One Knight in Product

Moving to Customer-Led Growth by Forgetting the Funnel (with Georgiana Laudi & Claire Suellentrop, Founders @ Forget the Funnel)

Georgiana (Gia) Laudi and Claire Suellentrop are both experienced SaaS product marketing leaders who spotted the same things again and again whilst trying to help companies grow. They decided it was time to join forces and persuade marketers around the world that the sales funnel is dead, and we need to try a different approach. They founded Forget the Funnel, a consultancy aiming to help people do just that, and have recently launched their new book of the same name.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
Episode highlights:
 
1. The Funnel is no longer fit for purpose
Marketers have been trying to cram leads into the top of the funnel for 100 years but it doesn't serve the needs of modern marketers in recurring revenue SaaS businesses. We need to consider the customer journey pre and post-acquisition
2. Forgetting the Funnel is a company mindset shift
Business leaders can lose sight of the market & the product vision as companies evolve. They need to forget the funnel & empower their marketing teams to do the same & focus relentlessly on customers, not inward-facing metrics.
3. You're going to need to pay off your Revenue Debt
As companies evolve, they can end up with a very fragmented set of customers that don't form a coherent ICP. To succeed with customer-led growth you need to work out who your best customers are and optimise for them.
4. Companies often have remarkably similar marketing problems
How these problems manifest themselves may be different, but there's generally some low-hanging fruit that can be picked straight away. Progress on harder problems can be stymied by unclear ownership or responsibility
5. There's no point spending a dime on marketing until you've fixed your fundamentals
If you don't focus your marketing on your best-fit customers and optimise everything to speak to them, you're just throwing your money away trying to scale marketing up. Fix the basics first!
Buy "Forget the Funnel"
"Your product is great. So why is marketing it so hard? Many SaaS companies struggle with marketing. Teams try everything they can to drive more traffic, leads, and signups. Yet revenue growth remains... lumpy. Slow. Frustratingly inconsistent. If this sounds familiar, the problem isn’t you or your ideas; it’s that you’re guessing at what resonates with your target customers. In Forget the Funnel, Georgiana Laudi and Claire Suellentrop share the Customer-Led Growth Framework they've developed to help companies of all sizes solve their product marketing struggles and hit ambitious targets. This framework helps you get inside your customers’ heads, map and measure your customers’ experience, and uncover which tactics will actually move the needle for your company."
Check it out on Amazon. You can also check out the book website
Contact Gia & Claire
You can catch up with Gia and Claire on Twitter (Claire, Gia), LinkedIn (Claire, Gia) or visit their website, Forget the Funnel.

Embracing Change to Innovate in Product Management (with Greg Coticchia, CEO @ Sopheon)

Greg Coticchia is the CEO of Sopheon, an innovation management platform aiming to help companies innovate at scale. Greg has been in product management since the 80s and seen it all, and also helped Carnegie Mellon University create the first degree programme in product management. He's passionate about all things innovation and believes that we all need to get comfortable with managing change. He also shared some insights from his many years in product management.
A message from this episode's sponsor - One Knight Consulting
This episode is sponsored by One Knight Consulting. Yes, yes, that's me. As you probably know, I've moved into freelance coaching and consulting for B2B product companies. I want to help your company, your team and your... well, you, get better at product management. If you want to chat to me about what I can do for you, why not head over to book a call with me and we can discuss your needs and how I can help.
Episode highlights:
1. You don't need a degree to be a product manager
Greg worked with Carnegie Mellon University to create a degree in product management, but it's important to realise that any learning is the start of a journey... you need to get punched in the face by a real job a few times.
2. Having big early successes is a double-edged sword
It's common for PMs to learn from failure, but it's possible to go too far the other way and treat early success as The One Way to future success. You need to remain humble and never stop learning & adapting.
3. The hardest organisation to get to change is a successful organisation.
It's easy to use Kodak or Blockbuster as cautionary tales but these were successful organisations making a boatload of money. They needed to embrace change, but it's not surprising that they didn't.
4. The best way for big companies to innovate is to make small companies
Big companies are inherently resistant to change. If they want to stay ahead, they need to create or acquire small companies without baggage and leave them to it rather than try to make them fit in.
5. Innovation is about more than just shiny new tech
It's easy to get excited about new tech, but we should get equally excited about repositioning existing products or building new business models to serve novel segments. Everything should always be focused on the users!
Contact Greg
You can catch up with Greg on LinkedIn.
You can try out Sopheon on sopheon.com

Achieving Product Excellence with the Product Operations Manifesto (with Antonia Landi, Product Ops Consultant & Co-Author ”Product Operations Manifesto”)

Antonia Landi is a freelance Product Operations consultant and coach who fell into Product Operations thanks to LinkedIn recommending a strange new job title to her, and thinking "that's me!". She's now a passionate advocate for the value that Product Operations can bring to organisations and has co-authored the Product Operations Manifesto to help frame it with product teams and company leadership.
A message from this episode's sponsor - One Knight Consulting
This episode is sponsored by One Knight Consulting. Yes, yes, that's me. As you probably know, I've moved into freelance coaching and consulting for B2B product companies. I want to help your company, your team and your... well, you, get better at product management. If you want to chat to me about what I can do for you, why not head over to book a call with me and we can discuss your needs and how I can help.
 
