Before you launch into a full Go-to-Market (GTM) process, you must decide whether or not a product or feature release will make it into the product roadmap. Developing a solid roadmap is conceivably one of the more difficult things a business will do, and this post attempts to ask the questions needed before moving forward.
Businesses often struggle with creating solid long term product roadmaps because they lack focus (and often vision too) and lack the soul searching ability to ask the right questions.
The most common challenge are reactive sales-driven orgs that push their product and R&D teams to go straight into development all because a single customer had a request and they jumped believing it would close that business. How many times have you seen businesses that realized that they have cobbled together so many custom solutions over time that they then have to lose a year or so working to streamline all the custom asks into GA and lose out on innovating on anything new with long term viability?
To avoid this, know that most ideas do not deserve to go to market. Have a “checklist” of questions to ask can help prevent any non-profitable rabbit holes from occurring (although, I admittedly know that this won’t 100% stop them). This process is generally work that a Product Manager does, but a good PM will leverage support from Product Marketing (opportunity research), R&D (development criteria), and occasionally finance (commercialization & revenue forecasting).
Here’s a base template of questions you should be asking before kicking off any GTM processes:
| Category | Questions to ask |
| Market | What problems are we solving? What do our customers need? How does our competitive set solve these problems? Is this a solution we need to solve? How valuable is solving the problem? Are we solving it uniquely? |
| Focus | How does this fit into our existing strategy (especially focus on if it supports your company’s vision and mission)? Does this change our strategy? |
| Business | Should we build, buy, or partner to provide this solution? How does this solution contribute to our business objectives? What is the timeframe for this launch and do we have the resources to launch? How will we price (revenue opportunity)? Will this cannibalize any existing revenue or customers? What metrics will we track to evaluate success? |
| Planning | What product or feature is needed to provide this solution? Begin implementing the product brief – (note: not all product briefs end up in a GTM) Does it require and alpha or beta launch (if so, do you have the customers or prospects who would want to participate)? |
| Programs | How will we launch and market this product or feature? How does this fit within existing marketing activations? Does this conflict with any other activations? |
| Readiness | How will we prepare our teams to sell and support this product or feature? How will we communicate and train our clients and partners? |
| Support | How will this new product or feature be supported? |
Ideally you can answer all of these questions clearly and concisely and move on. If not, then it’ll be time to consider if you want to focus your resources chasing non-valuable releases (and, of course, no one wants that).
Header Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash