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Happy Sunday everyone!

This is the last Weekly Roundup for this year before taking some time during the holidays. I will be back in your inbox in January.

I picked up writing on my pat leave last year to keep my mind engaged in something other than diaper changes. It started with LinkedIn posts, but then, in April, The Product Trench was born. I had no idea what to write about or any plans for this newsletter. Around that time, I had replaced my zombie scrolling on social media with consuming tons of content related to product and leadership.

Over time, I found it overwhelming to read all of the content in my inbox. For someone with OCD who can't go to sleep unless my inbox is zero, it was not fun 😂. That's when I published the first Weekly Roundup (or what was known as the Weekly Recap) edition, and boy, has it evolved since then! Some people now look forward to that Sunday morning email!

Writing The Product Trench has helped me articulate my thoughts better, both at home and at work. I've met (virtually) some awesome people who share similar passions and are either far advanced and ahead on their content creation path or just starting up like me. I would like to take the opportunity to thank some of them today: , , , , , , and Frederico Ferreira (couldn’t find you on substack dude).

The Product Trench is not a side hustle, nor is it my aspiration to become a full-time content creator. My goal is to create value with the hope that sharing my thoughts will help other product managers in the community as my way to pay it forward. So, thank you for tuning in this year. Please pass it along to other folks who could also see this value.

With that said, let's dive into some of The Product Trench highlights in 2024.

Some proud moments this year:

• My goal was to reach 100 subscribers by the end of the year. At the time of writing this post, I am a handful of subscribers away from hitting 300. What I am most proud of is that I maintained an open rate of 39-51%.

• I was an early guest on Aakash's Product Growth podcast. We covered how PMs can leverage AI for their work. Will AI eliminate Product Management as a role in the future? And our take on Product Management in the Era of AI. Make sure to check out the episode and other ones here.

• I wrote a guest post for Amy Mitchell's Product Management IRL about the unique challenges of FinTech product management. I discussed why building in FinTech is a different game, from regulatory hurdles to trust-building metrics.

• I had a few LinkedIn posts that inadvertently went "viral."

  • The IC itch as a leader

  • Analysis paralysis in product discoveries

  • Product management is not dead; it's growing again.

Most Popular Posts in 2024

1. Navigating the Product Hiring Landscape: joined me for a written interview to unpack the PM hiring landscape. We discussed trends, challenges, and strategies for product leaders and job seekers in a shifting market.

2. Why Shipping Features Isn't Enough: In the age of major debates about whether people are doing real product management or, as others would call it, BS management, I dive into how to stop building for the sake of it and start solving what really matters by getting out of the feature factory trap.

3. Product Owner Is Not a Job Title: In this spicy hot take, I discuss why a PO is not a job title, how to stop adding layers to a process that's already complex enough, and how to focus on what really matters—delivering value to customers.

4. Why You Probably Shouldn't Become a Product Manager: In my last hot take for 2024, I discussed how product management is often glorified as the ultimate career for those who want to break into tech or change careers. But after years in the trenches, I've come to realize that PM isn't for everyone—and honestly, it might be a nightmare for most.

5. Customer Feature Requests Are Not Your To-Do List: In my last post for 2024, I discussed customer feedback and feature requests. While they may seem like gold, they can turn your roadmap into a cluttered mess. I explained how you decide which ideas are game-changers and which are just noise. Learn how to balance customer demands with your product vision, focusing on the features that truly matter.

Thank You 🙏

Again, I want to thank each of you for your support in 2024. It has been a great experience so far. My inbox is always open to hearing your feedback or any requests you have for 2025.

Happy holidays, and I wish you a happy new year. 🥳🎄

See you in January.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

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Subscribe now

Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

Can you believe we’re already counting down the final days of 2024? I, for one, am excited for the holidays and to take some time off.

This is the second-to-last Weekly Roundup before taking a writing break for the holidays. After next week’s edition, the Weekly Roundup will return to your inbox on January 12, 2025.

With that said, let’s dive in.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. Surviving 2025 as a Product Manager — or anyone in tech, really.

2. 5 + 1 predictions for venture studios in 2025.

3. Partnerships for product managers.

4. The best growth advice of 2024.

5. Three proven strategies to monetize AI features in SaaS.

6. Finding your ideal customer profile in B2B: Interview questions & guide.

7. How to implement product principles so you stop struggling with decisions.

8. Founder-style leadership.

9. Pricing roadmap: How to be strategic instead of reactive.

Surviving 2025 as a Product Manager — or anyone in tech, really (5 min read)

Adapting to a challenging tech landscape requires a blend of business acumen, versatility, AI proficiency, and strong relationships. Prioritize understanding your organization's commercial goals and focus on delivering impact with fewer resources. Embrace a "full-stack" mindset—developing skills beyond your core role increases your value. Experiment with AI tools to stay competitive and understand their real-world applications. Build genuine connections by networking or organizing events to expand opportunities. Finally, prepare for setbacks by diversifying your interests and nurturing resilience.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Build adaptability by expanding your skillset, integrating AI into your workflows, and prioritizing meaningful relationships to navigate the evolving tech landscape.

5 + 1 predictions for venture studios in 2025 (6 min read)

The venture studio landscape is expanding, with more vertical, geographic, and corporate-specific studios emerging. Specialization and solving "boring problems" will be key to scalability and differentiation. Venture capitalists are warming to the model but remain wary of cap table equity issues, even as some launch their own studios. Modest capital inflows will support the industry, though confusion about its definition limits investor confidence. Operational costs make sustainability tough, leading to more failures. Performance data remains murky, complicating validation of the model. Transparency in deal terms and cap tables is critical for building trust and competing effectively.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Build a clear value proposition with a niche focus, prioritize transparency in your equity structures, and address operational sustainability to navigate the evolving venture studio space.

Partnerships for product managers (6 min read)

Partnerships are essential for delivering integrated solutions, driving innovation, and expanding into new markets. Product managers are crucial to moving partnerships from announcements to operational success by managing risks, aligning goals, and fostering collaboration. Developing a partnership playbook helps document strategy, manage risks, and lay the groundwork for scalability. Clear roles, shared goals, and strong cross-functional collaboration ensure partnerships deliver value, not just promises. Effective management of partnerships can transform them into true win-win outcomes that keep products competitive and innovative.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Build a partnership playbook to align teams, mitigate risks, and consistently deliver measurable outcomes for long-term success.

The best growth advice of 2024 (6 min read)

This article shares 24 proven growth tactics used by leading companies like Canva, Calendly, and Clay, covering strategies from finding product-market fit (PMF) to embracing automation. Key takeaways include running long-term retention sprints, leveraging white-glove onboarding for deep customer insights, disrupting existing categories instead of creating new ones, and focusing on account-based growth strategies like intimate events and unified GTM metrics. For monetization, tactics such as reverse trials, charging based on work units, and automatic fee increases showed impactful results. Efficiency and automation hacks include combating fake accounts, simplifying user onboarding, and revamping email and cancellation flows for better engagement and retention.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Implement growth strategies tailored to your stage, such as validating PMF through waitlists, improving lead qualification processes, or optimizing pricing models to align with customer value. Use automation to reduce operational overhead and focus resources on scalable wins.

Three proven strategies to monetize AI features in SaaS (6 min read)

AI in SaaS is rapidly evolving, with three monetization strategies emerging: embedding AI into existing pricing tiers (core, differentiating, or premium features), leveraging usage-based pricing (consumption or outcome-driven models), and add-ons (seat-based or hybrid). While content tools are the most monetized use case, AI is expanding into data analysis, customer support, development, and security. Monetization lags behind adoption due to complexities in billing systems, but usage-based and add-on pricing are closing the gap. The SaaS landscape is moving toward broader AI applications beyond content generation.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Align pricing strategies with the value AI features deliver. Test hybrid or add-on models for flexibility while iterating on billing systems to support emerging trends like outcome-based pricing.

Finding your ideal customer profile in B2B: Interview questions & guide (7 min read)

Defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) goes beyond firmographics; it's about understanding what truly motivates and challenges your buyers. Use structured interviews to dig deeper into five key areas:

• Learning Patterns: Where they gather industry insights.

• Industry Context: Broad challenges and objections.

• Roles in the Organization: Their responsibilities and influence in decision-making.

• Goals and Challenges: Their objectives and barriers.

• Decision-making Process: How products are discovered, evaluated, and purchased. The goal isn't just collecting data but uncovering real stories that reveal use cases, emotional triggers, and motivations. This framework helps focus your efforts on what truly matters to your most valuable customers.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Conduct buyer interviews to uncover specific use cases and emotional drivers behind customer behaviour. Focus on what your customers truly care about to sharpen your product, growth, and sales strategies.

How to implement product principles so you stop struggling with decisions (5 min read)

Decision-making is a major hurdle in product development, and product principles simplify this process by aligning teams and enabling faster progress. Craft principles tailored to your context by defining customer priorities, experience goals, boundaries, and quality standards. Collaborate with teams and leadership to ensure relevance and adoption. Review principles every three months for impact and usability. Categorizing principles into layers such as strategy, discovery, delivery, and collaboration makes them more actionable and applicable in daily work.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Collaborate with leadership and teams to craft context-specific product principles. Regularly review and adapt them to simplify decision-making and foster team alignment for smoother product development.

Founder-style leadership (9 min read)

Founder-style leadership, driven by deep product sense and strong coaching skills, is crucial for empowering teams at startups and scaling organizations. It prioritizes hands-on customer engagement, iterative learning, and mentoring to build product expertise and team autonomy. Unlike professional management, which often lacks product intuition, this approach fosters innovation and sustainable growth by ensuring leaders actively guide teams with context and strategy.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Develop product sense through direct user engagement and team collaboration. Hone coaching skills to empower teams with the context and support they need to thrive.