Episode highlights:
 
1. Product Ops is about achieving product excellence at an organisational level
It's difficult to pin down as problems are different in every company. Maybe it's data analysis, organising processes or building communities of practice. You're there to remove blockers to being product-led.
2. You might not need a Product Ops team... yet
Many Product Ops tasks already existed before Product Ops. How much you need a dedicated team depends on how much pain are you willing to tolerate. What's slipping through the cracks? Product Ops helps you scale sustainably.
3. Product Ops is not the revenge of project managers & "process people"
There are some crossovers with agile coaching, project & programme management but we should also reclaim the word "process"… process isn’t always bad - it just needs to serve you, not the other way around.
4. The Product Ops manifesto was necessary to give people something to rally behind
There’s so much ambiguity & a need to move past the "what is it" question. They came up with a document to help product teams to understand the parameters (and prerequisites) of the function.
5. About those prerequisites...
The most important is the ability to affect change - without this, Product Ops people just become process people or team assistants. On the other hand, these prerequisites are 100% valid for just generally being a good product company.
Check out the Product Operations Manifesto
"Product Operations empowers product organizations to collectively, effectively and efficiently drive the most meaningful outcomes for customers"
Check out the Product Operations Manifesto and feel free to add your name to the list!
Contact Antonia
You can connect with Antonia on LinkedIn.

Is Product-Led Growth Really For You? (with Leah Tharin, Product-Led Growth Guru & Head of Product @ Jua)

Leah Tharin is a product leader, content creator, advisor and startup founder. Leah is now reinventing weather forecasting with Jua and is a well-known advocate for product-led growth. We went deep into her content creation process, how to work out if product-led growth is for you, and some of the steps you might take to get started.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
Episode highlights:
 
1. Product-Led Growth is all about "Show, don't Tell"
It's not necessarily a free trial/freemium, but it's more important than ever to let people understand the value they're getting from your product rather than hiding behind (possibly auto-generated!) marketing content.
2. Product-led growth does not replace sales-led growth
PLG just addresses a different segment in a better way than sales-led. For bigger deals, you still need a sales team, but product-led sales mean getting better quality leads by demonstrating the value upfront.
3. Product-led growth might not be for you... yet
There are some segments where PLG might not make sense. If people don't know they have the problem you solve, if they won't proactively search you out or recommend you or if your solution is super-innovative, maybe try PLG later.
4. Ignore the "product" word - this is a company initiative
The product management team doesn't own PLG. The whole organisation needs to align around what "success" looks like for a customer and optimise all incentives towards achieving that.
5. You need to objectively measure team success
People can't just rely on "product sense" to tell if they're being successful with PLG. Product organisations need to have good quantitative data & measure product satisfaction. Data should be tracked per team, not per user.
Contact Leah
You can connect with Leah on LinkedIn, on Twitter, or check out all of her lovely content on Leah’s ProducTea.

(Don’t) Scream If You Want To Go Faster - How to Accelerate Product Development (with Ed Biden, Founder @ Hustle Badger)

Ed Biden is a product leader and passionate educator who has recently set up Hustle Badger, a product management education resource centre. When he was the CPO at FutureLearn, he helped to prove a new business model and he did it... quickly. I spoke to Ed about some of the principles he lives by when trying to accelerate product initiatives and deliver value faster.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
Episode highlights:
 
1. Executing fast means delivering more impact
The faster you're shipping, the more you're learning, and the faster you're going to understand what you should be doing. It's better to embrace inevitable uncertainty, get something out in the world and see how people react to it.
2. "Fast" is relative - you need to be as fast as you need
Not everyone needs to deploy 1,000 times a day. What fast means for you depends on your customers and their appetite for change, alongside internal factors that might impact it. Find the right fast for you.
3. Speed is always about trade-offs
You can't just go faster by ordering people to work faster - it's not sustainable. You need to work out what levers you can pull, what shortcuts are acceptable, and what's in and out of scope. You need to be willing to trade to get speed.
4. Radical transparency can help get away from "Go faster" execs
CEOs and business leaders often complain about speed and wish everything could be faster. It's important to be transparent with them, let them know the trade-offs & give them a stake in the decision so they buy in.
5. Watch where you spend your time
Often, teams spend a large proportion of their time on BAU and fighting fires. Keep track of this, because if you're spending 50% of your time not executing your strategy you're not going as fast as you can (and the results will reflect this).
Contact Ed
You can connect with Ed on LinkedIn, or check out Hustle Badger.

