How to influence using Product Intuition?

If you're reading this, you might be thinking, "What the heck is product intuition? Why do you have more say about the product than other folks in the company?" Well, I'm gonna share my experience and some tips from my learning as a head of PLG growth.

Understanding Product Intuition

Product intuition is the ability to make informed decisions about product development and strategy based on a deep understanding of user behavior, market trends, and customer needs. It's not about having more say than others in the company, but rather about leveraging insights to guide product decisions effectively.

Launching a PLG Motion: Lessons Learned

So, when we launched our PLG motion in December 2022, we had quite a mix of people involved. There was the head of design working on improving the experience, an engineer, a product marketer, and some sales folks on the PLG team. We had to juggle different approaches, but our main focus was just to launch it and get it out there in the world to see what happens.

I would often share this quote by Reid Hoffman, “if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

Of course, the engineering and design teams wanted to make sure the product was polished and made sense, based on our current mid-market, sales-led experience. Meanwhile, the sales people were like, "Okay, what does this product-led experience mean? What's our role if it's not a sales-led motion?"

Takeaway 

• Balancing team perspectives: We had to juggle input from design, engineering, product marketing, and sales teams.

• Overcoming perfectionism: There was a desire to polish the product before launch, but we decided to prioritize getting it out into the world.

• Defining roles: Sales teams were uncertain about their place in a product-led motion.

The Importance of Data and Observation

A large part of product intuition is making sure we capture data from observing our customers and understanding their behavior in the market segment we're going after. From a high level, you might think, "Oh, let's look at the data, let's look at how people click on the product." But the reality is, if you're just starting out, most people don't know how to use your product. You just get a bunch of rage clicks and inactive screen recordings.

The users don't understand the information hierarchy, the user experience, or how to make progress. It’s important to make sure your "aha" moment is reached by the majority of the customers you engage with.

Takeaway

• Observing customer behavior: Capturing data and understanding how users interact with your product in your target market segment.

• Recognizing limitations: Accepting that most new users won't immediately understand how to use your product because you are still iterating on how to guide them.

• Identifying the "aha" moment: Ensuring that the majority of customers reach their unique moment of realization so they can understand your product's value.

Implementing Superhuman Onboarding

We decided to launch superhuman onboarding. There was a lot of pushback on this. People were saying, "Why are we using sales? Why are we building a sales-assisted motion? This feels like more time, more calls. And we're doing this with free customers. This just doesn't make sense."

I was able to explain that it's a process of learning. We just gotta get the product out there. We just don't know. And with the backing of the VP of product and the CEO, we were able to move forward with superhuman onboarding calls.

In these onboarding calls, we're seeing how users are reacting to the product and observing their behavior. We don't have enough data yet because we just started. So data isn't really a concept we can rely on. We just need to observe and use our gut intuition.

Observing how users are interacting with the product, the questions they have, the objections they have – it definitely grounds you as a product team. It grounded us in all facets, whether you're a designer, engineer, salesperson, or in marketing. We just don't know in the very beginning, and that can make the whole team lose confidence. But we need to recognize that and not have our egos set in place, thinking, "Oh, we launch it, they will come."

Takeaway

• Overcoming resistance: There was pushback about using a sales-assisted motion for free customers.

• Securing support: With backing from the VP of Product and CEO, we moved forward with onboarding calls.

• Grounding the team: Direct user interaction helps all team members understand real user challenges.

• Humbling the team: Exposing engineers, designers, and salespeople to user feedback can be eye-opening.

Iterating Based on User Feedback

Is it obvious? Does it make sense? From our learnings, it was not obvious to our users. It was not dummy-proof. It wasn't very clear why you need to click certain features. The verbiage of compliance, the words we use for compliance, also doesn't make sense for someone new to the topic. The information hierarchy is not very crystal clear on what you need to do.

Customers often ask, "What do I do next? What does this mean? What do I click now? How do I know it works?" And there's just a flood of all these types of questions.

Takeaway 

• Identifying unclear elements: We discovered that our product wasn't as intuitive as we thought.

• Addressing common questions: Users often asked about next steps, feature purposes, and how to verify functionality.

• Refining messaging: We realized our positioning and compliance-related language needed be "dumb down"

Influencing Your Team using Product Intuition

To influence the team, I make sure that I have those customers recordings ask product questions and raising objections. Part of it is humbling for our team because not everyone is customer-facing. 

But when our engineering team, our design team, and our sales team hop on these calls, they can see, "Wow, our product is not up to par," or "Our messaging and our positioning is not ready" It was a realization, we needed to give our users more guidance.

To effectively influence your team using product intuition:

1. Share user experiences: Ensure team members hear customer questions and objections directly.

2. Use evidence: Leverage recorded onboarding calls to demonstrate areas for improvement.

3. Prepare answers: Develop responses to common objections and questions.

4. Simplify the product: Use learnings to streamline the user experience.

5. Own the roadmap: Direct your team's efforts based on user insights.

And that's where product intuition comes in. It's about taking signals that we have – first, I was able to generate them – and then I influenced my internal team. After that, I used those signals and learnings to give my team direction.

That direction means for me to having answers prepared for some of those objections, using those recorded onboarding calls as evidence to work with the designer to simplify the product experience. Now I am using those insights, I am directing, and I am owning the roadmap. I directing the traffic for my team to make our product better and better for our users.

That's what product intuition means to me – it's about observing, learning, and using those insights to guide your product development and your team.

Read more:

• The Real Journey to Product-Led Growth: Reflections and Lessons Learned from the Trenches

• A Year in Life as Head of PLG

• Your Onboarding Sucks

• How to communicate product-led growth Roadmap to Stakeholders

• How to use customer feedback in your PLG product roadmap?

I write daily*** about my learning on launching and leading PLG. Feel free to subscribe.

I am Gary Yau Chan. 3x Head of Growth. Product Growth specialist. 26x hackathon winner. I write about #PLG and #BuildInPublic. Please follow me on LinkedIn, or read about what you can hire me for on my Notion page.