In last week’s article, we started developing your product strategy by investigating your markets, which is part of “product planning” stage. To refresh your memory, I will include a brief description of the three stages and what they entail: 1. Product Planning (markets **done, accounts, and buyers) 2. Product Principles (buyer behavior, customer experience, and product design) 3. Go to Market (product roadmap, product launch, sales & marketing message, pricing and packaging

1. Product strategy stage 1, product planning (accounts)
In last week’s article, we started developing your product strategy by investigating your markets,
which is part of “product planning” stage. To refresh your memory, I will include a brief description
of the three stages and what they entail:
1. Product Planning (markets **done, accounts, and buyers)
2. Product Principles (buyer behavior, customer experience, and product design)
3. Go to Market (product roadmap, product launch, sales & marketing message, pricing and
packaging
Remember, we are doing the product strategy to maximize your revenue during the coming fiscal
year. Not all accounts are created equally. Some will spend little, others spend a lot. Some will spend
this year, others will spend next year. Some will respond well to your value proposition while others
will respond well to your competitor’s value proposition. You need to have an establish ranking of
your accounts (best to worst). If you cannot rank accounts best to worst on revenue potential and
propensity to buy, you have a problem finishing off this part of your product strategy.
A vital step in devising sales and marketing plans is to build your “Ideal Customer profile, ICP”. An
ICP is a clear visualization of those who buys your products. To know your ICP you need to answer
some of the following questions. Where do you get ICP answers from? The Win/Loss reports, so if
you are not doing a win/loss action as part of your sales process, it is time to start doing so.
1. What is your ideal customer profile (i.e., what defines your ideal prospect/customer)?
a. Who buys my products & services?
b. Why do they buy my products?
c. Where do they get their information from?
d. How do they buy our products (bundled, RFP, direct orders, etc..
2. How likely is each prospect/customer to buy from you?
3. How does each prospect/customer score relative to your ideal customer profile?
4. What is the potential spending for each prospect/ customer?
5. Do you know your share of wallet inside each account?
6. What is the intensity of your revenue concentration (i.e., does 80% of your revenue come
from 20% of your accounts)?
7. Do you have your best sales resources covering the accounts with the most potential?
8. Does each of your high potential accounts understand your full product portfolio and
associated value propositions?
Next week, we will do the “buyers” analysis which is the third step in the product planning stage of
the product strategy exercise.
Ashraf Osman, August 2017