Standing out in product & growth roles 😎, Navigating product discovery 🧭, Winning in enterprise 🏆🏢
Weekly Roundup 21 - November 02, 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 and leadership.
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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 🔁
The best prompts start as conversations.
Applying for product & growth in 2024.
How to navigate product discovery like a map.
Product discovery activities by risk.
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.
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.
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.
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See you next time.
— Sam ✌️