Pricing roadmap: How to be strategic instead of reactive (4 min read)

Smaller companies often neglect pricing strategy due to time constraints, limited expertise, and lack of ownership. However, pricing is a critical revenue lever that must evolve with new features, competitive changes, inflation, and bundling opportunities. A roadmap prevents dramatic price hikes that alienate customers and aligns pricing with product roadmaps. Tom Buiocchi's framework outlines categories like new products, bundling, and portfolio reviews to maintain proactive planning and avoid fragmented, reactive decisions that hurt profitability and trust.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Develop a pricing roadmap with clear ownership and input from all teams. Regular updates will help capture value, counter costs, and keep customers engaged while outpacing competitors.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

First, let me apologize again for skipping the last Weekly Roundup. I was fighting a bad cold (at least I think it was) and had to prioritize my health and family.

I also wanted to take a moment to express how thankful I am for each and every one of you. Your support, your feedback, and your engagement make this journey so meaningful.

With Thanksgiving, it was a calm-ish content week, but I still managed to find a few good nuggets for ya. So, let’s dig in.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. How to build your product sense: The trait that sets leaders apart.

2. Data-informed, not data-driven.

3. Outcomes over output.

4. 5 steps to select your go-to-market motion.

5. The Product Manager career path is not a straight line.

6. Generative AI UX — Developing innovative use cases for the enterprise.

How to build your product sense: The trait that sets leaders apart (4 min read)

Product sense is the most critical skill for PMs, enabling them to reframe problems, spot opportunities, and lead strategically. Unlike technical skills, it requires active learning through exposure, feedback, and regular practice. Improve product sense by joining diverse product reviews, decoding leader feedback, reverse-engineering successful features, and practicing decision-making with varied audiences. Mentorship can accelerate growth, but daily application is essential to sustain progress.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Build a system for consistent practice. Engage with other PMs, seek diverse feedback, and reflect regularly to develop the leadership-defining skill of product sense.

Data-informed, not data-driven (6 min read)

Being data-driven can lead to biased decisions disguised as objectivity. Biases like selection, confirmation, and recency creep into data collection and interpretation, making data a rationalization tool rather than a guide. Instead, embrace a data-informed approach: use data to augment decisions, not dictate them. Key strategies to reduce bias include:

• Cross-functional collaboration.

• Focusing on falsification over validation.

• Gathering multiple data points.

• Reflecting on past decisions.

• Becoming bias-aware.

AI tools can assist but aren’t substitutes for critical thinking or strategic judgment, especially given data variability like small sample sizes or regional disparities.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Balance data insights with human judgment by challenging ideas through falsification and layering qualitative insights. Use AI cautiously, recognizing its limitations in nuanced decision-making.

Share

Outcomes over output (6 min read)

Prioritizing outcomes over outputs ensures teams focus on delivering customer value rather than completing tasks for activity’s sake. Many teams fall into output-driven thinking due to insecurity and a lack of experimentation, which leads to reliance on correlation over causation. High-velocity experimentation, paired with a North Star Metric (NSM), helps uncover what truly drives impact. Frameworks like ICE scoring (Impact, Confidence, Ease) enable teams to allocate resources effectively. Growth teams bridge silos across product, marketing, and operations, ensuring alignment around impactful goals.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Overcome output-driven traps by embedding experimentation into workflows, aligning your team on a clear NSM, and prioritizing initiatives with high ICE scores to drive meaningful results.

5 steps to select your go-to-market motion (7 min read)

GTM motions are established playbooks to efficiently deliver products to customers, such as inbound content, outbound outreach, paid media, community engagement, partnerships, account-based marketing, or product-led growth. Smaller companies should focus on 1-3 motions before scaling. Selection involves five steps: engaging customers, analyzing competitors, leveraging strengths, narrowing choices, and committing for 1-3 months. Tools like the traffic light system evaluate costs and time-to-value for motions. Persistence and iteration are key to building traction and trust with customers.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Identify 2-3 GTM motions based on customer behaviour and your strengths. Use a structured evaluation and commit to them for a quarter to refine and gain traction.

Share

The Product Manager career path is not a straight line (5 min read)

The Product Manager career path is unique, flexible, and rarely linear. Entry routes range from traditional roles like engineering or marketing to modern PM certifications and internal transitions. Career growth offers managerial or specialized IC tracks, and success relies on skills like customer empathy, strategic thinking, and adaptability. Global remote work and emerging senior roles, including C-suite positions, reflect the industry’s evolution. PMs must embrace diverse opportunities, leveraging transferable skills and redefining their paths as they go.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Forge your own PM path by developing foundational skills and building on your existing experience. Embrace unconventional opportunities and aim for growth aligned with your strengths and ambitions.

Generative AI UX — Developing innovative use cases for the enterprise (11 min read)

Creating innovative enterprise Gen AI experiences requires balancing user needs, business goals, and the unique challenges of trust, control, and agency. Teams need to adapt their product development processes by using frameworks that emphasize authoritative data, cross-functional collaboration, and context-specific insights. This approach ensures Gen AI adds meaningful value while aligning with organizational goals and managing risks effectively.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Leverage frameworks that prioritize trustworthy data, collaborative input, and tailored insights to design Gen AI tools that address enterprise challenges and align with organizational objectives.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

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Subscribe now

Happy Monday everyone! 😎

Usually, you’d be getting this email on a Sunday morning. I wish I could tell you I am doing some A/B testing for my newsletter or trying something new, but I got nada.

The past few weeks have been hectic at work, home and preparing for my next local CrossFit competition. This makes writing a newsletter a bit difficult as my brain is fried at the end of the day, especially the Weekly Roundup, which requires some time for reading and digesting different articles.

I am trying the 5 AM club as a writing space. I hope it gives me an hour or so in the morning before the chaos starts. So, I am sorry for being late sending this.

I know you didn’t subscribe to read my rant and complaints (I am not btw), so let’s just get to it.

PS: If sending on Mondays magically spike some metrics, I might consider moving Sundays to Mondays 🫠.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. Thriving in a virtual team.

2. Always be launching.

3. The context matrix.

4. 5 ways to invent and simplify as an AI/ML product manager.

5. The Product Manager's decision making dilemma.

6. What finesse looks like when reading people and situations.

Thriving in a virtual team (4 min read)

In virtual team environments, product managers must navigate multiple roles: leading, contributing, and supporting. Thriving requires mindset shifts, such as seeing support as a form of leadership, sharing early work to maintain momentum, and always having an adaptable plan. Leaders need to organize work clearly, communicate goals, and set up structured checkpoints. Contributors should share their work proactively, while followers provide active, meaningful support. Success hinges on flexibility, communication, and balancing roles seamlessly.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Embrace proactive communication, timely work-sharing, and adaptable planning to boost productivity in virtual teams.

Always be launching (4 min read)

The "Always Be Launching" (ABL) strategy encourages continuous engagement over singular, polished product reveals. This involves sharing updates, customer quotes, insights, and even challenges regularly to build momentum. ABL moves away from one-time Big Bang Launches, focusing instead on long-term relationships and authentic interaction. Founders should embrace consistent, human-centric communication directly with audiences, avoiding dependency on traditional media channels. The strategy builds reach over time, fostering deeper connections and growth through persistent, relatable content.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Share frequent, honest updates and engage directly to build trust and maintain product visibility.

Share

The context matrix (2 min read)

Product management at every level involves creating and interpreting context. For product strategy, this means analyzing market data, capabilities, and long-term goals and forming strategic relationships. Product OKRs align with vision and strategy, focusing on key results that drive outcomes and adaptability. Product Discovery relies on strategic goals and customer insights, requiring effective problem framing, research prioritization, and solution validation before development.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Align context creation and sense-making in strategy, OKRs, and discovery for informed decision-making and cohesive execution.

5 ways to invent and simplify as an AI/ML product manager (3 min read)

The article discusses how AI/ML product managers can apply Amazon's 'Invent and Simplify' principle to enhance product development. It outlines five main methods: focusing on ways of working through iterative prototyping and outcome-based strategies; defining and tracking LLM quality metrics; adopting a fail-fast approach with rapid testing and feature flagging; mastering prompt engineering to create prototypes without engineering resources; and incorporating robust privacy and security controls in collaboration with legal teams. These methods help build impactful AI products that meet user needs and comply with regulations.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Streamline your AI product development by adopting iterative prototyping, defining quality metrics, incorporating fail-fast strategies, leveraging prompt engineering, and embedding privacy and security measures collaboratively.

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The Product Manager's decision making dilemma (5 min read)

Product managers must continuously prioritize by balancing diverse feedback from customers, sales teams, engineers, and designers against limited resources and the promise of consistent value delivery. Effective prioritization requires alignment with the product vision, addressing genuine customer needs, understanding potential business impact (such as customer acquisition or retention), and thorough risk assessment. Frameworks like MoSCoW and KANO can support structured decision-making.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize features by aligning them with your product vision and strategy, ensuring they address genuine customer needs and have a clear business impact while considering associated risks.

What finesse looks like when reading people and situations (6 min read)

Finesse is an essential yet nuanced skill in handling people and complex situations effectively. It includes delivering bad news tactfully to maintain relationships, understanding power dynamics to avoid unintended arrogance, and strategically deciding when to call someone out. Prioritizing impact over intention underscores that execution matters more than motives. Finesse also means reading between the lines to recognize hidden questions, seeking win-win solutions for sustainable relationships, and applying popular advice thoughtfully to avoid missteps that could damage trust or rapport.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Approach situations with strategic thinking and adapt your communication to balance mutual benefits and nuanced interpretation.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

This week's edition comes to you courtesy of DayQuil, pre-dawn writing sessions, and approximately 47 trips to the bathroom (most of them not mine). Turns out joining the 5 AM club is significantly less impressive when you're already awake from a combination of cold medicine and a toddler's newfound bathroom independence journey.

While I master the art of functioning on minimal sleep and maximum coffee, here's what I've been reading and what caught my eye this week.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. The best prompts start as conversations.