The Rise of the Robots - How to Responsibly use AI in your Products (with ChatGPT 4, Cutting-edge language model @ OpenAI)

And now for something a little different. I recently purchased a ChatGPT pro license and got access to ChatGPT 4, the groundbreaking new model from OpenAI. Social media is on fire at the moment, with people talking about all the cool stuff it can do. So, I thought "who better to speak to about AI Product Management"? A few hours later, and here's the result; the full One Knight in Product experience, a wide-ranging discussion with some terrible jokes from both sides thrown in for good measure.
A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel
This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast!
Episode highlights:
 
1. It's natural to be concerned about AI taking over the world
We've all seen the movies, the books and the horror stories. But there's also an incredible opportunity to change the world for the better. We need to be vigilant, and confront the concerns head-on.
2. Product Managers can benefit from putting AI in their products
But don't just go in blindly - you need to assess that adding AI capabilities to your product actually solves a real problem and isn't just cool tech. In short, you need to be a product manager!
3. You don't need to be a data scientist to be an "AI Product Manager"
Having technical skills and being capable of understanding AI on a high level is helpful, but only to help you have good conversations with your colleagues. As a PM, your job remains to manage the product!
4. It can be hard to persuade traditional industries to use AI solutions
Not everyone is cutting edge and there can be barriers to adoption. There are multiple ways to prove the solution and integrate gradually to show the benefits and remove the fear of change.
5. Explainability of AI is crucial
AI is often seen as a black box, but there are ways to help explain what it's doing and justify its decisions. This is especially important when considering the impact of bias, and ensuring an ethical solution.
Check out ChatGPT
You can chat to ChatGPT on the ChatGPT website or visit the Open AI website.

Moving from Value Streams to Software Profit Streams (with Luke Hohmann, Co-author ”Software Profit Streams” & former SAFe® Framework Contributor)

Luke Hohmann is a startup founder, consultant, SAFe framework contributor and co-author of the upcoming book "Software Value Streams". Luke wants to help agile teams connect their own value delivery with profit, the value that the leadership team really cares about, and set up whole organisations for success. We chatted about some themes from the book, with a gentle detour into Scaled Agile territory for good measure.
A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel
This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast!
Episode highlights:
1. A software profit stream is the necessary evolution of a value stream
Agile folk talk about value all the time but how does that map to company priorities? There are structures & systems we need to use to turn "value" into profit & meet the company’s financial goals.
2. Most books about pricing & licensing are old school and written for boomers - few of them cover software
Pricing is not a number, it’s a system, and it's a team sport. Your software solution's pricing & packaging should evolve over the product lifecycle.
3. Value is a set of relationships between nodes that impact each other
Value doesn’t occur in isolation; consider the system. if you’re building a solution to improve thing A in a positive way, but it negatively impacts thing B then the solution is intrinsically less valuable
4. Customers don’t care about your profits...
... but they do care about your ability to sustainably serve them a solution they need. But, beware! It’s possible to build too much quality and provide more than your customers are prepared to pay for.
5. Product management is an infinite game
We play games for leisure until they’re boring. At work, we serve our customers until it’s boring to the business. If we play the game well we don’t win the game, we simply win the right to play again.
Coming soon! Buy "Software Profit Streams"
"Profit is your key to survival. Without profit, you cannot maintain or grow your business. Without profit, you cannot serve your customers or provide benefits to your employees. Without profit, investors have no reason to invest. Without profit, the goals of the business are unattainable. In Software Profit Streams, serial entrepreneurs Jason Tanner and Luke Hohmann unveil the essential tools and processes for creating profitable software-enabled solutions that have long-term impact."
Book link coming soon!
Check out Luke's article on startup SAFe
Not convinced by SAFe in startups? Luke wants you to think again. Check the article out here.
Contact Luke
You can catch up with Luke on his website. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.

Getting Ahead of the Competition by Getting Good at Competitor Analysis (with Bethan Vincent, Managing Partner @ Open Velocity)

Bethan Vincent is an experienced marketer who has worked with a variety of firms in B2B SaaS and B2B Services and has now started marketing agency Open Velocity. Bethan believes in good competitor analysis and how we might get ahead of our competition by going out and finding out what's going on. We spoke about the joys of fractional marketing leadership, and some of the ways to get competitive analysis done.
A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel
This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast!
Episode highlights:
1. Competitor Analysis is a simple concept, but doing it is hard
Your competitors are out there and, in many cases, there'll be interesting stuff on their websites but you need to use a variety of techniques to really get to the bottom of what they're doing.
2. You need to know your own target market & positioning before evaluating others
It may be Marketing 101, but it's important to understand the space you're playing in, the audience you're going after & who your direct & indirect competitors are before doing competitor research
3. It's important to have a hypothesis you want to test for your competitors
There are many tools and approaches you can use, but you need to know what question you're trying to answer. Just finding interesting "stuff" is... interesting, but maybe not particularly useful.
4. Just because a competitor is doing something doesn't mean they're being rational
Be aware of what competitors are up to, but blindly copying them is not a good strategy. You need to be in charge of your own destiny, be a leader and do things others can't replicate.
5. Product management should be considered a subset of marketing 🔥
"Product" is one of the many "Ps" in marketing. Product managers should care about packaging, positioning, pricing, promotions and all the rest. It's not just about what you build or how you build it.
Contact Bethan
You can catch up with Bethan on LinkedIn or Twitter as well as apparently TikTok if you're into that sort of thing. Make sure to check out Open Velocity too.