1. You can’t explain your business in a few sentences. No matter what you do, you need to be able to explain it to anyone simply and quickly. Information should be understandable (don’t invent new words or expressions) and use comparable if needed.  
2. Target customer should be clear. Sounds obvious but I have seen too many companies struggling to give me a good answer about this one. If you don’t know who is your customer, how canyou expect to sell to them?
3. What is the problem you are solving? Is this something that is critical to your customers or just a nice to have? Needless to say that the more important it is, the more valuable it will be to solve.
4. How can your customers measure the success of your product? Ideally your solution needprovide tangible benefits to your customers. The softer the ROI, the harder the sale will be.
5. Is your only problem sales and marketing? It is never the case. If you keep changing your marketing strategy and sales team, there might be a problem someone else …
6. Your competitors don’t care about you. Maybe it’s because you are still under the radar but if this continues, it’s not a good thing. Either you hurt them or they see you as a disruptive threat.
7. Nobody else is remotely doing what you do. You are either very fortunate to have discovered a blue ocean or most likely that you about to hit a non market. This is very hard to measure even more when sometimes you canhead to early to market.
8. Nobody seems to get excited about what you do. If you are the only one that believes in it, there is obviously something wrong. It’s rarely the case that everybody is wrong and you are the only one right.

So how many fits your profile? The more you have the more you need to change quickly.

Build a credible model

While any revenue model is never ever accurate, it still needs to be credible. Potential investors and bankers need to feel that the scenarios being presented make sense; that the gymnastics used adds up to something that they will feel is remotely possible. Make sure also that you have a summary section that allows you to create multiple variations – optimistic, realistic, pessimist, etc.

Who is the buyer and how do they pay?

Take the time to well define who is the buyer – the person that ultimately will give you money. This is often not the same person as the user – I buy a bunch of things for my kids but I am clearly not the user of their kids game or toys. A common mistake is to create a model that does not line up with reality. Whatever the type of buyer you target, they have certain ways that they are willing to spend dollars. What is their usual spending limit? Will they pay using credit card or the customer needs to be invoiced.

Make sure you use acceptable adoption and churn numbers

If we always think of growth, we can’t forget that you will lose some users over time. You need to have adoption rates and churn variables built in the model. And please make these vary over the years – starting with smaller adoption and bigger churn and seeing both numbers improve over time. Try to find industry comparable so that you don’t use numbers that are downright insane.

What is your time to revenue?

You need to have assumption of the time between the product launch and actual revenue coming in. This can be as silly as the time it takes your supplier or customers to pay their invoices. I don’t know about you, but I rarely pay a bill immediately as I receive it. Of course, this is less of an issue if you planned for automatic billing and credit card payments (but make sure you planned for the spend of using such a system).

How much do you need to spend ahead of the curve?

With any growth or adoption curve, there is a cost to get to the right numbers. What is the cost of development and go-to-market spend needed to achieve a certain adoption rate. This is independent of revenue. Even free users cost something to get; make sure you adoption rate impacts some of the costs such as marketing spend and customer support/retention costs.

Be pessimist on revenue and optimist on spending

We usually over-estimate how much we will make revenue wise while we often lower our actual spending. Try to do the opposite, being high critical of potential revenue (and when it will come in) and be very generous on spending. With a bit of tweaking, this will give you a better and much more realistic model.

Test your model with someone in finance

Always make sure you get someone with an eye in finance. The smaller details can make a big difference. Investors look for specific metrics and rule of thumbs (spend in R&D vs. revenue, etc.) so be sure that you line up as close as you can.

Bottom line, we never spend too much time on our revenue or financial model, you will need at least two handful of iterations before it becomes very good.

Feedback is free

Even the simplest comments or feedback has value. Any objections or questions about your idea can results in finding new ways to address these issues. In addition, some of the feedback can actually make you idea even better. And the greatest thing of it all is this is all free. Think of your networks as a free consulting group that can all help you with many facets of your plan. Everybody loves to share his or her opinion. Of course, you still need to do all the heavy lifting once you got your feedback.

Validation drives towards your business case

Unless people just drink your kool-aid without providing real feedback, all the validation you will get from others will lead you towards a strong business case. If you talk to enough people, all aspect of your business idea will be covered: market problem, market size, target customers, product capabilities, go-to-market, revenue model and even high level financials.

Getting a clear message from validation

The more you pitch, the clearer your message will be. This is fundamentally important, as you want to begin pitching to potential investors your business idea.  Take the positive out of every pitch where you stumble or struggle to make your point – revisit how you presented and adjust your message for the next time around.