2. Applying for product & growth in 2024.

3. How to navigate product discovery like a map.

4. Product discovery activities by risk.

5. How to win the enterprise in 2024: The ultimate guide.

The best prompts start as conversations (3 min read)

Using AI creatively isn’t about perfect prompts—it’s about collaborative flow, like jamming in music or improv. The SNAP method (Speak, Note, Analyze, Polish) breaks down this process. Start by thinking out loud (Speak) to generate ideas naturally. Capture everything (Note), as even small ideas may spark something big. Review to spot patterns (Analyze), then refine (Polish) the strongest ideas into something structured. This flexible approach to prompting AI opens up surprising insights and new creative directions.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Treat AI as a thought partner, not a search engine. Use the SNAP method to make ideation feel collaborative, starting with free-flow conversation rather than pre-determined prompts.

Share

Applying for product & growth in 2024 (6 min read)

To stand out in product and growth roles:

• Focus on a results-driven CV tailored to hiring criteria, with specific achievements rather than generic responsibilities.

• Avoid embellishments and emphasize authenticity by aligning your skills directly with the role.

• Use clear, descriptive job titles, set transparent career goals, and prepare questions that reflect an understanding of the company and role.

• Generic cover letters and LinkedIn messages are discouraged unless there’s a strong context.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Stand out by crafting a sharply focused resume on quantifiable outcomes and authenticity—specific, tailored titles and achievements are your best assets in product and growth hiring.

How to navigate product discovery like a map (3 min read)

Product discovery should be flexible, treating each step as a “move” based on specific insights needed, not as a rigid sequence. Discovery involves:

• Entry points (starting triggers).

• Crossroads (key decision moments).

• Moves (specific research methods chosen based on insight needs).

• Commitments (decisions based on reduced uncertainty).

Each stage prioritizes reducing ambiguity through adaptable strategies rather than static steps.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Make discovery agile—choose your next step based on what brings the most clarity and accelerates insight, not on a rigid process.

Product discovery activities by risk (3 min read)

This guide organizes product discovery activities by key risks—desirability, viability, feasibility, and usability—allowing teams to de-risk development by focusing on core assumptions. Desirability risks involve customer interviews to confirm product value, viability risks use market research to test for financial potential, feasibility risks require prototyping to assess technical capabilities, and usability risks benefit from user testing to ensure accessibility. Prioritize action over waiting for perfect data.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Begin with discovery activities like customer interviews and prototyping to validate core assumptions early, reducing risk and accelerating product insights.

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How to win the enterprise in 2024: The ultimate guide (28 min read)

Winning in enterprise SaaS requires a playbook that combines Product-Led Growth (PLG) with a strong enterprise sales motion. This strategy leverages the product for scalability, security, and enterprise-specific features, allowing PLG to initiate larger deals—nearly half of $1M+ deals start with self-serve entry points. Companies gain a competitive edge by prioritizing technical foundations (security and scalable architecture) over sales, accelerating deal cycles by 2-3x. Scientific measurement, particularly using technical adoption signals, predicts growth 2.3x better than traditional sales metrics. Successful companies don’t just sell differently; they build to scale enterprise growth systematically.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize security and scalability in the product, use PLG to fast-track enterprise deals, and leverage technical metrics to predict expansion, transforming enterprise growth into a repeatable, measurable process.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

Subscribe now

In case you missed my post this week about navigating the product hiring landscape, make sure to check out the written interview with Heidi Ram.

Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

I am not sure if it was a coincidence or just my unconscious thoughts playing a part in it, but today’s roundup ended up with a theme; using AI and building products/visions that don’t suck. 🤔

I am constantly working on evolving this roundup. So, if you have any feedback on things you would like to see in these roundups, I would love to hear back from you. Leave me a comment, reply to this email or chat with me.

With that said, let’s just get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. How to build an AI product that doesn't suck.

2. Empathy and context: The hidden drivers of growth.

3. Why sticking to a rigid product roadmap might be killing your product, and how to escape.

4. How PMs can benefit from generative AI instead of being replaced by it.

5. Why your (company) vision is blurry.

6. Frustrated by rejection? How to plan before you ask.

7. Mastering solution product management.

How to build an AI product that doesn't suck (11 min read)

Creating AI products that resonate with users requires a balance between advanced tech, simplicity, and transparency. While tools like LLMs add power, they aren't a universal fix; often, straightforward solutions best serve real user needs. Focusing on reliable, adaptable designs that solve clear problems is key to making AI practical, trustworthy, and genuinely valuable.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Emphasize solving real problems with simplicity and transparency—sometimes, the simplest AI solutions are the most effective.

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Empathy and context: The hidden drivers of growth (3 min read)

Real growth stems from truly understanding the context of customers' lives and the specific "job" they hire products to accomplish. By focusing on customer needs and lifestyle demands, products can become essential rather than optional. Empathy-driven tools like direct conversations and surveys offer rich insights into these customer contexts, enabling more relevant solutions that balance convenience, choice, and customer empowerment. Sustainable growth is not only about product functionality but also about fitting seamlessly into the routines of users.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Deepen customer empathy by exploring their daily context and core needs to make your product indispensable.

Why sticking to a rigid product roadmap might be killing your product, and how to escape (13 min read)

Overly rigid roadmaps can limit product adaptability, missing shifts in market trends or regulatory needs and reduce team motivation. Flexibility enables better responses to change. The FLEX model (Focus on outcomes, Learn continuously, Experiment, and maintain X-ray vision/transparency) helps keep product direction dynamic yet structured, promoting innovation and continuous customer alignment. The key is balancing roadmap structure with adaptability.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Embrace a flexible roadmap by emphasizing themes over strict deadlines, prioritizing customer feedback, and holding regular roadmap reviews to ensure product relevance and team engagement.

How PMs can benefit from generative AI instead of being replaced by it (4 min read)

Generative AI accelerates key PM tasks like prototyping, analysis, and content creation, but it's most powerful as a co-pilot, not a replacement. Effective AI usage requires precise problem framing, clear context, and PM-driven decision-making. While AI saves time, it cannot replicate human judgment, empathy, or direct customer insights. PMs should deploy AI thoughtfully, focusing on the best-fit solutions rather than relying on AI universally.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Use AI selectively to enhance, not replace, your expertise; let empathy and judgment lead for the best results.

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Why your company vision is blurry (8 min read)

Many company visions lack focus because they're overly generic or aspirational without clarity on purpose. An effective vision is specific, aiming at a target audience and problem, and aligned with a strategic goal. This clarity helps in decision-making, keeps teams motivated, and attracts talent. Strong visions are ambitious yet adaptable, guiding without being restrictive.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Define your vision with a specific audience and problem in mind, balancing big-picture goals with flexibility for evolving needs.

Frustrated by rejection? How to plan before you ask (3 min read)

To reduce rejection, be selective in who and how you ask, focusing on the recipient's needs. Show how saying "yes" benefits them to make your request more appealing by prioritizing empathy, aligning your request with the recipient's goals, and enhancing your credibility with relevant data.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Make intentional, well-prepared asks by focusing on the other person's perspective and offering a clear value exchange.

Mastering solution product management (5 min read)

Product managers with a solution-focused mindset drive product success by anticipating customer constraints, customizing standard products, and managing risks across product ecosystems. PMs at any level can help reduce customization requests, address dependencies, and improve alignment by considering interdependencies across products, partners, and ecosystems. Shifting focus from features to full solutions strengthens customer satisfaction and strategic growth.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Build cross-product relationships, align roadmaps, and track ecosystem impacts to create cohesive, customer-focused solutions.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

It’s been a minute! I am back and almost done fixing my jet lag.

It was a great trip and time well spent with family. Plus, we got to see some pandas 🐼 (see picture at the end). My 2-year-old insisted they were dogs 🐕. I didn’t bother correcting him 🤣. I pick my battles, okay?! Mine was trying to make him sleep on a 24-hour flight back.

Anyway, I digress! I know you missed the Weekly Roundup, so let’s get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. What your biggest weakness really is.

2. Creating a product hierarchy.

3. Why founders should understand the worldview of bureaucrats.

4. 6 ways you can increase customer satisfaction immediately.

5. Growth teams should stay in a founder mode.

6. The importance of business models to building great products.

7. Leading B2B product management in high-resistance environments.

What your biggest weakness really is (14 min read)

The article argues that candidates often fail to recognize weaknesses that matter most to hiring managers, such as domain gaps or limited experience. Instead of hiding these, reframe them into strengths by showcasing growth, adaptability, and problem-solving. It's crucial to craft a narrative showing how your unique path adds value, even if it deviates from traditional expectations.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Acknowledge your real weaknesses and show how you've turned them into advantages by using storytelling to highlight personal growth.

Creating a product hierarchy (3 min read)

Instead of viewing a product in isolation, think of it as part of a broader portfolio. A well-structured product hierarchy helps align teams around customer needs and strategic goals. This hierarchy shapes everything—from product strategy to marketing and messaging—by organizing products from broad categories down to specific features. It enables teams to execute independently while staying aligned on market objectives, leading to clearer communication and stronger market positioning.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Start collaborating with marketing early using a product hierarchy. It ensures alignment on positioning, messaging, and timing across the product lifecycle, and prepares tailored messaging for varied stakeholders.

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Why founders should understand the worldview of bureaucrats (9 min read)

Bureaucrats often prioritize job security and risk avoidance over innovation, which can be challenging for startups. To succeed in selling to them, emphasize stability, minimize perceived risks, and use social proof. Their decisions are primarily driven by the need for defensibility rather than a desire for bold ideas, so frame your pitch accordingly.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Emphasize how your solution is low-risk, defensible, and aligns with precedents, using strong social proof to appeal to risk-averse decision-makers.

6 ways you can increase customer satisfaction immediately! (4 min read)

Customer satisfaction hinges on delivering promised value, ensuring the product is worth the cost, and providing a pleasant experience. Segment customers using NPS to prioritize efforts: promote happy users, convert neutrals, and address detractors. Strategies include reducing friction, surprising users, improving experiences, and preventing dead ends. High satisfaction drives loyalty, making it critical for growth.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Ensure customers feel satisfied by balancing value, refining experiences, and addressing issues proactively to drive retention and organic growth.

