Exploratory Workshops
2-3 weeks long exploratory workshops before committing to full solutions spanning 9-12 months, like achieving Product/Market Fit and transitioning to a product business.
Nothing else matters more than the Product/Market Fit in the life of your startup, and achieving it is vital for your startup’s success and survival. The purpose of the P/MF diagnosis sprint is to identify the current state of P/MF, the root cause if you don’t have it and actions you can take to achieve it. The diagnosis includes activities*, like data analysis, interviews and workshops with the co-founders and leadership team. We will diagnose by analysing the symptoms like high churn, poor sales conversion and poor retention through the customers’ lens. We will identify the steps to achieve, strengthen or speed up the journey to P/MF and get you into the exciting zone of scalability challenges.
Product/Market Fit Diagnosis Sprint
Activities
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Identifying and assessing symptoms like low customer adoption, lack of referrals and inconsistent market demand.
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Analysing qualitative and quantitative data, like product usage, customer research, win-loss analysis, and sales and marketing reports, to assess symptoms.
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Conducting 1-1 interviews with key business leaders to build a picture of their current state covering business model, pricing, strategy, assumptions, team, revenue, competitors, etc.
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Enriching the internal view of stakeholders with an external view of the customers for a reality check.
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Conducting qualitative interviews with customers if recent customer research doesn’t exist.
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A lightweight product audit to review product performance metrics (AARRR), product usage and strongest/weakest areas of the product.
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A series of targeted workshops like Product/Market Fit Canvas and Timeline Mapping to build a common understanding and alignment in the room.
Outcomes
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Identifying and analysing the gaps that need to be addressed between the current and future state of your startup's product-market fit.
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Identifying the root cause causing several other issues and holding you back from achieving P/MF.
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An outline of the scope, objectives and approach to gather data and conduct qualitative/quantitative customer research.
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Addressing open questions and the leadership team’s alignment and shared understanding of all aspects of P/MF diagnosis.
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Ideas, suggestions and potential fixes to address P/MF or scalability issues in a prioritised order, e.g. Effort vs Value matrix. There may be a need to pivot in rare situations despite visible progress.
Time
2-3 weeks**
Location
Hybrid (Onsite + Remote)
Deliverables
Outcomes report and the leadership team debrief
* We will shortlist the activities to conduct by assessing your circumstances and the available information.
** The timeline depends on factors like existing customer research, product complexity and data availability.
Tech-enabled B2B Service to Product Business Transition Assessment
Your service business is thriving, with steady and predictable growth. Customers are highly satisfied and refer others to you. However, scaling up means constantly hiring and training staff, and updating your processes and team structure to serve high-value customers. Is it time to consider a partially or fully self-serve product for customers to help themselves? That’s the exam question for this assessment.
Many service businesses aspire to transition into a product-based business, but only a few can achieve a scalable and product-worthy model. Moving from a service-based to a product-based business requires significantly different skills, capital, people, culture and mindset, making the transition challenging. There’s no easy way to transition, but you can certainly adopt strategies and models to facilitate a smoother transition. This assessment will help you determine if the product is the right path for your business and what it will take to achieve that transition. You will receive insights and recommendations on the costs, timeline, process, culture and strategic advice to begin the transition.
Activities
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Understanding how your business operates, services, delivery, costs, margins etc.
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Assessing how teams are currently organised and how those teams deliver services, including communication and collaboration norms.
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Reviewing data, analytics, KPIs, and reports actively used to make or facilitate business decisions.
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Leadership interviews, especially Head of Ops and VP/Director of Ops, to gain insights into the processes, operational strategies, service delivery and process enhancements.
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Mapping or reviewing the processes utilised to service customers, including documentation, information retrieval and sharing, knowledge bases, inefficiencies and risk and compliance management.
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Shadowing the frontline project/account managers dealing directly with the customers to keep them happy and satisfied.
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To review and identify customer segments, customer profiles and their applicability to a product business.
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Mapping or reviewing the customer journey touchpoints to explore the gap and opportunities between customer expectations and service experience.
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Reviewing and exploring opportunities from the customer support desk by looking at interactions, customer inquiries, support requests and issue resolution processes.
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Workshops to explore the future state of a product-oriented business, go-to-market strategies, USP, revenue drivers and distribution channels.
Outcomes
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A process outline, based on your needs and circumstances, to conduct product discovery and validation. The process outline will cover steps, tools and techniques to evaluate market viability through experimentation, research and testing.
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A roadmap to transition from service to product business with key milestones and success criteria for each milestone. The roadmap will be designed for minimal disruption to the current business and successful customer transition in phases.
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A very high-level and rough estimation of costs and time involved in the transition, including some options for funding like customer-financed or VC financed. (I have a partner who can build a detailed financial model if necessary. It’s not my strength).
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An outline of the competencies, capabilities, mindset and cultural shift required within the business and the necessary buy-in required from the leadership team.
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Product strategy hypothesis for selecting and validating a product direction and positioning it in the market centred around customer needs and market opportunity.
Time
2 days to 3 weeks*
Location
Hybrid (Onsite + Remote)
Deliverables
Assessment report and the leadership team debrief
* It will take us 2-3 days to determine if it’s worth exploring the possibility of transitioning to a product business and another 12-15 days to determine the transition steps, requirements and roadmap.
Product Health Check — People, Product and Processes
An expert opinion of your people, product and processes. The assessment includes evaluating your Product Org skills, strengths, performance, gaps, product performance in line with customer needs, and processes used to deliver the product and value to customers. It will help you prioritise initiatives, guide decision-making and ensure the product's long-term success.
Deliverables
Assessment Report
Issues with a severity rating
Recommendations
Prioritisation (Value vs Effort) matrix
Time
4-6 weeks
Outcomes
Effective cost management
Better resources utilisation
Staffing needs