Scoring. On Basketball and Product Management
Here's my journey in understanding that - ultimately - vanity stats do matter. And that might be okay.
My junior year in high school, I wanted nothing more than to make my JV basketball team. (Note: “JV” stands for “Junior Varsity” and represents the second-best team at the school. This is telling.) I practiced pretty hard, had grown a few inches and felt I had a decent chance. However, when I showed up to the tryout, the competition was quite stiff. Growing up near the birthplace of basketball (Springfield, Massachusetts), the sport was more popular in my town than most. The coach provided his criteria for selecting the team:
Defense
Defense
Scoring
Defense
Perfect. I was a good defender. During the tryout, I blocked several shots, deflected balls and all-in-all proved to be a pretty scrappy defender. However, I wasn’t athletic enough to be a prolific scorer on the other end of the court. I didn’t make the team. For years, I have tried to do the math in my head to understand the coach’s process. I always come down to the same realization: That coach was lying to himself.
I’m the fractional CPO at this small company and we’re trying to launch a new product to a new market segment and - like any new entrant - it’s hard to find a foothold. We’ve tried it all on the marketing side: organic content, paid search … lists (I know …). Traction has been hard to come by. We’ve been trying to do things the right way, launching a beta program and inviting the world to partner with us in the feedback loop. This way, we won’t build to the ideas in our head but to real customer feedback. We have zero beta participants as of today.
To keep our spirits up, we talk about the future and the long-term product vision. We celebrate small wins with product development, though we don’t have many prospects to bounce ideas off of. We have been trying to do this the right way for so long.
This week, we had a breakthrough. Our sales rep laced the new product into his talk track for our flagship product. The persona for the new product is different, and we historically didn’t want to risk losing an opportunity by muddying the waters. But the cross-sell attempt worked. The customer understood the use case and agreed to include another team in the evaluation. We now have a larger opportunity for a bundled offering. Swish.
Like a barnacle on a ship, I’m clung to this deal. I am at the ready to build any content our Salesperson needs to move the customer along. I’m rethinking pricing for the bundled offer. Do we run the risk of building/repricing/messaging based on the feedback of a sample of one? Sure. But we need a win. And to win, you have to score. Chasing one-off sales may be a certain path to product hell but God knows our team is going to chase this deal. Why? Because we want to score. We want to see a number on the scoreboard. We want these points to motivate the team to score more. And scoring, as a matter of fact, is what wins games.
I once worked for a CEO that claimed the company had two roles: Sales and Sales Support. Most Product folks would roll their eyes, but I love it. If you’re a for-profit company, isn’t this the ultimate goal after all? I realize it sounds superficial, cut throat, like a scene out of the movie “Wall Street”. But at least it’s honest. We’re not lying to ourselves.
(A quick sidebar: What is “defense” in this analogy? I suppose it could be protecting your advantage from the competition. Or it could be keeping customers happy above all other things to retain revenue. You could argue that either is more important than scoring. However, the market still loves revenue growth. Revenue is validation of a market and your ability to consistently penetrate that market effectively.)
My kids play basketball year round. Every now and again, they’ll play quite lousy, turning the ball over, committing needless fouls, etc. However, in the same game, they could take a few shots that go in the basket. And all their previous infractions are seemingly forgotten. Points, of course, aren’t all that matter. You do need to stop the other team from scoring. Even on offense, you need to set up scoring opportunities (“sales support”). But let’s not forget to shoot. It’s how you score. It’s how you win.