Growth teams should stay in a founder mode (6 min read)

Growth teams must remain in "Founder Mode," characterized by agility, innovation, and direct problem-solving, regardless of company maturity. This scrappy approach is vital for preventing stagnation, as it helps detect emerging opportunities and market shifts. Unlike "Manager Mode," which focuses on scalability, growth teams thrive by iterating quickly and staying close to customers, ensuring impactful outcomes.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Keep your growth team focused on continuous experimentation and direct user feedback to maintain momentum and avoid complacency.

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The importance of business models to building great products (5 min read)

Product managers should align their work with the business model to drive revenue, not just focus on features. Key areas include reducing churn, increasing customer usage, and targeting metrics that lead to sustainable growth. Features that don't directly impact these areas can waste resources. Understanding the business model deeply is essential to prioritize efforts that contribute to long-term success.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize product changes based on what directly impacts the business model, not just feature outputs.

Leading B2B product management in high-resistance environments (9 min read)

Navigating resistance in B2B product management, especially in environments where stakeholders may lack experience with agile or incremental delivery, is challenging. Common issues include misaligned expectations, risk aversion, and technical debt. Strategies to overcome these include using the OKR framework for vision alignment, adopting an MVP approach with A/B testing to secure buy-in, and employing multi-channel communication tools to reduce misunderstandings. Additionally, addressing technical debt through phased modernization and lean budgeting helps balance immediate needs with long-term product scalability.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize clear communication and use visual aids to align diverse stakeholders, while balancing short-term demands with long-term product vision.

Some Pandas for ya. Or, as my kid called them, woof woof

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

The Weekly Roundups will resume on October 20th. My bi-weekly original posts should not be impacted. Expect a new post this coming Wednesday.

If you’re looking for something to read or listen to in the meantime, here are a few suggestions:

1. My last month’s podcast with Aakash Gupta: Product Management in the Era of AI and lessons from 15+ years in product management. Don’t miss this one and other incredible episodes.

2. The unique challenges of FinTech product management: Why building in FinTech is a different game. From regulatory hurdles to trust-building metrics.

3. How to Land a PM Job in 2024: A 3-part series by . Here are the links to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

4. How I run value poker to build outcome-based roadmaps.

See you next week!

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

I rarely find it tricky to capture top product highlights from the community. This week was a tough one to crack though. There was lots of good content, so let’s get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. How I use anti-use cases to set clear product expectations.

2. Where do we find joy?

3. 5 tips to plan my career like I plan my product.

4. How to deliver bad news when it's not your fault.

5. From hands-on to hands-off.

6. Thoughts on work-life balance.

7. Crisis mode.

8. Typical PLG failure points in sales-led companies.

9. Is product art or science?

10. How systems thinking can transform your product strategy.

How I use anti-use cases to set clear product expectations (5 min read)

Anti-use cases—outlining problems your product won't solve—are a powerful tool to prevent misunderstandings between product, sales, and marketing teams. Product managers can set more explicit expectations by proactively defining these, especially for complex or buzzword-heavy technologies like AI. Anti-use cases should be embedded in strategic documents, GTM briefs, and training sessions to ensure alignment. They are especially helpful when team members overestimate product capabilities, helping prevent scope creep or unrealistic promises.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Integrate anti-use cases early in product planning to clearly communicate what your product won't solve. Use them in GTM briefs and product training to prevent misalignment across teams.

Where do we find joy? (4 min read)

Rich Mironov reflects on how product leaders can lose sight of joy amid daily firefighting and administrative tasks. He explains that true fulfillment often comes from building meaningful customer relationships, seeing the long-term impact of products, and celebrating team accomplishments. The day-to-day grind can drain energy, but moments of joy arise when product managers step back to appreciate the broader outcomes of their work.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Make time to reflect on long-term customer outcomes and team achievements, even when daily tasks feel overwhelming, to find joy and fulfillment in your work.

Share

5 tips to plan my career like I plan my product (4 min read)

highlights how treating career growth like product development can drive improvement. It encourages setting clear goals, writing a "year in review" vision, including growth goals in performance reviews, reflecting on progress, seeking feedback, and iterating frequently. These strategies ensure you stay adaptable, measure success, and continuously evolve in your career.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Apply structured, iterative tactics to your career by setting clear goals, measuring progress, and pivoting when necessary, just like product management.

How to deliver bad news when it's not your fault (6 min read)

When delivering bad news, avoid using overly negative language, providing too many details, or accepting blame that's not yours, as these actions can harm your credibility. Get to the point quickly and emphasize the recipient's own agency in the situation. Keep the tone constructive to maintain trust and minimize emotional drama.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Present bad news clearly and without unnecessary negativity, focusing on shared responsibility to maintain trust and minimize emotional stress.

From hands-on to hands-off (4 min read)

As product teams grow more autonomous, product managers must shift from direct involvement to strategic leadership. This transition is driven by access to AI tools, specialized team members, and product-led growth strategies. Product managers should let teams self-manage, focusing on fostering collaboration, trust, and open communication. The key is moving from managing daily tasks to ensuring alignment on vision and strategy.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: When teams become self-sufficient, step back and guide them strategically by focusing on alignment, trust, and communication.

Refer a friend

Thoughts on work-life balance (6 min read)

Work-life balance is an unrealistic concept, and instead, advocates for work-life prioritization. Life's priorities—work or personal—shift constantly, and trying to maintain an even split is counterproductive. Setting boundaries like fixed work hours, gym time, and travel limits can help protect personal priorities. Recognizing that career trade-offs evolve over time is key, and it's possible to negotiate personal space even early in your career.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on prioritization, not balance. Protect key personal time through clear boundaries that align with your current priorities.

Crisis mode (7 min read)

argues that it's crucial to focus on conserving energy, not just managing time. Outsourcing less important or draining tasks—even if they aren't done perfectly—helps preserve your focus on what matters most. Recognizing and addressing energy drains is essential for long-term productivity. Without actively resisting inefficiencies and burnout, organizations are unlikely to make necessary changes.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize conserving your energy by offloading non-critical tasks and addressing inefficient processes early to prevent burnout.

Typical PLG failure points in sales-led companies (7 min read)

Sales-led companies often struggle with Product-Led Growth (PLG) due to poor integration between sales and product. Misconceptions like relying solely on freemiums or avoiding sales early can lead to failure.

A hybrid approach between PLG and sales-led methods (Product-Led Sales) works best, combining self-service and sales-assisted strategies. Leaders must drive change and align teams, as balancing sales incentives and product priorities is critical.

Additionally, over-reliance on data can hinder necessary but unquantifiable decisions. Customer success teams, often ignored, hold vital insights for long-term revenue and product improvements.

With shifting market conditions pushing for profitability over growth, PLG requires careful planning and leadership buy-in.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: PLG isn't just about freemiums or data; build a cross-functional team with buy-in from leadership, prioritize customer success, and balance sales and product efforts to drive long-term success.

Is product art or science? (3 min read)

Product development combines the structure of science and the creativity of art. Teams typically follow scientific methods, testing and iterating ideas, but there is an artistic element—especially in design and user experience—where creativity adds desirability and beauty. While artists create for self-expression, product creators focus on delivering customer value, though both share common creative processes.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Embrace both creativity and structure in product development. Use scientific methods to test ideas, but don't forget the artistic elements that make products engaging and delightful for users.

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How systems thinking can transform your product strategy (3 min read)

Systems thinking helps product managers assess the interrelationships between a product's components and the broader ecosystem in which it operates. This approach enables leaders to see beyond individual issues, revealing hidden connections and feedback loops that influence outcomes. By anticipating ripple effects and unintended consequences, product teams can create more resilient, long-term strategies that adapt to complex and dynamic environments. Systems thinking also helps avoid short-sighted decisions by encouraging holistic analysis of both internal and external factors.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Apply systems thinking to identify how different elements of your product ecosystem interact, allowing you to make informed, long-term decisions that strengthen overall strategy.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it or share your referral link with someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

It has been a good week of product content, and I tried to capture my favourites, so let's just get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. Surprising lessons from 20,000 experiments.

2. Unfortunate startup pivots.

3. 12 proven sources of insights to fuel your product discovery.

4. 3 tools to manage up easily.

5. Why is everyone hating on product managers?

6. Stop learning to give feedback. Learn to receive it.

7. How to balance product discovery with product delivery.

8. Should your new feature be free or paid?

Surprising lessons from 20,000 experiments (4 min read)

Simplifying your website, marketing emails, and landing pages often leads to better conversions. Data from over 20,000 experiments shows that adding features like social proof on pricing pages, homepage videos, and strikethrough pricing rarely improves results. Users respond better to simple, functional designs that get to the point, whether that's through unformatted emails, straightforward landing pages, or clear, concise messaging. The focus should be on guiding users to complete core actions without distraction.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Apply simplicity to every touchpoint—whether it's a landing page, email, or website. Remove unnecessary features to keep users engaged and focused on conversions.

Share

Unfortunate startup pivots (2 min read)

Some startup pivots are often doomed to fail, such as shifting from B2B to consumer, adding chat/social features, or bolting on trendy tech like AI. These pivots fail because they often ignore core product issues and retention problems. Premature platform pivots and going from paid to free also typically fall flat. Successful pivots often zoom in on existing high-engagement users or adapt to adjacent, established market categories.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on solving core product problems instead of adding features or chasing trends when considering a pivot.

12 proven sources of insights to fuel your product discovery (5 min read)

Product discovery thrives on diverse data:

• Core sources include customer interviews, surveys, and analytics to grasp user behaviours, motivations, and pain points.

• Social listening, market research, and competitor benchmarking add external context, while internal insights come from stakeholders and user feedback.

• Additionally, AI-driven tools like synthetic user research offer innovative ways to simulate and validate ideas.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Use varied insight channels, from user feedback to data analytics, to uncover opportunities and refine your product strategy.

