh, you're missing this thing and I absolutely must have it than it is to just say, you know what? Now is not the right time.

Speaker A: That's kind of the equivalent problem. Like in Product starting and, um, becoming too connected to the problem or to the solution that you provided for a problem and then finding out it's the wrong solution. Yeah, it's kind of the same thing. Like, you get too connected, you're too down this road that, hey, we've got to make this work for this customer. They're great people. I really don't want to go in there and disappoint them. And yeah, you can see how, uh, these personal feelings that we would have towards either other people or towards the product can get in the way of actually getting the real work done and getting everybody in a better spot. And then if you find yourself in this spot where you've exhausted your defined markets, uh, which is a difficult spot to be in, and it's not a fun realization that, hey, look, uh, in this market there's just not a lot more business to go after. Especially if you're early on. I mean, if you're later on in your life cycle, this is probably the expected status quo. Wow, we really sold through that market. There's not very many people left that haven't bought our product that would want to buy our product. But if you're early on and you exhaust your defined markets, this, this gets to be really problematic. So how do you find which markets to branch into? Or in other words, why not the veil of a vode? Why isn't it working in the veil of a vode? How do we know where to go? That's not the veil of ode, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, you've exhausted veil of a vode. So where do you go next? Like what direction do you travel in to ensure that your next village, Zeusian or not, um, is the right village? Rather than wasting your time moving from, from place to selling any Ziza Zoof seeds. Thank you for choosing the Ziza Zoof seed, Kyle. I really appreciate.

Speaker A: Absolutely wouldn't have picked anything else.

Speaker B: Um, I guess the analogy works though, right? Like instead of taking your entire team to a new place, you would do market research on that place before you decide to go set up shop there. What does market research look like? How does that break down into different sections?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. And um, market research to actually figure this out is going to be things like user, uh, discovery, word of mouth, commission studies, uh, in this case actually going. And I think I'd start with a forester or gartner and just see what's out there already. On a different style, uh, of market, there's a lot of good material. If you get A partnership with these companies that you can search through and actually look at what's been commissioned before. Some of these reports are available for free on the Internet, especially if you're willing to provide your email address in a few different places so that the company that commissioned the report can market to you for a little while. Uh, but you can actually start to get these. And out of these you can get some nuggets that may actually help define a little bit better what your next target market should be. I mean, I know I've looked into things before where I've thought, you know, maybe we're actually, uh, my product fits more into this segment than into the segment we're currently in. And in looking through these studies and reading through them, I realized that yes, our product could play in that segment, but our product would need probably another year or two's worth of development to get all the features that are expected for entrance into that segment. So maybe we would have a better time in that segment, but that's going to take one to two years of development to get into that segment. And then you have to ask yourself something like, do we have the financial capital to actually be able to do the investment to pivot? Because changing your market doesn't always mean, oh, that's so easy. You just go change your market sometimes. It could mean actually having to develop new stuff for a particular market. It could mean expensive research. You know, you're going to have to go talk to people. Do you need scissors of seats? This is a scissors of seat. This is what it does. Does that appeal to you? No. Why not? I just don't need scissors of seeds. Uh, could you tell me more? You know, you're going to have to get that information out. And, uh, oftentimes, you know, if you want to do user discovery, user research, uh, especially for people that aren't your customers already, sometimes you're going to end up having to pay those folks for their time, a gift car, a coffee, some type of remittance for giving you their time. And so it's not a zero cost to go change markets. It's a big deal to have to go pivot to a different market. But using those types of things can help you kind of figure out where to go. I guess the biggest thing on that is don't give up. If you find yourself in that situation, go explore a market. If it's not right, move on, move on, move on until you find the one that is right. Because it could be pretty easy to want to give up in that Scenario.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think there's a whole bunch of questions to ask as well, starting from what problems do you encounter? And in that research piece there's so, uh, again we could do a whole other session on this, but there's so much to how you phrase that question. Don't go in with a, oh, do you have this, this problem? Because it's very easy for people to say yes or no and you've walked out with great, it's a survey. I don't care for surveys. What you actually want to get is the empathy and the understanding of the problem. So how do you achieve X? And then seeing them, walk them through their process with them and understand what it is that they run into, where are the challenges? And if the challenges are similar and could be solved with a Ziza Zoof, great, then you've got yourself a market. What you also like the secondary set of questions is, is there propensity to pay? And you see this between countries, but also like smaller areas between different markets as well. Of uh, certain countries will culturally enjoy subscriptions more than licenses or vice versa. Um, and that kind of question scales up and scales down. Some people don't have a lot of disposable income. So if you're targeting a market with little disposable income, then you also need to change your pricing structure. And so maybe in one village, Ziza Zoof seeds are uh, extreme. They're luxury, they're great. And you go to a different market and they don't have the money to be spending on luxury items. So how do you then change your Ziza Zoof seed so that it can still be bought, but they're getting some value for money? If they don't have disposable income or they don't have the type of money that you're looking for, I think that that's kind of also the secondary follow up. And it's almost less of a producty question, but it is a product question because if people are paying less or they don't see as much value in your products, then how do you change your feature set to reflect the different amount of value that it's providing for a different type of customer?

