The Ultimate Product Strategy to Deliver Billions with Sara Hicks, Intuit Mailchimp

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H A C-K.com strategy connects the vision to the tactics. It's your glue that connects the dream with the day to day.

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I'm Sarah Hicks, Chief Product Officer of mailchimp. I'm here today to talk about creating product strategies that will help you to listen to your customers and deliver billions of revenue to your business. So I'm supposed to do this in 20 minutes, which is a tall order, so let's jump in. So a little bit about my background. I started my career as a senior community coordinator at GeoCities kind of Web 1.0. I was the first vice president of product at Etsy and I am now the Chief Product Officer at mailchimp. So I like, I love designing, building and shipping software and I even more so now love the process and the code of bringing people together to do their best work. So as you heard in the intro, I'm the co founder and former CEO of Reaction Commerce. Mailchimp acquired Reaction in April of 2020. I've got experience creating product strategies from scratch. So zero to one, brand new startups. I've also got experience creating product strategies at companies that have achieved product market fit but are looking to scale. And I've also got experience creating product strategies at Mailchimp, where we've got over 14 million customers around the world and are doing over billions of dollars in revenue. So as I said, today's talk I'm gonna talk about how I've created product strategies. How you can listen to your customers, listen to your market, listen to your team is really important and then in turn deliver revenue for your business. So this is pretty simple first lesson. So one of my favorite questions that I like to ask my product teams is, hey, what are you working on? Pretty simple, right? You would think it's a pretty simple question. So. But invariably I get one of three answers. So the first one is I get a very long list of features and tactics. It's like a mile long and there's a backlog that's even longer. It's really overwhelming. And then the second answer I get is some aspirational outcome. It's like we're democratizing publishing or something, like really inspirational, but it's not very tangible. And then the third answer I sometimes get, this one's a little bit more rare, but it does happen is I have no idea. People just shrug their shoulders and like, I don't know. And in that case it's a little troubling because that's a sign of they have no idea why they're working on something or why it was prioritized. It's usually a symptom and that I found of like a command and control culture, a very tops down culture. So each of these answers is a little bit troubling, but they're also very telling. It's clear that these product teams are lacking a product strategy that gives them clarity and context. So strategy connects the vision to the tactics. It's your glue that connects the dream with the day to day. So from your product strategy, you're going to get your product roadmap. I've seen too often where teams create a list of features. They're going to deliver them by month and then by quarter and they're like, that's our product strategy. And I'm like, no, that's your product roadmap. What's your product strategy? So you need to develop a vision and a strategy before you jump into defining your roadmap and your tactics. I've made the mistake people, I've done it reverse, it doesn't work. So if you're stuck in feature land with a list a mile long, you can have a product strategy that's going to help the team bring it all together. Conversely, if you've got a team that's way out in vision land, in this aspirational land, they're going to build something for the moon. A strategy is going to help timing make it more tangible. And if you really have no idea what's going on, again, a product strategy is going to bring clarity and context. So let's take a moment to Do a click glossary. Pretty simple stuff here. Your vision is your why. It's your dream, it's your North Star. It's why you exist. So at mailchimp, we exist to empower the underdog. I love that motto. I have a David versus Goliath chip on my shoulder. I always want the underdog to win. So once you've achieved product market fit and scale, it should very rarely change. So your strategy is your how your strategy probably should and will evolve, maybe every year it can evolve more frequently than that. But if it's changing every six months, you should probably go back to step one. And then your tactics are the what and the when that's going to get to your roadmap. These change often. They can change as often as two weeks, six weeks, depending on your cycles of your development. So we're going to spend a little bit of time on this lesson. So that's just your warning. This is where the real work needs to happen. So this will take some time. It's often not that easy. And I'll also state that there's no prescribed framework for this step. It depends on the stage of your company, where you are in the evolution of your company, where you are in your growth. So all those things need to be taken into context. So at mailchimp, we believe in what we call customer driven innovation. So this is essentially us answering three different things. So one is what problems do my customers have? Two is that we or our partners can solve well, and then three, that creates a durable competitive advantage. So if you think about those three questions, it's at the center of those. If that's a Venn