Article by Martina Lauchengco and Marty Cagan

We realize that most of our topics concern the development of Internet services, and mostly consumer internet services at that. But many product managers out there are working hard on other types of software products, such as enterprise or infrastructure software, both shipped software and hosted services.

One product area that seems to be a long-standing source of confusion for those in these spaces has to do with what are referred to as solutions products and the associated solutions marketing. Just as many companies stretch the truth to call their products a “platform,” many other companies like to claim their product is a “solution” even when it’s not.

The concepts of platform and solutions are both important and powerful, and those products that aren’t really up to the standard just dilute the meaning for the rest and confuse the market.

Before defining a solutions product, let’s first be clear on what constitutes a product in general. This may sound basic, but much software is not actually a “product” at all.

Here is how we characterize a product:

- people will pay for it; it delivers real and distinct value (and typically has it’s own SKU). Note that sometimes people pay by tolerating advertising, or by paying for support and not license fees, but one way or the other they’re compensating the provider.

- it works well in multiple customer installations. The point here is that it’s not a special; this is not custom software.

- your field and/or channel can effectively sell it. You provide the necessary sales tools and sales training.

- your company will stand behind it, providing support and adding improvements as necessary.

- your customers and/or channel and/or services partners know how to install, configure and customize the product.

You might argue that what we’re defining here is not just a product, but a certain quality of product. And we think that’s true. We consider software, even software produced by a product organization, to be just a wanna-be-product if it’s not yet being successfully used by multiple customers. In a sense, the software has to prove its right to be considered a product. Much like a platform that does not have any applications running on it isn’t really much of a platform.

Now, here’s how we describe a solutions product:

A solutions product has all of the characteristics of a “product” above plus:

- the software solves a business-level problem, often for specific industry verticals.

- the product may be based on an integration of one or more component-level products, which may come from your company or from partners, and they are pre-integrated.

- if appropriate, the product is certified with partner’s products as necessary (the customer needs to know the supported configurations).

We like solutions products because they speak directly to a business-level problem or need. In general, customers care much less about the underlying technology you use (other than early adopters), and more about whether you really solve their business problem. Your business problem might be disaster recovery, customer relationship management, or Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. But it isn’t what flavor of the operating system is used, or what type of router you select.

Note that there are some solutions products that are turn-key, and others that require professional services, and solutions products can be for any size customer from a single consumer to the largest enterprise, and also the software may be shipped (installed) software, or software as a service.

But it’s also important to point out what a solutions product is not:

- a set of instructions for how to use an existing product in a new way (customer’s won’t pay for that)

- a set of customizations/scripts from the field or other external source (not supportable)

There are many field or marketing organizations out there where they clearly see the customer demand for true solutions, but their product organization only provides the underlying component products, and they are often tempted to get creative and try to cobble together something that they hope they will have better luck selling. But while this might buy you a little time, as soon as a competitor comes along with a true solutions product the customer can easily tell the difference.

Related but the not the same as solutions products is solutions marketing. We also like solutions marketing over other forms of product marketing because solutions marketing:

- speaks to the business-level problem, aligning products with business value

- speaks to vertical industry segments, aligning value with a particular industry’s more specific and sometimes regulated needs.

- showcases live customer success stories in action, in order to prove the business value

- shows how to leverage products, professional services and business process knowledge or best practices to achieve business results

To us the trend is very clear and has been underway for several years. Increasingly customers are demanding products that directly address business-level needs, and they’re less interested in reading and comparing a data sheet of technical specs. Good solutions products and solutions marketing speak directly to these business needs.

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By Marty Abbott

In my earlier article I used the sports management analogy to make the case for actively managing the skills, skill levels and composition of your team. In this note I’ll discuss the topic of how to manage those activities. For this, we’ll leave sports and use a gardening analogy.

Even a novice gardener would not expect to rake some soil, throw some seeds, pray for rain and wait for a beautiful garden. Your team is no different; you must undertake the same activities in managing your team as you would in creating a successful garden.

Seed

Selecting the right flowers for our garden means paying attention not only to how they look, but how they will interact with the other flowers in our garden; will they steal too many nutrients or will the soil properly support their needs?

Managers in hyper-growth companies spend a lot of time interviewing and selecting candidates but usually not very much time on a per candidate basis and even less time pondering where they’ve gone wrong in hiring in the past. Finding the right individual for your job means paying attention to your past failures in hiring and correcting them. We might interview for skills, but overlook critical items like cultural or team fit. Why have you had to remove people? Why have people decided to leave?

Candidate selection also means paying attention to the needs of the organization from a productivity and quality perspective. Do you really need another engineer or product manager, or do your pipeline inefficiencies indicate additional process definition needs, tools engineers or quality assurance personnel?

One final point here is that far too often we try to make hiring decisions after we’ve spent 30 minutes to an hour with a candidate. We encourage you to spend as much time as possible with the candidate and try to make a good hire the first time. Seek help in interviewing or add people whom you trust and whom have great interviewing skills to your interview team to increase your chances of a good hire the first time. Call previous managers and peers and be mindful to ask and prod for weaknesses of individuals in your background checks.

Feed

Feeding your garden means spending time growing your team. Of all the practices in tending to your team, this is the one that is most often overlooked for lack of time.

The intent of feeding is to help grow the members of your team who are producing to the expectations of your shareholders. Feeding consists of coaching, praising, correcting technique or approach, adjusting compensation and equity and anything else that creates a stronger and more productive employee.

Feeding your garden also means taking individuals who might not be performing well in one position and putting them into positions where they can perform well. However, if you find yourself moving an employee more than once it is likely that you are avoiding the appropriate action of weeding.

Also, feeding your garden means raising the bar on the team overall and helping them achieve greater levels of success. Great teams enjoy great but achievable challenges and it’s your job as a manager and executive to challenge them to be the best they can be.

Weed

While you should invest as much as possible in seeding and feeding, we all know that underperforming and nonperforming individuals choke team productivity just as surely as weeds steal vital nutrients from the producers within your garden. The nutrients that are being stolen in this case are the time that you spend attempting to coach underperforming individuals to an acceptable performance level and the time your team spends compensating for an underperforming individual’s poor results.

Weeding our gardens is often the most painful activity for most managers and executives and as a result it is often the one to which we tend last.

While you must abide by your company’s practices regarding the removal of people who are not performing (these practices vary not only by country but very often by state), it is vital that you find ways to quickly remove personnel who are keeping you and the rest of your team from achieving your objectives. The sooner you remove them, the sooner you can find an appropriate replacement and get your team where it needs to be.

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