Speaker A: And I think that one of the things we're starting to see with, uh, the explanation that you've just given here and what we've been talking about on this episode, uh, is very much how product management has its own set of things that you manage as a product manager. But it touches so many different parts of a business. You know, We've talked about different parts of sales that you may want to consider. We've talked about marketing, we've talked about engineering. All these different disciplines end up coming together to form the product manager's job and uh, to be what the product manager does. So that's where product management gets really difficult. This is where product management is difficult to teach in school because it's experience with all of these different things and understanding all of these different areas of the business that have to come together to really allow a product manager to be effective in a space. And one thing that we hear talked about a lot is product market fit. You know, we started this conversation out, uh, talking about product market fit. It's kind of a buzzword that describes that point in time, because it is a point in time you can lose it once you have it. Where you've got a product that fits a market really well and is selling like crazy because it has found its people and it is solving that problem and that's rolling. So that's a great state to be in. But sometimes you have what we call problem solution fit. So Danielle, how do we know when we have product market fit versus when we have problem solution fit and kind of what's the difference there?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think when you're in a, my experience with this is, is with a startup and so that's the, the mindset that I'm in when I'm talking through it. But if you're starting at the starting blocks and aiming for product market fit, you're shooting too high. You should always have product market fit in mind. But the thing you need to be searching for and ensuring that what as a startup going from 0 to 1 is a problem solution fit. So what is the problem that a great deal of people will pay to have the solution for? And then does your solution match that problem? And just making sure that it's repeatable, making sure that it's scalable, and making sure that there is a full market out there are kind of secondary questions. And so to me that's the difference of what's your 0 to 1 and then what's your 1 to 100? Um, and making sure that you're kind of, of gating the right questions. Um, because aiming straight for product market fit is a really big step. Um, but that first thing of problem to solution is always manageable.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I've heard Dan Olson talk about this a little bit before as well, and he likes to talk about how you really need to spend a lot of time in the problem space before you jump into solution space. I mean, it kind of comes back to what you were saying about, uh, fall in love with the problem, not the solution. And uh, oftentimes we like, we see the problem and we see a potential solution to that problem and we just want to jump right to solution and start building and go, hey, we, we solved the problem. And yet you may not have considered certain things that you actually needed to solve for this to actually be a real thing. Uh, so that's definitely something to keep in mind there as well.

Speaker B: I think that spending enough time in the problem space is something that hits product managers every stage of product, product management cycle, which we talked about in the last podcast. If you missed that, go back and listen. But that spending the appropriate amount of time in the problem space hits every product manager at every point in the life cycle. You need to ensure. And knowing when to leave the problem space is a really tough problem as well. But you need to ensure that you've spent time there so that you're actually understanding the root cause issues, not the surface level issues. It's very quick to say, oh, I observed this person having this problem and therefore this is one of ten solutions. I've thought about all of the potential solutions and I've gone with the cleverest or most logical solution for this problem. But what if you grasp the problem wrong? Or what if you didn't spend enough time really understanding the root cause of that and going through the five whys, which is the, uh, you know, the five whys, where you ask why over and over and over again and eventually you get to the real reason. Sometimes in my experience, what I've seen is this is really, I see this a lot in like my grandparents and older folks when they're working with technology, they will tell you, oh, the problem is I just can't do this thing. I just can't send you messages, I just can't send you pictures. And it's like, okay, well then I'll make the app easier to send me images. And that was never the problem. The problem actually was that they don't have the confidence to be able to send images or they don't have the camera to be able to send, take the images to send them in the first place, or they don't have the Internet. There's so many other things that could lead to that first knee jerk reaction of this is my problem, go fix it. And so that I think that's what Dan, um, talks about when he talks about getting into the problem space. Is just making sure you've done your due diligence and the problem that you're trying to solve is the actual problem, so that when you come back with a solution, people are willing to adopt it.

