How Product Management Can Save SaaS

With the shift to Software as a Service for many applications the need for strong product management is more apparent than ever. Here at the 280 Group we use several SaaS applications, and to be frank most of them are poorly implemented and remind me of the early days of desktop applications.
Here are just a few of the places where product managers can add tremendous value in a SaaS environment:

• Be responsible for the whole product. No one understands the product, customer and business better than the product manager. And no one has a better holistic view. Each department (sales, support, etc.) has their own agenda that is perfectly logical from their point of view. But the if unchecked when decisions are made it can result in a terrible experience for the customer.
• Filter out the vocal minority. Many SaaS companies are using built-in surveys and discussion forums to gather information as the basis for prioritizing features in their releases. This is a valuable source of data, but by definition the customers who are contributing are self-selected and most likely won’t reflect what your average user really cares about. If you don’t bring in additional data you run the risk of building a product that makes your power users happy but leaves the other 97% of your customers scratching their heads.
• SaaS applications can change too rapidly. I am sure that each individual decision to add new features rapidly and change menus, etc. is well-justified within each SaaS company. The problem is that at the 280 Group we run multiple SaaS applications. Between all of them at least one changes every week or so. As a small business owner I don’t have the time or desire to re-learn how to do tasks or to absorb new features and functionality constantly – I have a business to run. Imagine if every time you opened up Microsoft Word the menus had changed. Product Managers need to specify the most important use cases and ensure that new releases don’t interrupt their customer’s work flows. And they need to understand the environment of their customers and how often customers can really digest new changes. Just because your team is doing one month sprints doesn’t mean you should necessarily provide a new release every month.
• Implement usage monitoring software and use it wisely. Since you can monitor what features are being used in a SaaS environment it can be valuable to aggregate the data and use it in product decisions. However, you have to balance this with the fact that there may be features in the product (or that need to be added to the product) that users can’t find and/or don’t know about. When Microsoft did a survey to see what should be added to MS Word in Office 2007 8 out of 10 of the top requests were features that were already in the product that users didn’t know about or couldn’t find! Product managers need to combine usage data with common support questions, queries in the help system and customer research to determine what the right mix is rather than relying only on usage data.
• Set the long-term vision and strategy for the product and make sure that short-term decisions are aligned with it. With the increasing use of Agile and the short development cycles of SaaS it is easy for a team to become far too focused on the short-term list of features to implement. The danger in this is that you won’t necessarily build a product that will be competitive a few years out. Tacking features on based on what seems the most important thing this month can lead you to both an architecture that can’t support large-scale necessary changes and a product that starts to look like a swiss army knife.
• Don’t ship beta features in a product that customers are paying for. When we are paying a premium for a SaaS applications nothing pisses us off more than seeing a feature listed as “Beta”. What does that mean? Can we count on it? Does it work correctly? Product Managers need to make the call as to whether a feature is implemented and tested to the point where customers can rely on it. If not, don’t release it. As SaaS matures I am hopeful that the quality of the applications will improve and that there will be more of a focus on the user.
• Get trained and up-to-speed on how to work more effectively with your team if they are doing Agile development. Agile environments require different skill sets than waterfall, so make sure you learn about effective product management in that environment. You might want to read Agile Excellence for Product Managers or take a course on Agile Product Management Excellence.

As SaaS matures I am hopeful that the quality of the applications will improve and that there will be more of a focus on the user. Product managers will be key to making this happen.

FONTE: http://www.280group.com

Pick one and own it

What if your company were allowed only one advantage over the competition?
What would a sales call look like, starting with your 30-second pitch, then dealing with skeptical questions, trying to earn this potential customer's interest, respect, and eventually money, all with only one advantage?
Impossible, or just pointless?  Neither!

You should go through this exercise because this skill is valuable in every sales call. Sometimes you're defending the few advantages you have over a specific competitor. Sometimes you're arguing the virtues of small businesses over large ones. Sometimes you're defending your product against what the potential customer perceives as a glaring lack of functionality.
Hanging your hat on just one advantage that you can own completely is stronger than diluting your message across many advantages.
And it's not just in face-to-face sales calls either. Your homepage becomes laser-focused. Your advertisements become pointed, powerful, pithy, and other words starting with "p."  Your 30-second pitch becomes compelling. You know what to blog and Twitter about. Your 5-minute product demo drives home a single point. Everyone knows who you are and where you stand.
And at least on this one point, you're untouchable. Doesn't that sound nice? It is nice.
But don't you need lots of advantages to overcome sales objections and competition? No. Let's see how to riff off single advantages, using them to answer a range of skeptical questions and concerns.
If nothing else, this should get your juices flowing and make future sales calls and marketing messages more effective.

