Life beyond features 💡, Ultimate guide to improving retention 🔁, Unlocking momentum with product strategy 🚀, and more
🔁 Weekly Roundup 16 - September 15, 2024
👋 Hey, Sam here! Welcome back to the 🔁 Weekly Roundup edition 🔁 of The Product Trench. Each week, I curate deep dives, trends and resources related to product management, startups, and leadership.
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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 🔁
Creating effective retention strategies.
Non-obvious signs of early startup traction and how to spot them.
How to improve retention: The ultimate guide for product managers and leaders.
A life beyond features for B2B PMs.
Unlocking momentum with product strategy.
Communication gaps: The hidden barrier to successful execution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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See you next time.
— Sam ✌️
Good finds this week for product managers! Your Sunday posting is becoming a habit to learn about the latest product topics.
Thank you for the shout out!
Thanks so much for the shoutout on the retention guide 🙌