Speaker A: And then once you do get the actual solution and you've got people that have adopted it and you're moving along, you find that you've got a couple of must haves in that solution. Uh, having a must have is the type of thing that's not going to make somebody happy, but not having it is going to cause dissatisfaction. So you've got to make sure that you've identified those in your solution. But then what's interesting is you also want to have delighters. And, uh, these are great to have as they're going to make people happy. These are those extra little things that just make using your product that much of a joy that actually brings somebody delight when they're using it. But unfortunately, over time, those things get into the category of must haves because people get used to having the delighters, and then that just becomes a must have. And so to keep that product market fit, to keep developing, you've got to stay on top of that, because eventually what used to delight people is now just a you must have. And if you got behind the market, maybe there's must haves you don't have. And we saw this in the way that navigation has changed so greatly, uh, over the last I don't know how many decades, but it has changed quite a bit, um, because today, how do you get somewhere? You pick up your phone that has GPS and either Google Maps or Apple Maps or some other program built in, and you say, I want to go here. And you hit the button and it tells you exactly how to get there, whether you're walking, whether you're taking transit, whether you're driving. Uh, I mean, it's pretty amazing that you can just do that and you get that information. But if we think about it, how did we used to get around Danielle?

Speaker B: Maps. Physical maps.

Speaker A: Yes. We used to use memory. Yeah.

Speaker B: There used to be a book, the A to Z. There's, uh, a buy a new car. Buy a new A to Z. That always used to be there. I can't believe I just said Z twice. Zed. This is Zed.

Speaker A: We do explore the differences between American and British culture on this podcast as well. All of it, it's just part of the game. Uh, so, yeah, you said Z. You didn't say Zed. It's all the scissors.

Speaker B: Too many zeds in this program z

Speaker A: uh, versus S we could go down that road. Um, but yeah, we used to have to. You know, you used to have to take the atlas and you would sit there and study the thing and figure out exactly how you needed to go. And then you'd follow the signs on the road and you'd get to where you were going. Uh, but then, you know, there bec map software programs that you could buy for your computer kind of before the Internet was really in vogue, and you'd, uh, load this whole big software into the computer and then you'd be able to print out directions. And this was like majorly better than just the atlas because now you had a sheet that told you exactly what to do and you just follow that in the car. Uh, then everybody realizes that Google Maps came along and then you could actually do the same thing with Google Maps. So you didn't need the software on your computer, but now you've got Google Maps, you print the paper out, and now we're at the point where you use your phone. But if you watch the progression, each one of these things was a delighter when it happened. I mean, like getting that mapping software that you had to go buy from the store that you could then like print out, uh, that was an amazing piece of delight. Because what was the must have the map. I had to have the map, I had to understand the map. But to actually have a computer tell me how to get around the map, that was a delighter. But then it became a must have. And every single time one of these delighters people picked up and they used it and they loved it. A year or two later, it's a must have have. And you can just see that so clearly.