diagram, think of them as circles. At the center of those answers is what we think of as customer driven innovation. So the first part of this process is to start with some research. At the end of this phase, you should be able to say with sufficient detail who your customers are and what problems do they have. So some questions why do or don't your customers use your product today? Where are your customers struggling using your product? Or if you don't have a product yet, where are they struggling? In general, do different customers have different needs? So if you have like a voice of customer program, if you're at that stage, you can consult with that team. If you have sales partnerships, support people who interact regularly with your prospects or with your customers, talk with that team research. At an early stage, startup is obviously going to look a lot different than it does at a company like mailchimp. So when I was at ETSY again, I was pretty early there. I used to take my laptop across the street to the coffee shop. I would ask people in line if I could buy their coffee for them in exchange for some feedback. It doesn't have to be complicated. It really can be that simple, you taking a laptop and going and talking to some customers. So the next part is analysis. Here we're looking to answer some of the following questions. Again, your questions might not be this similar. Which audience is most valuable? Who are you solving for? Which audience is growing the fastest? And where are the biggest drop offs here? It does help to have some tools to understand your data, your analytics. But again, doesn't have to be complicated, doesn't have to be expensive. There are a lot of great tools out there to help you with this research. And finally, it's super, super important to understand the market opportunity. Are behaviors and interests changing? So are certain industries adopting certain online services differently than others? If so, how? What's the competition doing? So a little note here is like, don't get too stuck on trying to understand everything your competitors are doing. I've been there, I've done that. It's a waste of time. Just have a pulse on their progress. Like just have a general sense of where they're going. And lastly, try to answer, how's the economy? What are the macro trends happening in the world? Supply chain issues, pandemic? All those things bring into context as you're developing your product strategy. Okay, so this is probably going to sound a little bit silly considering I just told you to do a bunch of research. But the reality is that your research phase that I was just talking about can take. It takes time, right? But it can take a couple weeks. I've seen it take months and continue on for years. The important part is to just do it thoroughly. But the outcome of that research phase needs to be simple. It needs to be super, super concise. It needs to be very explicit. And so let's dig into what that looks like. So your research phase should end up, if you do it well, this part should look easy. It's three to five input goals at max. Each goal is like a simple headline. Don't use any buzzwords, don't use any jargon. Make it so that anyone can understand what you're talking about. So don't use AI, don't use it. Make it really simple. So each goal then will have a couple of sentences that connect the goal to the customer benefit. That's really key. You want your goals to connect to your customer benefit. Again, A couple bullet points, couple sentences, and then each goal should outline what is the customer secret sauce, what's the durable competitive advantage? How are you going to win? So from these three to five goals, you can have then a handful of initiatives that roll up into those goals. So it's quite simple. All of your product development teams should be aligned to the initiatives, which are then aligned to your input goals. So at Mailchimp, we have about 16 initiative teams and they all roll up to we have five input goals. So you may have only one or two initiative teams. That's perfectly okay. It's just to create this structure so that you don't get the answer. I don't know what I'm working on. People will have some grounding and some context. So this is where it starts to get a little interesting. If you're doing things right, your product strategy will make your teammates feel a little bit uncomfortable. So I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think this is partly psychological. So a product strategy can feel a little bit vague. It's a little bit abstract, and most people don't really operate too well with ambiguity. A product strategy will also take time to deliver, and we are a lot of us a little nervous with things taking time, especially if you're a type A sort. And then a product strategy will also create some pressure for teams to deliver, especially if they have to maintain existing features. So you just got to have understanding that this is going to be how your teams are feeling, but you don't want them to feel too uncomfortable. Your teammates should be feeling super excited, but they may be feeling like it's hard to accomplish. This is where it's really important to make sure that your strategy is rooted in feasibility and even in some empathy. So if you need to run some experiments, if you need to do some rapid discovery, if you need to do some discovery spikes to better understand if your strategy is feasible, do this and more importantly, share that you're doing it. Share the results. A good strategy is rooted in analysis, but a great strategy is rooted in transparency. So it's