Don’t be stubborn

If you keep getting resistance when you present your business idea, make sure you learn from it. Sometimes good ideas are just not ready for market yet. If people don’t see the value or need in the market – don’t just keep going because you think you are right. In some cases, it’s not a bad thing to park an idea for a short while and focus on something else until the market is ready for your grand idea.

What I am talking about is not the elusive feature your engineering team forgot to build for the latest release. I am talking about your company’s true understanding of what is the right product you need to build in order to be successful. Here are a few simple rules that you should have in your checklist:

-       What is the market problem that you are solving?
Don’t focus on the solution before you have clearly identified a problem that your customers are willing to pay for a viable solution. If there is not enough pain for the problem you are solving, marketing won’t be able to bring in enough prospects to pay for the investment you’ve made.

-       Are people looking for your kind of solution?
While your product might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, if people are not looking for your solution, you won’t get your business to take off. Perhaps it’s because you have tried to invent a new product category or just because you’re 5 years ahead of the market – no matter what is the cause, make sure that there are plenty customers that are looking for your product out there.

-       Build the right product without any additional feature
Often referred as the Minimal Viable Product; spend your engineering dollars wisely on just features you know will have a significant impact on the buying decision of your customers. Any additional feature that is “fluffy” or not needed will be a waste of time – no matter how cool you think the feature is.

Bottom line – anytime you feel like blaming sales and marketing, please go back to your product manager and engineering team and make sure they did their homework – not just a nice gut feeling about things …

Clearly the company had been successful in attracting early adopters but failed to build what was needed in order to handle a critical mass of customers; simplifying the product, proper customer support and having the right kind of customer onboarding program. All of our customers felt that we were not listening to their needs, forcing them to pay for extra product development (change order as they used to call them), provided limited customer support – at least nothing pro-active in making sure that the customers were properly using the product.

Finally the company had developed a completely new process called “the seven pillars of product management”; sounding good on paper but had not the right level of maturity in order to be commercialized as the company had done so. As a result, the company had a bad record of customer attrition and unsatisfied users.

Enter a new CEO

I came on board on December 12, 2011. Given my past experience in managing complex product portfolios for companies such as Kaydara, Autodesk, and OZ Communications – I had my own ideas on what FeaturePlan should be doing as a product designed for product managers. We rapidly revisited the business strategy, direction, product strategy and what was needed to get the business on the right track.

We rapidly put in place regular product meetings and met frequently with our existing customers as well as talking to a lot of prospects and industry experts. We were beginning to make very good progress with new concepts such as Document Center and our plan to build relevant tools to help in key areas of the product management process (market sizing, competitive analysis, etc) – our customer and prospects were very excited about our new direction.

In addition, we were also moving away from the “seven pillars” and working with a larger set or processes, best practices from many consulting groups such as 280 Group and very interesting conversations large consulting organizations such as PWc. Within only a few months, we had more than 20 strategic and local partners that were beginning to help us with our business.

Sales & Marketing

Before I joined Ryma, the marketing messaging was confusing at best. Web site traffic was very low compared to our competitors; there was no sales funnel and even worse, not a well designed and managed sales process or lead generation program. Almost, everything had to be rebuilt. Within a few months, we had a fully functional lead generation, nurturing and sales process that was bringing a very good amount of opportunities in the sales funnel.

Sadly, without the new tools being developed (Document Center was only released in late April), the product still suffered many issues and was not helping us close the deals as quickly as we needed to. In addition, some of the deals with key accounts were taking much longer than anticipated to get closed. When days and weeks are key to your survival, this was not a good thing.

The funding that came too late

With revenues from sales not coming as quickly as needed and new deals talking longer to close, we had been talking to several investment groups in order to get some funding in order to prove that our newest business model, product strategy and the execution of it all was on the right path. Sadly enough, this came too late and our largest creditor forced us into receivership. The majority of the employees were terminated, including the entire executive team. Only a few people were kept in order to provide basic support as well as helping the creditor to find a suitable buyer for the assets. Now that the assets have been sold (I will let them make any announcements if they desire to do so), I am capable of commenting on what happened with Ryma – hopefully this gives everyone a better understanding of the situation.

The future

From the looks of it, I do not believe I will be personally involved with the new owner of the assets of Ryma. I am proud of what we were able to do within the last 6 months of the company and I am very proud of everyone that worked with me in trying to turn the company around. Close but no cigar as they say. I definitively believe that we had the right plan and I wonder if I will get another chance to build the kind of tools I want to build for product managers and business executives.  If anything happens, I am sure that the readers of my blogs will be the first ones to know…

The bottom line is that you need a clear vision for the product. Before you start investing all of your resources, it is imperative to put pen to paper and identify who your intended users are, what their needs are, and how your product will satisfy these needs. Most importantly, you need to ask what you want your product to represent and define the essence of what you will market. If this is not clear from the beginning, it’s likely that you will get bogged down in techno-babble specs and suffer from feature creep.