Speaker B: Yeah. I have another story that's slightly different about Delighters. I, um, was doing some design research with the team that I was working with at the time, and we had a pretty significant competitor. The product I was working on was definitely not the front runner in the market. We were chasing another product and we'd have people. We had people come in and tell us, like, hey, you use this product, like, walk us through it. Can you show us the screens? Can you tell us why you like it so much? Can you tell us what led you to buying this product in the first place? And it was often the things that they were calling out was the logo. Um, and I won't name the product because I'm still jealous of how well they're doing. Um, but, um, you could fill the gap with something like Duolingo, right They have such a strong product logo and then they filter it through the product as well. So like every now and again you'll finish a level and that the owl will pop up and he's got such a personality and it's so delightful. And we were sat talking to all of these users of this competitor product and they were quoting that logo and I was like, hold on a minute. If we make a fun character and we put this little character where the screen is loading, we're not going to fix our problem. Our problem was that the app didn't work foundationally in the way that people expected. And so they went to the competitor and then the competitor had a delighter. And delighter was the thing that stuck in their brain when they talk about that product. So if you're aiming to get word of mouth, sharing and kind of marketing, then those delighters are even more important. But also if you're doing that competitive analysis, you're understanding a different market. Watch out for them because they're not always the thing. That means that your product will succeed. Just adding a character or just adding on top a top a cherry of a cake that doesn't taste very nice doesn't mean that you're going to be successful. And I think Maslow's hierarchy always comes to mind because if you don't have those base layers of like, what's the shelter like, where's the food? Just adding that top kind of triangle doesn't make much of a difference if you don't have those base layers covered. So really understanding what are the base layers in the market. And then to your point of if your competitors have suddenly started offering a mobile app, you can't still be stuck on paper. Just the fact that the paper was a delighter, uh, when you did the year ago, you have to keep revisiting these things. Even if you think they're successful in the market, you have to keep going back and asking the same questions.

Speaker A: Those are excellent points. And I believe that the type of cake that Danielle would not buy would be a carrot cake. Even though there are plenty of us out there in the market that would love carrot cake.

Speaker B: Why are you going for. Okay, I. Let's poll the audience. If you're listening, agree with me. I'm not even going to poll. I'm just going to tell you to agree with me. I don't. Why would you put a vegetable in a cake? It just chocolate goes in cakes. I could probably stretch to a, ah, fruit in a cake, but not fruit cake. That's Too many. Don't push me like a raspberry cake or a strawberry or something. But carrot cake. Who are these people out here loving carrot cake? Let me know. I want to hear from you.

Speaker A: Those of you that like me, that do like carrot cake. You realize we've now got two completely different segments of the market here. Uh, as you can see how, uh, one person is. If you just interview Daniela, you'll never make a carrot cake.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah. That may actually be what you want to make because maybe there's more people that'll buy carrot cake and maybe you'll

Speaker B: have a durable advantage against your competitors in the carrot cake space, where you won't if you're going for the chocolate

Speaker A: cake as a customer.

Speaker B: And that's not a problem. Right. I think, I mean, uh, here's uh, another question is, okay, you've gone ahead and you found your, your market for your product to fit into, but then how do you stop the embellishments? If we've said and asserted that delighters are really important, how do you not add too much? So a carrot cake is still a carrot cake. I'm never going to buy it, regardless of how much chocolate and sugar you put on the top of that carrot cake. But then if you cover that carrot cake in chocolate, maybe you're turning away the people who do actually like carrot cake but don't like chocolate.

Speaker A: And apparently those people like chocolate carrot cake. Even liking both of those things, I don't know if they go together. Uh, and sometimes people have been like, you like everything here.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. So how do you drool back from that?

Speaker A: Yeah, that next topic. What happens when you try and solve all the problems? And why shouldn't you solve all the problems? Because we like solving problems. That's what product managers do. So why not solve all the problems?

Speaker B: I think understanding your user, uh, as well as your market and then having a really clear strategy on why you're going after that market and why you're going after that user and, uh, making sure that you're not being distracted by shiny stuff is important. But yeah, it's really hard if you just have all of these cool feature ideas. How do you know when you're bloating your own product and when you're actually making it work?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you know that because all of a sudden you're spending your time running in a bunch of different directions and you get to a point where nothing's really working as well as it should. Uh, and you keep adding things left and right and it becomes a feature factory, and you've got scope creep everywhere. And your strategic roadmap is getting overridden by the CEO and the sales team and all the other people in the company. They're like, we want this, we want this, we want this. And none of it actually maps to a cohesive strategy. And running down that road and not saying no, you end up with a product with a lot of bells and whistles, but really no sense of direction and no sense of what it actually now solves. That is a difficult situation to find yourself in. When you find yourself in that situation, how do you push back? How do you keep from doing too much? That's a loaded question.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, um, I mean, one of the warning signs that I always look out for is when you have that, that strategic roadmap. And a strategic roadmap is different from a work plan, is different from a feature roadmap. And I'm sure, Carl, I know you love talking about that sort of stuff, so we'll get into that. But when you're at the strategic roadmap level, if you see a list of features, that is my first warning sign. Because if you just see a list of stuff to go do, then you're just adding stuff. And it might well be the right stuff, but it's not leading with the thing that you're trying to solve. It's not leading with the hypothesis of, hey, we want to go improve day one retention, or we want to go improve this particular problem for this particular type of user. Uh, if you've just got a list of things, that's a to do list, then that, to me is a sign that you're trying to. Trying to do too many things and you're just adding bells and whistles for the sake of it. Um, if you've used data to get to that point, then that's a really good sign.