3 tools to manage up easily (5 min read)

Managing up is crucial for career growth and autonomy. Robert Ta, Senior Staff Product Fellow at Dayforce, highlights three tools:

• Ask yourself three questions to align with your leader's priorities, help them succeed, and make their life easier.

• Create a "Boss Agreement" through intentional meetings to clarify expectations, success metrics, and decision boundaries.

• Implement a bi-weekly Progress Report to maintain alignment, build trust, and provide performance evidence for promotions or reviews. Misaligned expectations can harm trust and performance, so clear communication is key.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Define your boss's success criteria and deliver routine progress reports to ensure alignment, reduce micromanagement, and build trust for future autonomy.

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Why is everyone hating on product managers? (3 min read)

The article argues that PMs need to shift away from focusing on internal rituals and roadmaps and prioritize real customer value. It suggests avoiding unsustainable hypergrowth trends, choosing work environments that align with personal values, and steering clear of toxic leadership. PMs should also reduce over-planning, communicate effectively across teams, and build hands-on product skills.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on execution and customer needs over frameworks, and select leaders and environments that promote genuine product development over bureaucracy.

Stop learning to give feedback. Learn to receive it. (6 min read)

Most people know how to give feedback but struggle to receive it. Defensiveness blocks growth. To improve, assume positive intent, turn initial defensiveness into curiosity, and ask for specific examples. Managing facial expressions and body language helps build psychological safety, encouraging more honest conversations. Listening doesn't mean you must act on all feedback immediately; instead, gather data and decide later. Mastering feedback reception enhances relationships and strengthens leadership.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on building curiosity over defensiveness when receiving feedback, and always reward honesty with positive engagement.

How to balance product discovery with product delivery (5 min read)

Balancing product discovery and delivery is crucial to building valuable digital products. Focusing solely on delivery can result in backlogs of unnecessary features and missed opportunities, while overemphasizing discovery can lead to lack of tangible progress. To achieve balance, teams should split responsibilities between discovery and delivery, with constant communication and a shared goal. Use a product trio (product manager, designer, and engineer) for discovery, while ensuring delivery teams understand the problem space. Both groups should collaborate to evaluate and iterate based on real customer and business value.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Split your team's time between discovery and delivery, ensure shared goals, and measure value created from each feature, not just the speed of delivery.

Refer a friend

Should your new feature be free or paid? (4 min read)

Deciding whether to make a new feature free or paid hinges on factors like retention, virality, and competitive positioning. Free features boost engagement, virality, and future conversion opportunities, while gating complex or niche features can create paid value. Freemium should be seen as a business strategy, not just a conversion tool, and innovation in the free tier can shape your brand's perception. Considering factors like feature complexity and uniqueness helps make these decisions clearer.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Evaluate new features for retention, virality, and market competitiveness before deciding to gate them.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it or share your referral link with someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

Before we get to it, my episode Product Management in the Era of AI on ’s new podcast is now live. I enjoyed being one of his early guests. We tackled everything from product management in the era of AI to the hot and spicy topics in product today. So make sure to check it out 👊.

In case you missed it this week, here is a link to my latest post: Beyond features: How to build a roadmap that actually moves the needle.

Ok, enough shameless plugs, let’s get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. Creating effective retention strategies.

2. Non-obvious signs of early startup traction and how to spot them.

3. How to improve retention: The ultimate guide for product managers and leaders.

4. A life beyond features for B2B PMs.

5. Unlocking momentum with product strategy.

6. Communication gaps: The hidden barrier to successful execution.

7. Everything wrong with the product management job market and how to fix it – Part 1.

Creating effective retention strategies (10 min read)

Retention is crucial for sustainable growth. Improving it requires a multifaceted approach, from understanding customer psychology to using data-driven tactics.

• Key strategies include tracking cohort retention, feature adoption, and customer health scores to predict churn.

• Continuous onboarding, personalized experiences, and a focus on reducing friction strengthen long-term engagement.

• Additionally, fostering a company-wide retention culture and integrating retention into every product decision drives lasting success.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Embrace a data-driven approach and make retention a core focus across teams to build a lasting customer base.

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Non-obvious signs of early startup traction and how to spot them (6 min read)

Spotting early startup traction isn't always tied to metrics. Surprising signals like customer complaints, an influx of feature requests, or strangers showing interest indicate a growing product-market fit. Even criticism from users shows engagement, while competitors solving the same problem confirms relevance. Founders can also gauge success through personal moments, like using their own product or noticing rising morale.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Don't wait for perfect data—track customer behaviour, competition, and even founder emotions to spot early traction.

How to improve retention: The ultimate guide for product managers and leaders (35 min read)

This masterclass on retention covers everything from foundational metrics to advanced churn prevention tactics. Key areas include correctly measuring retention, following the "Retention Hierarchy of Needs" framework, and ensuring retention is a company-wide responsibility. Advanced tactics range from organizing teams for retention success to leveraging a wide array of strategies (the "retention tactics encyclopedia"). There's no single solution to retention—it requires constant iteration, deep user understanding, and relentless focus on delivering value.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Make retention a team-wide responsibility, constantly test and adapt strategies, and focus on delivering ongoing value to your users.

A life beyond features for B2B PMs (5 min read)

B2B product managers face unique challenges, including balancing customer demands with user needs, navigating ambiguity, and avoiding the feature factory trap. To succeed, PMs should combine customer wants with user needs, iterate quickly to gather feedback, focus on outcome-based metrics, communicate the value of delivered features to stakeholders, and actively seek qualitative data for insights.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Define success through clear outcome metrics, and use fast iterations to align solutions with both user needs and customer goals effectively.

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Unlocking momentum with product strategy (5 min read)

Transforming product ideas into a strategy requires a clear approach:

• Assess the business baseline by reviewing market trends and competitors.

• Evaluate your product's performance, focusing on customer segmentation and key use cases.

• Consolidate opportunities, such as market growth, customer needs, and innovation potential.

Involving stakeholders throughout can align insights, build momentum, and define a strategic direction for your product or portfolio.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Systematically assess your product's market position and opportunities to craft a strategic direction that drives action.

Communication gaps: The hidden barrier to successful execution (2 min read)

Even well-executed strategies can fail due to communication gaps between leaders and PMs. Leaders often focus on vision and strategy, receiving only top-level updates, while PMs are immersed in problem-solving and data analysis. If insights from both aren't constantly aligned, long-term goals can derail. To fix this, leaders should coach PMs to evaluate the bigger picture, and leaders must involve teams in their evolving ideas. Clear, ongoing communication is key to keeping strategies on track.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Ensure PMs link new insights to the broader strategy and create open channels for frequent communication between leadership and teams.

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Everything wrong with the product management job market and how to fix it – Part 1 (21 min read)

James Gunaca shares insights from interviews with over 50 product managers, hiring managers, and recruiters. The article highlights how tech layoffs have created a competitive market, with applicants struggling to stand out due to ATS filters and vague job descriptions. Trends like ghost job postings and long hiring processes add inefficiencies, while expectations of market recovery remain unfulfilled.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Improve hiring processes by clarifying job roles and reducing reliance on automated systems to ensure better candidate matches.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

I am back and happy to say that I survived a camping trip with a toddler. Phew! 🏕️👶

On to the good stuff. My guest post, The Unique Challenges of FinTech Product Management, in ’s Product Management IRL newsletter is out. Thank you Amy for giving me this awesome opportunity.

With that said, let’s just get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. Making the tradeoff between speed and quality.

2. You don't need a PM to speak to developers.

3. It means saying 'No': How to master prioritization like Steve Jobs.

4. What to do in your first 30/60/90 days as a Product Manager.

5. The subscription value loop: A framework for growing consumer subscription businesses.

6. 5 steps to negotiate your product manager job offer in a tough market.

7. Six popular growth tactics that don't actually work.

8. Differentiation and specialization done right.

9. Product vision and mission.

Making the tradeoff between speed and quality (3 min read)

Balancing speed and quality is a persistent challenge in product development. You don't have to sacrifice one for the other.

• Ensuring teams understand they won't ship bad products provides clarity.

• Focus on what customers prioritize, which isn't always about perfection.

• Instead of cutting corners, streamline the process to move faster without compromising quality.

• Teams should be empowered to make thoughtful tradeoffs based on customer needs and risks.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Break work into smaller milestones and empower teams to balance speed and quality intentionally.

You don't need a PM to speak to developers (2 min read)

You don't need a PM to communicate with developers effectively. Treat engineers as professionals by holding them accountable and giving them a clear business context. Inspire them by showing how their work connects to larger company goals and expose them to real customer pain points for motivation. Respect their estimates, ask questions to deepen your understanding, and encourage them to suggest different options for solving problems. Including them early in the process will result in better solutions.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Build trust with developers by respecting their expertise, sharing context, and encouraging creative problem-solving.

Share

It means saying 'No': How to master prioritization like Steve Jobs (8 min read)

Prioritization is crucial for product success, but it often feels frustrating and risky, particularly when it means saying no to good ideas. The key to effective prioritization is transparency, strategy alignment, and using the right framework for your team. Methods like RICE, MoSCoW, and the Kano Model offer ways to balance value and effort, aligning choices with business needs, team capacity, and market maturity. Consistency in your approach builds trust and ensures better product outcomes over time.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Choose a prioritization method that fits your team and stick with it long enough to evaluate its success.

What to do in your first 30/60/90 days as a Product Manager (7 min read)

During your first 30 days, focus on learning about the product, market, and company culture while establishing key relationships. Build a learning backlog for clarity on the business, and a relationship backlog to engage stakeholders. Avoid applying past solutions prematurely. The next 60-90 days should transition from initial wins to strategic, long-term goals, with trust earned through reliability, competence, and empathy.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Invest in deep discovery and strong relationships in the first month, and evolve into strategic actions over time.