A Vision Needs to Start with a Direction

All too often, we associate a vision with something that will happen in the distant future. While somewhat true, a vision is really about capturing the true nature of the product you’re building and defining the direction on how to get there.

For example, our mission at Ryma is to be the leader in product management by developing tools that will enable our customers to develop better products. We want to touch the lives of every Product Manager out there. So what’s our product vision? We want to offer a solution that will not only be powerful but that is also simple to use and empowers each stakeholder in the product management process to be better at their job. We want to give them the tools that will make their lives easier and will allow them to focus on what’s important: making great products for their customers.

In order to achieve this product vision, we have set a clear direction for the product development team. We want each and every new feature of our product to make life easier for our customers, while giving them access to the power of our platform.  We will shortly announce new capabilities for FeaturePlan that will demonstrate this new focus on simplicity combined with power.

A Direction is a Path to Follow

When a company is building a new game changer, it’s important to stay focused on the intent and not to get lost on feature creep. Achieving a minimal viable product is very much about choosing the right features while making sure you still are on the right path for your product vision. Remember the first iPod? While it pales in comparison with today’s version, you can already understand the product vision and the path that Apple was about to embark on. Having the right product vision, and ultimately releasing a game changer, is very much about that. Again, taking Ryma as an example, our next release will be very much like the first iPod when it comes to a new component named Document Center that’s being added; but the direction will be both clear for our development and our customer and partners.

Clarity in a Product Vision Does Not Make it Easier for Competitors

Recently, many people have been left disappointed by Apple’s product releases. It’s not that they aren’t great or highly successful in the market, but rather that people are now envisioning product ideas ahead of the market and are assuming that Apple will be moving at the pace of their imagination. We often forget that the bad years for Apple were when people had no clue about what would be coming next in terms of their products. Today, we can all see their product vision and can easily guess some of the steps that are coming from them. But even so, it does not make it easier for competitors to beat Apple at that game. I am sure that there are a few manufacturers right now that are scrambling because of the recent release of the new iPad. Companies should not be afraid of having a clear product vision and direction. You should only worry if you can’t execute properly.

Bottom line, if you seek clarity with your product vision and direction, your business will only be better off – and if you execute well, you’ll leave your competitors in the dust.

If you are lucky enough, you end up getting sufficient customer feedback (or complaints) that leads to some level of feature ranking and planning, based on what the market seems to require. This of course has its level of hit and miss. While customers are great at identifying problems, they are not always capable of defining the right kind of solutions they need.  Someone needs to step in and truly identify the right product to build.

After a while, you begin to wonder if there is any kind of best practice that would get you to be a “real” product manager. There are several groups that are offering different levels of training or framework (AIPMM, Blackblot, Pragmatic Marketing and 280 Group just to name a few). This definitively brings standardization and a common language to the world of product development.

But there is one aspect that most product managers forget to aim for: to become the CEO of their product. In my case, I was fortunate enough to have run my own company for several years before taking on true product management roles. While I had the inconvenience (and hard time) of having to adjust to the reality of working for someone else, I had the unique benefit of thinking like a CEO.

Managing a product is far more than just supervising which features are put in it. There are many important considerations to take in account: how big is the market opportunity? What are the financial metrics that will define the success of a product? What is the business rationale in a build vs. buy scenario?  What is the impact on the company’s P&L?  What kind of product can your sales channel successfully sell?

There are a lot questions that need answers. The better you understand what it means to be a CEO, the more effective you will be in managing your product. Key differentiators include your ability to build the right kind of business case – which leads to obtaining approval of new product plans and ultimately receiving more resources and budget, which are needed to drive your product portfolio forward.

So how do you become the CEO of your product? First step is to want it – seek opportunities that will allow you to learn from your own CEO and others around you. Spend time asking about their job and what are the usual challenges they face. Not only you will better understand what it means to be a CEO, you will also be better equipped to sell your product pitches going forward.

Having spent the past 20 years managing, developing and marketing a number of different products, I have seen Product Managers face the challenge of inadequate resources, time and budget to do their job right. Managing a product is far more complex than just creating a simple list of features. Knowing what kind of product to develop and having the right time to market is not a trivial thing. For every story we hear about visionaries such as Henry Ford or Steve Jobs, it’s all about getting an intimate understanding of the customer needs and converting this knowledge into powerful products that will impact the market.

Whether you’re into classical music, marching bands or rock and roll – any great musical performance share a common thread of group alignment, collaboration and precise execution. Product Managers are very much like the conductor or leader of the Product Team. To deliver a great product, the Product Manager must stay on top of all incoming customer feedback and market information and convert this into insightful marketing and product requirements. They must then seek alignment and collaboration, ensuring that every stakeholder is executing a complex plan of action that will ultimately result in the release of a product that the customers will buy.

