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The Tough Reality for Enterprise B2B Product Managers
And how to thrive in it
Jean-Michel Van
December 03, 2023
The Tough Reality for Enterprise B2B PMs
What happened this week?
I'll talk about something a few readers asked me, which I also struggled with early in my PM career, I felt ‘discriminated’. What I've realized is that most online info is about B2C PM content with big names like FAANG or MAMAA or the like. It makes sense—We’re all consumers, they're well-known, so news about them is more popular.
In a nutshell, the challenges in B2C are widely known, like the network effects leading to things 'going viral', rapid A/B testing, blablabla…
On the other hand, things are quite different in Enterprise B2B world. Conversations here mostly focus on big sales contracts, product stability, and consultative selling, bringing a whole new set of challenges for B2B product managers…and I'll talk about some of them today.
(By the way, reply to this email if you are looking for a PM position. More details below)
Today at a glance:
The B2B PM Reality and how to thrive in this space
Key Learning Summary Post-it
Top 8 Job opportunities from my network (🔐 for Premium users)
Weekly Juicy Picks
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1- What does Enterprise B2B mean for PMs?
Very easy, this is pretty much what you see below…You usually get ‘Contact us’ or ‘Let’s Chat’ in the pricing.
This is the section that involves Outbound Sales Teams. Here, we’re dealing with customers that fit the description below:
Large and complex organizations
Risk Adverse and do not like changes
Legacy systems and processes
Lots of politics and long-term contracts
It’s a different beast. Now let’s get to the PM portion specifically.
2- Your user base might be pretty small in real terms
It's essential to acknowledge that in the context of Enterprise B2B, the user base may be relatively small. While the organization itself may be large, individual users directly impacted by a particular product could be a fraction of the total workforce but with HIGH value. This introduces a unique set of challenges for PMs targeting the Enterprise B2B space:
Key Challenges
💡 Many enterprise products only have a handful of (high value) users, so robust A/B testing is VERY limited, unlike B2C.
💡 Users do not like change
💡 User discovery fatigue as they get the same Qs from different people in your organizations, Sales, CSM, PM, etc…
Key Learnings
✅ Build relationships with key customers early to understand their needs better.
✅ Create power user groups to gather insights from engaged users
✅ Implement early adopter programs to test new features. The last one has worked pretty well for me over the year.
3- Your users aren’t (necessarily) your customers
For product managers in Enterprise B2B, it's crucial to recognize that "Your users aren't necessarily your customers." While users matter, decision-making often rests with higher-ups during the sales cycle. This underscores the need for a dual strategy: addressing user needs while aligning product value with key ‘decision-makers' objectives for successful adoption.
Key Challenges
💡 Identify challenges/objectives in procurement, compliance, and IT teams as critical areas for your product and messaging.
💡 A decision maker is NOT your user in most cases
Key Learnings
✅ For Product discovery, I use a simple framework:
Senior key stakeholders are leveraged for big bets & product direction
Your actual app users are leveraged for feature-level direction
Both should be happy as they talk top each other✅ Actively seek and cultivate a product champion within the organization to support and advocate for product management initiatives.
4- Product Prioritization Influenced by Sales/GTM
B2B Product managers need to collaborate with Sales and Go-to-Market (GTM) teams. Those teams own the user/customer relationships and you need to understand that. Continuous feedback loops with sales and GTM teams guide product development, aiming for a seamless fit with customer needs and broader business objectives.