Speaker A: Yeah, and it's super key in how you market things too, because, uh, we talk about the list of features and we talk about feature factory. And if you just go out there and you tell people, hey, we've got this product, got all these great features. Yes, you have to talk about the features, but you've got to lead with the value. You've got to lead with what you're actually delivering. So like, uh, say we were marketing product managers. Well, product managers can do all sorts of things. They can write features, they can write initiatives, they can help your engineering team write epics. I mean, they can do all sorts of things. We could make a feature list for what a product manager should bring into your organization. But you don't hire somebody just to create a bunch of documents and a bunch of minutiae and create work for other teams. You hire that person because you want to see them actually increase the bottom line of your business. You want to see them accelerate your growth. You want to see them be able to help bring you closer to new revenue and get into those places. That's why you hire a product manager. That's what product's about is accelerating business growth and getting you to your outcomes faster. You don't hire a product manager because they can write a document, but you hire them to do those things. And yes, to get there. They're going to use all these tools in their toolbox to do that. So that's a key thing. And you've got to think about that when you're marketing your own products so that you might have product market fit, but you're not talk about it. Right. You know, like, oh, you didn't explain scissors who seeds well enough to the people who develop a vote to make them realize that yeah, you actually do need this because if you had scissors who seeds, you wouldn't need the other thing that you think you need.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's the difference.

Speaker A: Didn't sell that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's to me, it's the difference between outcome and output. And you, you touched on it there. Right. Of like when somebody doesn't understand what a product manager does, it's very easy to hire one and be like, I want you to write documentation. I want you to write. Write product requirement docs and PRDs and issues. But actually that's output that just tells you that I can write a document which great. I can write a document. You need to be managing my outcomes. Of like, I want you to achieve X and I don't care how it's done is a better way to phrase anything to a product team, not just a product manager. Um, especially because there's never going to be like documentation is not going to solve the world's problems problems. Um, it's going to help in certain instances.

Speaker A: We'll kill you.

Speaker B: Oh, lack of it is absolutely. But it's always a combination of things that gets you the outcome that you're looking for. Not one output equals the thing that you're looking for. And that brings us to our CTA of realizing that there is no silver bullet for any product management. But also realize there's no silver bullet for your product market fit either. And nor is there a guarantee that once you have it, you'll keep bit

Speaker A: and think about where your product fits your market well and then think about the problems your market has that you may not solve well yet. Focus there and see how much you can build for growth.

Speaker B: Also note that changing direction is not always easy, so you can definitely expect a lot of pushback internally and externally.

Speaker A: Not that we know.

Speaker B: I've never experienced this one. Um, but it might be that a change of direction is exactly what you need. Start thinking about how you can measure that and how do you get that confirmation m uh, that you're going in the right direction.

Speaker A: This has been Productly speaking.

Speaker B: Thank you for tuning in. If you like what you heard, subscribe. Make sure you don't miss any episodes.

Speaker A: Also, share our podcast with your friends and anyone you think might enjoy listening to An American and a Brit natter on about product management.

Speaker B: I don't think you can call it nattering, I guess.

Speaker A: Actually we did stay on topic and is not technically nattering exactly.

Speaker B: Well, what did you guys think? Leave us some feedback. Make sure to Visit us at www.productlyspeaking.com, send us an email at helloroductlyspeaking.com or join the chat on matrix@productlyspeaking matrix.org thank you all again and until next time. Cheeri.