also important to remember that you can't shift everything and everyone overnight. So you probably have teams that are working on your existing products. You need to balance maintenance with innovation. There's no formula here. You just need to have empathy for how your teams are delivering against your current products. So I can probably spend my whole talk talking about this one lesson alone, but I won't. The most important thing is to not surprise your teams with a new strategy. If you've surprised your team, you probably want to step back and kind of restart the process. Engage them early and often. Don't throw out a rogue strategy. Have them help get their feedback. And don't skimp here, don't like, like cut corners here. It may sound like this is exhausting. You're like, sarah, come on, I can't do all this. But it can be done very efficiently, very timely. You just have to have enough planning, communication and facilitation. So strategies created in a vacuum rarely succeed. I think I'll repeat that one again. Strategies that are created in a vacuum rarely succeed. And I've made the mistake. So I kind of know that. So my approach here to avoid this is to start local, then go global and then repeat. So by that I mean I start with the product teams and the folks who are closest to the code base, closest to the pixels. I start the process there. I talk with my cross functional peers, the folks I work with most closely day in and day out. Product managers, product designers, engineers, content teams, analysts, you name it. And if you manage a team, start there and then expand out to your manager's cross functional team. Expand out to the broader team, to sales, finance, legal, and expand out even if you have investors. The important part is to use different approaches for different altitudes. Which leads me to my next lesson. So different approaches for different altitudes. Document your strategy. That's pretty straightforward, right? So people can refer to it on their own time. Before setting up any meetings with any altitude, send out your pre reads at least 48 business hours in advance. So your meeting with leadership and with your investors should obviously look a little bit different than your meeting with your core teams. Ideally, your product strategy has a document and a corresponding deck. So at mailchimp, we've got a six page document that describes our product strategy. It has all the analysis, it has all the information, it often has pictures, it has a prototype. We like to say that a prototype is worth a thousand meetings. So if you have the time, do a prototype. Visual really helps. It has all the data from our experiments, from our content, conversations with customers, and then the deck has everything that led us to that strategy as well. Each of the three to five areas, those input goals have one slide with all the key information on it. People print those out, they have them on their desks, they take them with them. You have a product strategy, one liner, even repeat it all the time, which is a lead into my next lesson. Be a broken record. So one of my mentors once told me, if I wasn't repeating My if I wasn't tired of repeating my product strategy, I wasn't doing it enough. So every single meeting, every single conversation is an opportunity to repeat your goals, your product strategy, and your durable competitive advantage. Put it in an email tagline. Put it, like, everywhere you possibly can, every single meeting. Heck, you can even send out swag. You can have an acronym or a motto. So now you've got a good product strategy that takes into account your customer needs. It takes into account data, research, analytics. You've done all the work, which is awesome. So now the task is to continually refine and focus and listen. So now you're on the wheel, right? So you want to create a learning culture by doing the following things regularly, repetitively. So you want to develop a cadence of monthly, quarterly, annually reviews. You want to conduct ongoing research and analysis. Refine the questions that you asked in the earlier part, like, refine your data collection. You're now learning. Get super, super curious. Experiment. Always talk with your customers, and then develop a way to cascade all of this information that you're learning back to your teams. And then rinse and repeat. So as your product and your business scales, as your revenue scales, you'll need to smartly scale your product teams, your engineering teams, your design teams, as you grow. Okay, have some fun. Last, but certainly not least, it's got to have fun. We get to design, build, and ship software for millions of people. It's one of the most delightfully fun jobs, I think, in the world. And so, with the proper sequencing, with the proper research and preparation, you'll all be on your way to creating a product strategy that will delight your customers and deliver billions of revenue to your companies. Of course, you might not get to billions overnight, but I guarantee if you're starting to follow some of these steps, you'll be on a great path to win. So here are the takeaways. You can reach me anytime. I'm on Twitteraraluhix. There's my website. You can get my contact information@saraluhis.com I'm on LinkedIn. My most important piece of advice is don't do it alone. So find someone who's been at a scale slightly ahead of you. Find a coach, find a mentor. Reach out to me. It's a really hard path, especially as product leaders. So don't go it alone. That's my most important advice. So thank you so much.

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