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The subscription value loop: A framework for growing consumer subscription businesses (29 min read)

Scaling consumer subscription apps is tough due to common challenges like distribution constraints, heavy reliance on paid acquisition, and churn issues. The Subscription Value Loop model offers a solution by focusing on improving the core growth drivers: Acquisition, Retention, and Monetization. Strengthening each loop reduces churn, increases customer lifetime value (LTV), and improves payback periods, enabling more efficient scaling. The key is aligning on a strong value promise, leveraging virality, and building freemium models that pull users deeper into the experience.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: To scale effectively, focus on extending customer lifetime value through personalized retention tactics and reduce dependence on paid acquisition by optimizing your freemium offerings and fostering community-driven virality.

5 steps to negotiate your product manager job offer in a tough market (20 min read)

This guide outlines five steps to effectively negotiate a product manager job offer. Start by preparing early and positioning yourself strategically throughout the hiring process. Leverage market insights to handle compensation discussions confidently, even without competing offers. Highlight your unique value through a 30-60-90-day plan, and make a strong counteroffer backed by data. Finally, anticipate pushback and treat negotiation as a normal part of advancing your career in tech.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Approach negotiations with a clear value proposition and solid market data to back your requests.

Six popular growth tactics that don't actually work (6 min read)

This article debunks six common growth tactics that often backfire: redesigning the homepage, oversimplifying user flows, endlessly testing colours, relying on single email campaigns, adding third-party auth, and using template libraries. These approaches can feel productive but often fail to improve metrics like user activation, retention, or revenue. Instead, the focus should be on addressing deeper user needs and providing better guidance.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Avoid “quick fix” tactics. Focus on understanding user friction and providing genuine value across the customer journey.

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Differentiation and specialization done right (8 min read)

To stand out, startups should differentiate on what customers care about, not just speed or team strength. Specializing deeply can increase differentiation but may shrink the market size. The trick is balancing niche focus with market potential. The key is to specialize enough to attract a loyal base while keeping market expansion in mind.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Balance specialization with market reach by targeting a niche that's large enough to scale but small enough to stand out.

Product vision and mission (10 min read)

A well-crafted product vision drives innovation and sets long-term goals by defining the future state of your product, while the mission grounds everyday actions, offering clarity and focus. Both must align with company objectives, be customer-focused, and stay actionable. Regularly revisiting them ensures they adapt to changing market dynamics. Involving cross-functional teams in their creation ensures a comprehensive perspective, and integrating both into daily decision-making fosters alignment and continuous progress.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Use the vision for long-term direction and the mission to prioritize day-to-day actions. Ensure both are clear, collaborative, and flexible to remain relevant.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

Was this forwarded to you? Join The Product Trench 👇

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

It has been a busy week. Busy with what? Well, prepping for Aakash’s new podcast is no joke. My Episode airs on September 8th, so save the date! Plus, I am doing my first collaboration, so stay tuned for more updates next week.

So, between the above and planning the first camping trip with a toddler, I apologize for the lighter-than-usual roundup.

Anyway, I digressed, so let's just get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. Will we lose our jobs to AI? Cutting through the hype.

2. AI companies are pivoting from creating gods to building products. Good.

3. Anticipating the unseen.

4. 15 mistakes PMs and PMMs need to avoid for better product launches.

5. The power of starting small to gain support and traction.

Will we lose our jobs to AI? Cutting through the hype (7 min read)

Paweł argues that AI is not as advanced as big tech claims, and fears of widespread job loss are overblown. While AI can automate some tasks, especially for junior roles, it still lacks the ability to handle complex, human-dependent decisions, making senior positions secure for now. However, real progress in AI is slowing, emphasizing the importance of upskilling and focusing on areas that AI cannot easily replicate.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Leverage AI to enhance productivity but prioritize learning skills that AI struggles with, ensuring your role remains relevant.

AI companies are pivoting from creating gods to building products. Good. (7 min read)

AI companies have realized that generative AI is less ready for widespread commercial use than initially believed. This miscalculation has led to significant challenges, including high costs, reliability issues, privacy concerns, and the need for better safety and user interfaces. As these companies shift their focus from merely creating AI models to protecting and refining them, they must address these obstacles to bridge the gap between AI's potential and its practical, everyday applications. The road to broad AI adoption is now expected to take longer than initially anticipated, potentially unfolding over a decade.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on overcoming practical challenges like cost, reliability, and safety in AI development to meet consumer expectations and ensure long-term success.

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Anticipating the unseen (4 min read)

Amy Mitchell tackles how AI is quietly reshaping the future of product management through specialized AI agents into teams, handling tasks from design to engineering. This shift allows product managers to focus on complex communications, strategic decisions, and creativity. As AI becomes central, product managers must enhance their leadership, empathy, and communication skills to effectively manage AI-driven workflows and maintain a human touch.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Invest in developing leadership, communication, and empathy skills to stay ahead as AI reshapes the product management landscape.

15 mistakes PMs and PMMs need to avoid for better product launches (10 min read)

The article covers 15 crucial mistakes that Product Managers (PMs) and Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) often make, which can undermine product launches.

• These include focusing solely on solution validation without validating messaging, misplacing or mispricing features within product tiers, and neglecting to set clear launch metrics.

• It also highlights the importance of aligning PMs and PMMs throughout the launch process, adjusting launch intensity based on feature value, and avoiding over-hyping followed by silence.

• Other pitfalls include failing to phase rollouts, not preparing support teams adequately, and overlooking localization needs for global products.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Validate your product solution and customer messaging. Align PMs and PMMs early, set clear metrics, and adjust your launch efforts based on feature significance.

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The power of starting small to gain support and traction (5 min read)

Pilot projects are an effective way to introduce and test complex changes with minimal risk. Unlike proof of concept (POC), they operate in a real-world setting on a smaller scale, providing actionable insights on whether to scale or abandon an initiative. The key to success is starting small, iterating based on feedback, and focusing on delivering value before expanding.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Use pilot projects to drive change—start small, learn, adapt, and then scale based on proven success.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

The Product Trench is a free newsletter. I may consider some type of paid tier down the line. Until then, if you find my work valuable, you can buy me a coffee.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

This week's roundup contains some good nuggets on product growth, leadership, and other topics, so let's get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. A masterclass on managing up

2. Pitfalls of being too metrics-driven

3. The ultimate guide to positioning

4. Simplify, engage, inspire

5. Part II: Derisking 12 common workplace scenarios

6. Decoding "outcome-driven" product development

7. Should you product-led growth?

8. Growth teams must learn to play well with other teams... or else

A masterclass on managing up (11 min video)

Managing up involves three key strategies: regular communication, escalation of challenges, and alignment with management's priorities.

• Regular status updates, though often disliked, are vital for keeping leadership informed and aligned.

• Escalating issues and openly discussing frustrations with management is crucial, especially for high-agency individuals who tend to handle everything independently.

• Finally, aligning your team's work with management's current priorities, even if they seem inconsistent, is important for career progression. Balancing these strategies while protecting your team's focus and integrity is essential for effective leadership.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Communicate consistently with your manager, escalate challenges when needed, and align your team's work with management's priorities to ensure ongoing support and success.

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Pitfalls of being too metrics-driven (3 min read)

Being overly metrics-driven can lead to negative outcomes, such as focusing on short-term gains, ignoring critical issues, and fostering a blame culture. Instead, leaders should balance metrics with context, set qualitative goals, and consider a range of metrics to guide decisions. Teams should also contribute insights, and metrics' limitations should be acknowledged to avoid tunnel vision. Qualitative research and cross-functional feedback are essential to complement quantitative analysis.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Balance metrics with context and qualitative insights to prevent short-sighted decisions and ensure long-term success.

The ultimate guide to positioning (90 min video)

In his newly launched podcast, Aakash covers everything you need to know about positioning with Anthony Pierri. The episode covers a masterclass in positioning, building a great home page, various hot takes, the role of PMs and PMMs, and the future of product marketing.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: 

1. Positioning is about giving frames of reference to help people understand the value of a new product or category.

2. Clear messaging on homepages is paramount to entice your potential customers.

3. The future of product marketing is to lead with features and product capabilities, rather than just focusing on benefits.

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Simplify, engage, inspire (4 min read)

Amy Mitchell provides a step-by-step guide for product managers to prepare and deliver impactful presentations on complex topics. It emphasizes the importance of defining clear objectives, structuring content logically, supporting arguments with evidence, engaging the audience, and closing with a strong summary. By focusing on clarity and audience engagement, you can effectively communicate critical technical insights and drive strategic decisions.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Simplify complex information by breaking it down into clear, logical sections and use visuals to enhance understanding and engagement.

Part II: Derisking 12 common workplace scenarios (6 min read)

This article breaks down 12 common workplace scenarios, such as giving feedback, presenting to leadership, and delegating tasks, highlighting the primary risks in each and offering strategies to mitigate them. For instance, when sharing a controversial idea, clearly stating your intent can prevent misunderstandings, and when raising prices, framing the increase as minor can reduce customer churn.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Always anticipate potential risks and plan simple, clear steps to mitigate them in any workplace situation.

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Decoding "outcome-driven" product development (10 min read)

Outcome-driven product development emphasizes aligning customer, product, and business outcomes to create value and drive growth. Understanding the "Outcome Chain" is key, as it connects customer needs to product performance and business success. Product teams should focus on building towards customer outcomes, leading to product and business results. Key practices include continuous discovery, outcome-driven roadmapping, and iterative validation to ensure alignment and adaptability.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize customer outcomes as the foundation of your product strategy, ensuring they cascade into measurable product and business outcomes.

Should you product-led growth? (12 min read)

The article breaks down the complexities of adopting a Product-Led Growth (PLG) strategy, emphasizing that it's not a simple yes or no decision. Success hinges on understanding your product's positioning, customer needs, and the balance between self-serve and high-touch models. HubSpot's successful PLG shift and Salesforce's struggles highlight the importance of product simplification, market flexibility, and organizational adaptability in transitioning to PLG.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Evaluate whether your product and organization are ready for a PLG approach by considering product complexity, customer needs, and the balance between self-serve and human touchpoints.

