Partner to Please
Delivering full solutions through partnerships
Years ago, when I took on a new product development role, I felt lost. My company lacked a product manager, and each project manager handled their products from start to finish. Although we all had various skills, we didn’t cover all aspects of product development. We had a great engineer who had difficulty with market analysis and business cases, one project manager transitioned from sales, and another from production. They were skilled in their previous roles but were still learning product development. I had experience in team leadership and market analysis, but I struggled with engineering a functional product.
In essence, collectively we had all the pieces to create and launch great products, but those skills were isolated in our individual silos.
One day, we shared our frustrations. Our engineer needed help writing a business case and my prototype didn’t work. So we made a deal: I would write his business case while he fixed my engineering mistakes. We collaborated, using our strengths, and our projects progressed faster than expected, giving us better insights into customer problems to address.
Seeing the results, we asked management for a paradigm shift. We started working in as partners in a collaborative cross-functional team with each of us doing what we do best. The result? We cut development times by 75% and doubled sales.
Just like we can't make successful products in a vacuum, companies can't create complete solutions alone. Through partnerships, we can combine our strengths with those of other companies to deliver greater value than we could achieve individually.
Last year, I crashed a partnership management conference called the Nearbound Summit. This is an awesome community of collaborators. While their traditional focus is using partnerships to drive sales by tying products together to provide better customer value and accessing other pools of customers, I saw how partnerships could also help us better manage our products through more customizable solutions and more efficient product development.
In the product discovery process, we often uncover a whole set of problems our customers would like us to solve. However, we rarely can or should build a solution for all of them. Sometimes we lack of expertise or resources to build them. Sometimes there is already a good solution to a part of the problem that is outside our area of focus and it therefore doesn’t make sense to spend resources on it.
The partnership managers showed me that I don’t need to fix all customer problems. Instead, we should focus on solutions we are best at and partner with others who already have the answers for other issues. This can save us months of development time and tens to hundreds of thousands in costs.
The build, buy, or partner decision is key for your product strategy. While we should not outsource vital functions, we also cannot make everything the customer needs. Keeping key technologies internal while outsourcing less critical or value-added products helps us avoid overextending ourselves by trying to fill every customer need.
Like a well-made watch, where each part works together, our product portfolio should combine our skills with those of expert partners. This collaboration can lead to better products, build trust, and save costs by focusing on internally building what truly matters and outsourcing ancillary products or features used only by a small group of customers.
Product managers often express frustration with the “feature farm,” which is a result of sales teams pushing for new features to win specific customers and lax validation mechanisms to determine wider demand. This often leads to bloated product roadmaps and complicated products filled with features that few customers actually use. Although sales teams are important for understanding customer needs, they sometimes base feature requests on conditional statements like “I’d buy if you could….” While these concerns are valid for individual customers, it doesn't necessarily mean that the development team should create a new feature for every request, especially if a current or potential partner company may already have that solution.
An effective partnership program, whether consisting of an autonomous team or as part of the product management function, cultivates relationships with companies that provide complementary solutions and even provide mutual benefits in costs, customer satisfaction, or brand strength. While this can help generate sales, it can also be valuable when building new products or filling gaps in your product portfolio. Whether developing a new product or tailoring a solution to a user segment, partnering can be a shortcut to providing more comprehensive solutions without having to spend the time and resources to develop a new feature or complementary product.
Customers want value, whether it's saving money or time. When we help them with problems and save them these resources, they view us as more than just a retailer; we become a partner who understands and solves their issues. Offering a software API or bundling products can shift our role from just a vendor to a solution partner that customers rely on for their critical needs. True partners focus on pleasing their customers with solutions that meet their needs.
Customer-Led Innovations Consulting helps align your company’s goals and strengths with what your customers need. We assist in creating products and strategies that enhance your offerings, ensuring you meet customer demands and address any gaps in your product portfolio. Book a free one-hour consultation to start building your effective product management strategy.