Most Expensive

You: We're the Cadillac tool — the most expensive, but also the best. I know, "most expensive" doesn't automatically imply "best!" But in our case you get what you pay for.
Customer: Hmm, I don't know, budgets are tight. We're thinking of going open-source — it's free.
You: Open-source is free like puppies are free. You don't write a check to get it, but you have to support it for life. Your employee's time is not free. Working around bugs is not free. Having nothing but the Web of Lies Internet to rely on for tech support is not free. See, we don't line our pockets with that revenue, we spend it making you maximally effective.  We answer the phone on the first ring. When you have a problem, we connect you directly with developers instead of hiding behind off-shore Level 1 support. We'll stay on the line with you at 3am as you work through a problem. We'll do a conference call helping you through best-practices on using the tool for your specific purpose. We do things open-source would never do.
Customer: OK, that's useful. But BigCorp offers 24/7 tech support too and they have consultants.
You: It's quality, not quantity. Let's get specific. We employ actual software developers for Level 1 tech support and email, so you're talking to someone who not only can answer every question but can even read the code to get answers. You're talking to someone who has the power and ability to change the code to fix a bug or add a feature. That's an inside track that no big company will offer. And consultants? Our consultants write blog posts about best practices. Our consultants literally live and breath with the entire team every day. Our consultants train with the top experts in the field, who we can afford because we're the Cadillac. You're not getting someone who realized they can turn a buck installing high-priced software — you're getting true experts giving you insight that only we can provide.
Customer: I'm also checking out SimpleCo's tool. They're much cheaper, and although they don't have as many features, it seems simpler to use.
You: Just because they do less doesn't mean they're easier to use. For example, one of the reasons we're expensive is that we integrate with 20 other software packages. That's great for you, because it means we interoperate with more of your other tools — including that tool you're going to buy next year but you don't know it yet. But it's not more complex for you, because if you don't use an integration it has zero impact on your day-to-day use. There's a myth that "more features are always more complex," but that's just bad user interface design. And yes, you guessed it, we can afford awesome user interface experts who help us avoid those mistakes.
Customer: But still, even if I agree with all that, I still have to justify the budget today.
You: When you factor in the cost of the tool, also factor in the cost of failing to be successful with the tool. To spend many months installing, integrating, training, learning, customizing, fighting, on the line with tech support, only to have it fail in the end — having to rip it out, then go through the whole process again with a new tool. Multiply that by the chance the tool will indeed fail. Sure it's possible that any tool could fail, but with us — more features, better support, expert help — it's less likely to happen. Oh, and besides the catastrophic expense, what's the effect on your personal career? What's best for you and your company is to bet on the best.

Obsessed with Quality

You: Software is so crappy nowadays, we expect failure. We expect bugs. We expect to be helpless, to just have to "deal with it." At AwesomeCorp, we say that's unacceptable.
Customer: Yeah.... so you're saying you have no bugs at all?
You: No, I'm saying we're maniacal about finding bugs, and when you find one we're incredibly fast at fixing them. It's not unusual to have a fix in under 24 hours. All software can have bugs, but no one is more committed to fixing them.
Customer: Well if that's true, that's good. But I'm currently trialing BigCorp's tool and they have more features than you. I don't know which we'll need, but I have a problem buying a tool that doesn't do much.
You: It sometimes sounds like "more feature bullet points" is automatically better, but you and I have used software that claimed to have lots of useful features that didn't really work in reality. Usually the more features a product has, the worse each feature is. Try uploading a 1gig file to BigCorp's tool — oops, it breaks! To us, saying you have a feature when in reality it's full of holes is dishonest. We'd rather know we have fewer features that we actually stand behind rather than claim to have features that are just incomplete.
Customer: OK, I can appreciate that, but what about OpenSourceOrg's tool? I know it doesn't do quite as much as yours, but free is free!
You: Yup, free is free... until you run into a bug. It's free until it crashes. It's free until you notice there's incorrect data floating around. It's free until you need something and there's no one to ask. Of course they say "you can fix that bug yourself" or "you can add that feature yourself," but that ain't free! And even if you invest the effort, if they don't accept your patch you'll constantly have to re-patch when you get updates. Bugs are a reality, and that's when open-source starts to become non-free in a hurry. We, on the other hand, never charge you for bug fixes, even years later, because we're 100% committed to quality code.

Small Company

You: If you haven't worked with a small company before, you're in for a nice surprise: Smart people you can actually talk to, people who care about what you need, people willing to go out of their way to make sure you're successful.
Customer: I get that, but little companies fail all the time. How do I know you'll be around to give me that great support?
You: You say that as if big companies are stable during recessions and accounting scandals! You say that as if big companies don't cut entire product lines if they're not profitable, or sell them off even if they are. It's impossible to know when a big company is about to discontinue your product, and it happens all the time.
Customer: You say you have great support, but BigCorp is the one with 100 developers and support engineers willing to help me.
You: "Willing" to help you perhaps, but able? Typically the software developers are shielded by "Level 1 support" — people without power, certainly not the power to get your feature requests into the pool. In fact, wouldn't you agree most tech support feels like a shield rather than a help?  And even if you get a bug into the pile or a feature onto the list, big companies release new versions infrequently, so you might have to live without it for a year. Not us. You get to complain directly to the engineers who can fix the problem in weeks — or sometimes days.
Customer: But they have 24/7 support. Do you have that?
You: No, we don't pay folks we've never met $1.25/hour to answer the phone at 3am PST so they can tell you to reboot your machine and RTFM. Instead we pay actual software developers $70/hour to talk with you in person about exactly what's wrong, either solving the problem or getting it fixed ASAP. Sometimes we even write special code just to get you running again, tiding you over until a proper fix is released. Try getting that from BigCorp!
Customer: Well if that's true, that's good. But BigCorp also has more features than you.
You: Do you really want your tools to have "more features," or is it really that you want your specific needs met, and "more features" could potentially mean that more of your needs are met? We believe the point of software is to solve your problems and make your life better without incurring too much new expense in time and money. Even assuming BigCorp's has one or two features you like today, what about in six months when you're deep into the tool and realize there's 10 more things you really want? Do you expect them to add half of those to their next release? Because that's exactly what we're going to do — hold proactive meetings to find out what you need to be most productive, and agree to add those as soon as we can. Don't ask "Which tool will satisfy my needs today," ask "One year from now, which tool will be satisfying my needs, including the ones I can't foresee?"
Why try to defend 10 points when you only need one or two to make your case?
Why not focus your message, focus your behavior, focus your look-and-feel, and focus your sales pitch?
It's already hard enough to stake out a niche in this massive world! Don't dilute your message.

Fonte: A Smart Bear