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Growth teams must learn to play well with other teams... or else (6 min read)

Growth teams often clash with core product teams because they need to impact areas they don't directly control. A key lesson is to involve surface owners as consultants and share credit for successes to build long-term collaboration. Moving too fast without alignment can lead to strained relationships and operational issues/

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Always engage and credit product domain owners when driving growth initiatives to ensure long-term success.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

It has been a busy week, so let's just get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. Dangerous anti-patterns of product management

2. How to find your first ICP: A guide

3. Transitioning to a PM-guided culture

4. A guide to minimum viable product

5. Ditch the PRD template and embrace the PRD checklist

6. Time management techniques that actually work

7. Derisking 101: How to identify and reduce risk in your daily work

8. Staying sharp in a fast-paced world

9. You don't have to be a manager

10. How to craft a compelling elevator pitch (6 min video)

Dangerous anti-patterns of product management (3 min read)

Product management often falls prey to dangerous anti-patterns that can derail success. Common pitfalls include:

• Focusing on adding features rather than delivering real value.

• Relying too much on intuition without leveraging data.

• Confusing busyness with productivity.

Other risks involve misalignment between goals and user needs, ignoring user feedback, and poor communication among teams. Addressing these issues is critical to ensure products meet customer needs and achieve business objectives.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Align your product goals with user needs and data-driven insights to deliver true value rather than just adding features or keeping busy.

How to find your first ICP: A guide (7 min read)

Identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a triangulation exercise that balances quantitative data, qualitative insights, and market analysis.

• Quantitative methods, like data analysis, reveal patterns and trends in customer behaviour. 

• Qualitative approaches, such as interviews and surveys, dive deep into customer motivations and pain points. 

• Finally, market analysis provides context by examining competitors and broader market dynamics.

By combining these three perspectives, you can iteratively refine your ICP, ensuring it aligns closely with real-world needs and market opportunities.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Use a triangulated approach that combines data analysis, direct customer feedback, and market context to accurately define and refine your ICP.

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Transitioning to a PM-guided culture (4 min video)

To shift your team's culture from PM-dominated to PM-guided, you need to leverage influence, especially if you hold a senior position. Start by observing and listening to the team dynamics. Then, approach your peers by acknowledging their achievements and subtly pointing out that PMs may have too much power. Propose a more balanced approach where all team members, including engineers and designers, have a say in product decisions. Elevate non-PM voices by including them in key meetings and decisions, moving beyond the typical approach of merely exposing them to customer pain points.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on nurturing influence and inclusivity in decision-making by empowering non-PMs and fostering a culture where every voice is valued.

A guide to minimum viable product (6 min read)

The article demystifies the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), emphasizing that it's not just a smaller version of the final product but a tool to test assumptions quickly and cheaply. It outlines the key characteristics of an MVP—minimum features, fast iteration, and real user feedback—and discusses common pitfalls like over-engineering or misinterpreting the "minimum" as "barely functional." The piece also covers practical steps to define, build, and measure the success of an MVP, including setting clear goals, identifying core features, and using metrics to validate learning.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on creating an MVP that tests your core assumptions, not just a watered-down version of the final product.

Ditch the PRD template and embrace the PRD checklist (6 min read)

The article argues that traditional PRD (Product Requirement Document) templates can be rigid and stifle creativity. It proposes switching to a PRD checklist that focuses on key elements while allowing flexibility. This approach promotes clearer communication, reduces unnecessary details, and aligns teams on the essentials without being bogged down by format. The checklist is categorized into must-have sections such as objectives, user stories, and constraints, making the process more dynamic and tailored to the project's needs.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Transition to a PRD checklist to streamline communication, foster creativity, and focus on what's truly essential for your product development.

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Time management techniques that actually work (4 min read)

Ten practical time management strategies to boost productivity include using your calendar for to-dos, completing tasks that take less than two minutes immediately, setting up a "waiting for" list, protecting deep work time, and saying no more often. Other techniques involve avoiding meetings in the morning, keeping work asynchronous, and employing a virtual assistant to handle low-impact tasks.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Maximize productivity by scheduling dedicated deep work time and offloading low-impact tasks to others.

Derisking 101: How to identify and reduce risk in your daily work (9 min read)

To manage risks effectively, identify potential problems early, learn from past experiences, and take proactive measures to prevent unnecessary mistakes. Focus on the most significant risks, use first principles for decision-making, and take proactive steps to catch issues before they escalate. This approach minimizes preventable problems and helps in managing outcomes more effectively.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Cultivate a proactive mindset in risk management by anticipating issues and addressing them before they impact results.

Staying sharp in a fast-paced world (4 min read)

Staying sharp as a product manager involves continuous learning through two key approaches: focused learning and serendipity learning. 

• Focused learning is goal-oriented, structured, and time-boxed, allowing you to master specific topics deeply. 

• In contrast, serendipity learning is about broadening your awareness by curating diverse content and engaging with it regularly. 

Together, these methods help you maintain a balance between deep expertise and staying updated with industry trends.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Incorporate both focused and serendipity learning into your routine to stay ahead and maintain a well-rounded skill set.

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You don't have to be a manager (6 min read)

Not everyone needs to pursue management to advance in their career. Individual Contributor (IC) roles like Principal or Staff positions offer top-tier pay, autonomy, and prestige without the burden of managing people. These roles, now more common, allow professionals to excel without shifting into management—a path often unrelated to their core talents.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Consider IC roles or advising if you seek career growth without the challenges of management.

How to craft a compelling elevator pitch (6 min video)

Use the hero's journey framework to create an effective elevator pitch and tell a compelling story that hooks the listener.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Start your pitch by setting the context (the customer's ordinary world), introduce the problem (the villain), and end by teasing your product as the solution.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

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Subscribe now

Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

It has been a good product content week, so let's just get to it.

This Week's Roundup 🔁

1. The 3 types of PM cultures — and how to spot them

2. How to make an internal switch as a Product Manager? 

3. Stop the (goal) cascade madness

4. Focusing on time to value over time to market

5. The challenges and opportunities AI brings to Product Management

6. 5 secrets to succeed as a B2B product manager

7. Elena's 2024 B2B product-led sales guide

The 3 types of PM cultures — and how to spot them (5 min video)

PM cultures are categorized into three types: PM dominated, PM guided, and PM serviced. 

• In PM dominated cultures, even low-competence PMs hold significant influence.

• In PM guided cultures, only high-competence PMs wield influence, ensuring better decisions. 

• PM serviced cultures see PMs mainly supporting other dominant functions like engineering or sales, with little decision-making power.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Evaluate your company's PM culture to understand power dynamics and improve decision-making efficiency.

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How to make an internal switch as a Product Manager? (5 min read)

Transitioning to a Product Manager role within your company involves adapting your existing skills while overcoming mindset shifts. 

• Marketing professionals must embrace continuous iteration.

• UX designers need an end-to-end approach.

• Engineers and QA must broaden their focus. 

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Proactively build relationships with product managers. Show initiative, curiosity, and a willingness to learn new domains and skills.

Stop the (goal) cascade madness (6 min read)

• Goal cascades, while seemingly logical, often fail in practice. Effective goal-setting starts with front-line teams focusing on stable core metrics, which provide a consistent framework over time. 

• Temporary bet metrics can be used for specific initiatives but should be retired when no longer useful. 

• Cascading goals across multiple layers creates a misalignment between organizational objectives and team-level actions. Instead, organizations should simplify goals into two levels: high-level business metrics and actionable team metrics, avoiding unnecessary complexity and ensuring alignment with actual work.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Focus on stable core metrics at the team level and avoid deep, multi-layered goal cascades that don't reflect real, actionable work. Simplify to align directly with business-critical metrics.

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Focusing on time to value over time to market: A strategy for developing successful products (6 min read)

Shifting focus from time to market (TTM) to time to value (TTV) enhances customer satisfaction and long-term success. TTV is about delivering meaningful, immediate value to customers, which builds trust, satisfaction, and long-term success. This approach involves deep product discovery, continuous customer feedback, and iterative improvements. It contrasts with TTM, which often prioritizes speed over quality, leading to rushed, less impactful releases that might not fully address customer needs.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize value over speed. Focus on delivering immediate and tangible user benefits to drive long-term product success and market differentiation.

The challenges and opportunities AI brings to Product Management (51 min video)

Janna Bastow shares her perspective on how AI is just another tool that can help product managers synthesize feedback and speed up certain aspects of their job.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: (1) The value of a roadmap is found in the process of creating it, not just the document itself. (2) AI can enhance product management by serving as a feedback tool and decision support, but human judgment remains essential. (3) Developing a culture that encourages employees to challenge ideas is critical for innovation. (4) Product managers must connect their work to revenue and ensure roadmaps align with company strategy.

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5 secrets to succeed as a B2B product manager (6 min read)

1. Distinguish between customers and users.

2. Sales teams know the customer really well.

3. Get creative with experimentation.

4. Embrace the slow pace in B2B product management.

5. Revenue will always be a priority.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Build strong relationships with both customers and users, leveraging sales team insights and creative testing methods to validate product decisions. Always keep revenue alignment in mind when planning your roadmap.

Elena's 2024 B2B Product-Led Sales Guide (10 min read)

The guide explains how to transition from product-led growth (PLG) to product-led sales (PLS) by effectively leveraging self-serve usage data to identify sales opportunities. It details strategies for scaling engagement with users who express interest ("hand-raisers") and differentiating product offerings to target ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and product-qualified accounts (PQAs). The focus is on using detailed product interaction data to tailor sales approaches, making them more precise and aligned with customer needs, ultimately driving growth and efficiency in B2B sales.

⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Use product interaction data to identify and engage potential customers, focusing on scaling interest-driven leads and customizing offerings for those who best fit your product.

👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.

If you enjoyed reading today's newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

See you next time.

— Sam ✌️

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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎

Sorry this post is a bit late. My toddler went on nap strike so my writing plans got pushed to later this afternoon.

Fun update… I am changing a few things with how and when I post, starting with the Weekly Recap moving to Sundays and now called Weekly Roundup—at least until I find a better name. 🙃 More on that over the upcoming few weeks.

