In B2B, especially enterprise, PMs must cater to these two groups of people that are very different. Customers (or buyers) often don't use the SW they buy but users can live in it daily.
Customers will have very different needs and requirements than users. Users might need efficiency to do their job well, customers might need to see ROI of buying the SW.
One possible framing of customer problems is: – As a customer of (product)... – we cannot (achieve a goal, e.g. grow as we'd like)... – because we can't ...
A B2B SaaS can have two very different strategies for selling: 1) Top down – winning "customers" (or "buyers") first 2) Bottom up – winning users first
This can dictate the focus target group for PMs work. In top down, customer problems are PMs "currency" – it's only by solving them that the product can unlock its value.
It's also often said in enterprise companies that user problems are owned by user experience team while customer problems are owned by product management.
PMs must also study problems across customers: (customer problem) x (n° of customers) = (market problem)
It's in the market problems that the biggest opportunities lie for B2B.
Tags: product management B2B SaaS
ID: 2021-0420-0825
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