But unlike a rock band or a small orchestra, companies are often designed in a much more complex organization. People work in different spaces and locations, and can have agendas that are not always compatible with the Product Manager’s vision. On top of this, everyone involved suffers from data overload, which makes it very difficult to get all the stakeholders on the same page, using a common language and up-to-date set of information. Of course, with a lot of hard work, you can do a lot of bridge the gaps and making sure that everybody is in sync and moving in the same direction. But then again, Product Managers still need the time and bandwidth to think about the right kind of products they need to create.

Our vision at Ryma is to provide every Product Manager with a platform where they can maintain all the latest and relevant information, align all the stakeholders across the company, facilitate collaboration between teams, and help individuals execute to the best of their abilities. By automating or eliminating repetitive tasks, we help them focus on driving innovation. By facilitating collaboration and access to information, we improve the communication channels and overall efficiency. By assisting in the process of developing a product, we ultimately help Product Managers optimize the quality of execution – which is much needed to deliver better products to market in a shorter timeframe. We want to touch the lives of all Product Managers and give them the tools that will allow them to develop innovative and great products.

Michel Besner
President and CEO
Ryma Technology Solutions

This extended break led to an unplanned experiment, where I got to measure the stickiness of the content I had written over the years. Of course at first, traffic went down – but not by that much. As time went by, it seemed that I was keeping a steady amount of traffic with regular visits on many of my blog posts as you can see from the following chart. I don’t have any deep and profound analysis on the matter but I was definitively pleased to see that what I had written is somewhat withstanding the “test of time”.

At the end, I guess that the time off was worth it – I am re-energized and ready to talk again about business processes, topics around product management and marketing … thanks for everyone that have been bugging me to come back to writing on my blog and I am looking forward to your on-going feedback.

Rock and roll!

Michel

Steve is very much the primary influence in my interest in technology. From the first time I saw an Apple II, I have been mesmerized by his thinking, vision and determination. He’s the one that got me into computer programming (I remember bugging my parents for months until I got my own Apple II) and ultimately computer graphics. Back then, computers were an amazing source of innovation – you had no choice as you did not have many applications to play with – programming was the way to go. And this pushed me toward finishing my studies in Computer Engineering.

The Mac has influenced many people – this was not the one for me. The work that Steve did while at NeXT completely blew my mind and got me thinking about the aesthetics of software, usability and really thinking out of the box. It also was a great lesson on time to market – NeXT being way too many years ahead of its time.  Steve’s passion and desire to make a dent in the universe forced me to think about my own path and what I wanted to do. This burning passion got me to start a company with a few of my friends – Kaydara.

Very much like every entrepreneur, I took the long road of learning what it means to be a CEO. There is a fundamental difference between starting a company and running a successful business. Again, many of my life lessons on how to become a good CEO came from watching Steve as he came back to Apple. I don’t think I have missed a single of his keynote (in person or on the web). His approach on simplifying the message, focusing on what is key and how to be a leader all impacted my own style. At the same time, I learn the hard way that being somewhat of a tyrant was not a good thing (some of my first employees can attest to that). But over the years I have matured and mellowed – finding a style that I both like and people around me can relate to and appreciate. Finding your own leadership style is probably one of the hardest things to do, as there is no recipe or secret ingredient.

In the later years, Steve’s quest to simplify our digital lifestyle continued to influence me in different ways.  For one, my house is filled with Apple products: one Mac, 5 MacBook Pro, at least 5 iPods, one iPhone, an iPad and a couple of Apple TVs. Some people could call me a Apple freak … Also I once saw a quote from Steve saying that “Software is the user experience” – something I deeply believe in and have made me think of usability in every product I have been involved with – both from a product management point of view but also from a marketing angle.

I will always remember what I felt when I first heard about Steve’s passing. I often get up from the couch and go check my computer to see if there is any emails or news that is worth reading – my home page when I start Safari is the default startpage on the Apple site. It took me a few minutes to really grasp the simple image of Steve with a start and end date. I was in shock.

For days following the news, I did like many people did – revisit Steve’s legacy and re-read many of his famous quotes, including his beautiful commencement speech at Stanford. There is a lot of great content in there but the one that is still resonating in my head is: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

The sense of urgency is a great tool to help you make decision about life – both personally and professionally. Who knows how long you will live and stay in good health? If you have a burning desire to achieve things in life, don’t waste your time, focus on what is really important and let you passion lead the way.

Steve, thank you for everything you brought in my life – you have given me so many life lessons, making me a better person every day.