With that said, let's jump straight into it.

Here are my favourite articles this week.

How to figure out metrics ownership (5 min read)

Metrics ownership can be complex, involving multiple teams and objectives. The Own-Share-Shed framework helps define responsibility for metrics. Ownership types are determined by questions about existing ownership, necessary resources, and team objectives. Metrics can be fully owned, shared, or shed, depending on their current and ideal states. The process involves:

• Mapping out input metrics.

• Assessing ownership.

• Transitioning to the ideal state through clear communication and collaboration.

How should you monetize your AI features? (8 min read)

AI monetization strategies include direct methods (charging for AI features or increasing product prices) and indirect methods (integrating AI features into existing bundles without altering prices). Most companies bundle AI features into current packages, often increasing prices or adding usage-based pricing. Direct monetization, preferred by many, offers cleaner adoption data and better ROI understanding. Companies should consider AI's value and costs, customer willingness to pay, and competitive landscape when deciding on a monetization strategy.

Leading by following (3 min read)

Leadership isn't just about steering the team but also knowing when to follow. Product managers can enhance their skills by giving constructive feedback, supporting decisions, and proactively offering help. Embrace the role of a follower to improve leadership skills and team outcomes.

Roadmaps tend to set the wrong expectations with leadership (2 min read)

Roadmaps often mislead leadership by implying immediate impact post-shipment, overlooking adoption delays. Effective uptake requires thorough go-to-market strategies, with product marketers collaborating closely throughout the delivery cycle. Introducing uptake buffers and phased launches with metric gates can align expectations more realistically.

Assumption prioritization canvas (4 min read)

The Assumption Prioritization Canvas is a framework designed to help product teams identify, categorize, and prioritize their assumptions to focus on what matters most. It aids in clarifying which assumptions are critical and uncertain and thus needs validation. The process involves listing all assumptions, plotting them based on their impact and uncertainty, and deciding which to test first. This structured approach ensures resources are allocated efficiently, reducing the risk of product failure due to overlooked critical assumptions.

👋 That's it for this week’s edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week. See you next time.

If you enjoyed reading today’s newsletter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

Was this forwarded to you? You can join by clicking below.

Subscribe now

Here are my favourite articles this week. Let's jump straight into it.

Why high growth, high churn products never seem to work (6 min read)

Meme apps and AI poducts often experience viral spikes but suffer from poor retention, driven by the dopamine rush of novelty rather than genuine user engagement. These short-lived surges give an illusion of success but can't sustain long-term growth. Real growth requires products that retain users and build on a stable customer base. Founders should leverage the initial viral boost while focusing on creating sticky, valuable experiences that can grow steadily over time.

Product analytics fundamentals for PMs (3 min read)

Product analytics is essential for PMs to understand user behaviour and improve products. Focus on actionable key metrics aligned with business goals. Use quantitative and qualitative data to provide a complete picture of user behaviour and interaction with your product. Select the right tools and set up a robust analytics framework. Communicate insights effectively to drive data-driven decisions and improve user experience.

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Improve growth mindset in your company with a weekly experiment review meeting (7 min read)

Develop a growth mindset in your company to drive sustainable and predictable growth by implementing structured rituals like weekly experimentation reviews and embracing failures as key learning opportunities to ensure a culture of growth that is both defensible and scalable.

Plausible vs correct (AI) (4 min read)

AI systems generate plausible but not always correct answers because they rely on patterns rather than understanding truth. Product managers shouldn't confuse AI's statistical outputs with genuine insights. It's crucial to discern when human intervention is necessary, especially in high-stakes fields. The goal is to use AI tools to complement human judgment and ensure outcomes that truly benefit users rather than relying solely on AI-generated content. Understanding AI's limitations helps in making better technology choices.

Building a great product management organization (5 min read)

Crafting a stellar product management organization hinges on four pillars: Organizational Design, Strategy, Operations, and Culture. Start by defining clear roles and responsibilities to avoid overlaps. Ensure strategic alignment with business goals and effective deployment. Leverage data and customer feedback for informed decisions. Cultivate a customer-centric culture focused on outcomes, continuous learning, and empowerment. Regularly assess and refine these areas to maintain agility and drive innovation.

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You're not just solving user problems (6 min read)

Focusing solely on user needs can be limiting. While understanding users is crucial, balancing these insights with other methods and evaluating ideas against broader company goals is equally important. This balanced approach ensures the development of high-impact products that serve both users and business objectives effectively.

Releasing new features nobody cares about (4 min read)

Assess your team's current situation to identify opportunities to streamline your development flow. Avoid becoming a feature factory by focusing on goals, solving real problems, and being willing to drop non-viable ideas. Coordinative workflows increase delivery time and waste, whereas collaborative workflows create value faster and adapt better to changing plans. Understand your product development flow to implement gradual improvements, simplifying processes through collaboration with stakeholders and team members.

👋 That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week! See you next time.

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Announcement: I'm planning to launch a podcast. This isn't just another podcast—it's a platform dedicated to the unsung heroes of the product world. My focus is on the product managers and leaders who are driving innovation in companies you might not have heard of but are doing extraordinary work. I believe everyone has a story worth telling, and I want to hear yours. Do you know someone whose story needs to be told? I'd love your recommendations through this Guest Recommendation Form.

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Here are my favourite articles this week. Let's jump straight into it.

The AI Summer (3 min read)

Generative AI saw rapid adoption but limited sustained use, echoing early tech struggles. While widely tested, many pilots have yet to lead to deployment, mirroring the slow adoption of past innovations like e-commerce and smartphones. LLMs aren't standalone products; they need further development for practical applications. The tech world might be in a bubble phase, needing time to find a true product-market fit, much like previous tech evolutions.

From Good to Great in Product Management (2 min read)

Exceptional product managers excel by practicing seven superpower skills: empathy, effective communication, resilience, discernment, strategic decision-making, patience, and skill blending. These skills help them understand diverse perspectives, inspire teamwork, bounce back from setbacks, make wise choices, prioritize by value, maintain a long-term vision, and innovate. Developing and integrating these abilities thoughtfully into daily work leads to greater organizational success.

How to deal with B2B sales-driven feature requests (7 min read)

B2B product management differs significantly from B2C, often requiring a balanced approach between sales and product. In sales-driven environments, PMs must collaborate closely with sales teams to meet client needs without compromising product scalability. Understanding the core needs behind custom client requests and evaluating their potential for broader applications can lead to innovative solutions that benefit multiple clients. A Go-To-Market (GTM) Complexity Tracker can help quantify the impact of customizations on implementation timelines, aiding in better prioritization and alignment with business goals.

"Can I Make It Smaller?": How to Use an MVP Razor to Build Features (7 min read)

Applying the MVP Razor means continuously asking, "Can I make it smaller while preserving its essence?" You can save time and resources by stripping down features to their core elements. This approach helps test key assumptions, secure stakeholder buy-in, and iterate quickly based on feedback. Always focus on what's essential and avoid overcomplicating your MVP with unnecessary features. This ensures you're building what truly matters to users and can adapt swiftly to their needs.

The Myth of Execution (1 min read)

Great execution isn't just about discipline and hitting deadlines—it's about delivering outstanding results with superb intuition, creativity, and strategic thinking. Many confuse visible activity and intense work with true execution. Steve Jobs excelled in execution by seamlessly integrating vision, strategy, and action, proving that great execution is deeply tied to having superior ideas and making a singular impact at every step.

Metric Overload: When Too Much Data Becomes a Problem (4 min read)

Organizations must balance data collection with actionable insights. Too much data without strategy leads to analysis paralysis. Signs include ignored dashboards, stagnant metrics, and wasted resources. Combat metric overload by aligning metrics with strategic goals, keeping dashboards simple, engaging teams, and balancing data with intuition. Focus on a few key performance indicators (KPIs) and ensure they drive meaningful change and improvements aligned with overall company objectives.

👋 That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week! See you next time.

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Here are my favourite articles this week. Let's jump straight into it.

How Close is AI to Replacing Product Managers? (7 min read)

AI is getting closer to replacing some product managers' tasks, especially with advanced prompting techniques. AI outperformed humans in two out of three tested tasks: developing product strategy and defining KPIs. However, AI struggles with creative and strategic thinking and lacks contextual knowledge. While AI's current capabilities are limited, continuous improvement means it's only a matter of time before AI becomes a more significant player in product management roles.

The AI Future Is Already Here, It's Just Not Productized Yet (4 min read)

AI is rapidly reducing productivity costs, much like previous technological shifts. Current AI advances mainly exist in infrastructure layers, but the future holds potential for application-level breakthroughs. Companies should categorize AI opportunities into roles for AI agents, industry-specific functions for AI vertical software, and widespread tasks for AI horizontal software. Implementing these can automate routine tasks, enhance workflow efficiency, and elevate knowledge work, leading to significant productivity gains.

The 7 layers of Notion's PLG Iceberg (2 min read)

Notion is revolutionizing the $16.6B document market dominated by Google and Microsoft with its AI product surpassing $100M ARR. Its success stems from a robust product-led growth strategy. Its success hinges on product-led growth (PLG), characterized by strong brand design, a vibrant community, versatile pricing plans, seamless onboarding, quick user "aha" moments, and continuous user engagement through advanced features.

Trends in Product Management Part 2 (3 min read)

AI and role consolidation are driving many changes in product management's dynamic role. Amy Mitchell shares a recap and mid-year evaluation of product management trends.

How to Train Customer Teams to Get Really Useful Feedback (10 min read)

Training customer teams to gather valuable feedback is crucial for product strategy. Effective feedback should identify the user, their goals, the challenges they face, and the importance of these issues. Overcoming challenges like busy schedules and superficial feedback requires structured training sessions. Key steps include explaining the importance of quality feedback, providing concrete examples, and outlining specific questions to uncover deeper insights. Continuous reinforcement and integrating this training into onboarding processes are essential for long-term success.

👋 That's it for today! Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week! See you next time.

Love The Product Trench? Share your referral link with friends and earn rewards.