Sustaining revenue growth is difficult because most product markets have a natural life cycle. First, a product must prove itself with early adopters. If it proves itself, revenue growth takes place as more buyers want to buy the product. Naturally, the product reaches a point of maximum penetration. At this point, growth slows, or even declines. The way to find new sources of product-driven revenue growth is to launch new products to new buyers at the right time to enjoy a long-life cycle.

1. Product strategy stage 1, product planning (buyers)
This week we will finish the stage 1 of product strategy development, namely product planning.
As a reminder, following are the 3 stages we will perform to develop a product strategy:
1. Product Planning (markets **done, accounts **done, and buyers **done today)
2. Product Principles (buyer behavior, customer experience, and product design)
3. Go to Market (product roadmap, product launch, sales & marketing message, pricing and
packaging
Sustaining revenue growth is difficult because most product markets have a natural life cycle. First, a
product must prove itself with early adopters. If it proves itself, revenue growth takes place
as more buyers want to buy the product.
Naturally, the product reaches a point of maximum penetration. At this point, growth slows, or
even declines. The way to find new sources of product-driven revenue growth is to launch new
products to new buyers at the right time to enjoy a long-life cycle.
To complete the buyers phase, we will answer the following questions:
• Who is the primary user of our product? (remember the “buyer, user, beneficiary?”
• What factors do our buyers consider before they purchase our product or service?
• What is our brand awareness in our addressable market as compared to our competitors?
• When our buyers do not purchase our products, what are their stated reasons?
• How do our buyers make purchase decisions? Please describe the buyer’s journey for each
market segment, product, sales channel?
• Is the decision to buy our product or service made by a consolidated, central buying
decision team (BDT) or is it made by a decentralized, fragmented BDT?
• Which channels do our customers prefer to buy our products and why?
• Have our value propositions been validated by our customers?
• What do our buyers value when engaging with our content?
• What is the evaluation criteria used by our buyers when making a purchasing decision?
• When our buyers select one of our competitors over us, what are their stated reasons why?
This concludes stage 1, or product planning stage of our product strategy journey. Next week
we will start with a very interesting stage which is product principles (buyer behavior, customer
experience, and product design)
Ashraf Osman, August 2017