Transform your product team from delivery centric approach to revenue centric
Today, I want to write about something controversial.
B2B SAAS Product management teams often focus on the wrong things: Delivery, Agile, Sprint Planning, Burndown Charts. These are all vital aspects of managing a team, but the truth is, they often distract from what truly matters—growing the business.
Delivery is important, but it shouldn’t be your north star. Far too many product teams equate shipping on time with success. However, a well-timed release of a product that doesn’t contribute to business growth is, in fact, a failure.
Shifting to a Customer- and Revenue-Centric Approach
In my work with product managers, I’ve helped shift the focus away from the obsession with delivery metrics to a more customer- and revenue-centric approach. When teams understand that their primary role is not just to deliver products but to drive business growth, everything changes.
Let me be blunt: if you believe your job as a product manager is to gather and document requirements, then hand them off to engineers to build, you’re not a product manager—you are at best a business analyst. A product manager’s true job is far more strategic. It’s about setting a vision that aligns with business growth and ensuring that the right product is built to ensure that growth.
There’s a growing realization in the industry that the primary responsibility of product teams is to grow the business. And the product is the medium through which that growth happens.
But Isn’t Growth the Job of Sales and Marketing?
It’s a fair question. Sales and marketing teams are often viewed as the drivers of growth. They handle demand generation, customer acquisition, and revenue generation, so isn’t it their job to grow the business?
Yes and No.
Sales and marketing are responsible for the mechanics of selling, but product teams define the value that is being sold. Consider these key questions:
- What are sales and marketing selling?
- What value proposition are they communicating to customers?
- Who are they targeting in the market?
- How do they differentiate your product from competitors?
This is where product management plays a crucial role. If the product does not offer compelling value, sales and marketing can only do so much. No amount of clever messaging or aggressive selling will make up for a product that doesn’t solve real problems in a differentiated way.
The Product Manager’s Core Mission: Growth
Let me be direct: a product manager’s job is to grow the business.
Some might argue that a product manager’s main responsibility is to build a product that delivers value to customers. And they’re right, in a sense. If your product doesn’t provide value, why are you in business at all?
But here’s the nuance: if your goal is to provide value, your business might grow as a byproduct. If your goal is to grow the business, providing value becomes non-negotiable. You have NO choice but to deliver products that customers can’t live without.
This distinction matters because it changes the way you think about product development. Instead of focusing narrowly on delivering features and functionality, product teams need to think about how those features contribute to the bigger picture—business growth.
What Your Product Team’s Mission Should Be
To get your product team focused on growth, their mission should be centered on these key principles:
1. Build products that provide 10x value to customers.Your product should solve problems so well that customers can’t imagine living without it. It shouldn’t just be a nice-to-have; it should be indispensable.
2. Create a product that is clearly superior to alternatives.Your product must be better than the competition in meaningful ways. Whether it’s through superior features, better user experience, or a more compelling price point, you need to provide a clear advantage that drives customers to choose you.
3. Ensure that your product grows revenue and the business.Every product decision should be made with growth in mind.
- Will this feature help retain customers?
- Will it drive new sales?
- Will it open up a new market segment?
If you can’t draw a line from your product decisions to business growth, you’re focusing on the wrong things.
Growth Takes Many Forms
Growing the business through product management isn’t just about acquiring new customers. Growth comes in various forms, and product teams need to be thinking about all of them. You can read more about the 6 levers of growth in my article here.
Why Your Company May Be Struggling to Grow
If your product team isn’t focused on business growth, it’s no surprise that your company may be struggling to understand why growth isn’t happening. This is a common problem in many B2B SaaS companies. They focus on process efficiency, Agile frameworks, and delivery speed without considering whether their product is actually driving growth.
I’ve seen this happen time and again. Teams hit their delivery targets but miss their growth targets. And the reason is simple: they weren’t focused on growth in the first place.
The Path Forward
So, how do you shift your product team’s focus? Start by realigning the product teams mission. Make it clear that their job is not just to deliver a product but to deliver growth. Encourage them to think critically about how every product decision impacts the business’s top and bottom line.
In my experience, when product teams start focusing on growth, everything changes. They stop measuring success by the number of features delivered or the speed of their sprints and start measuring success by the impact their product has on the business.
That’s when true growth happens.
If your product team isn’t aligned with this mission yet, it’s time to rethink your approach. Growth is too important to be left solely to sales and marketing. It’s time for product managers to step up and take ownership of growing the business.
