Product Path
How Product Teams Help Sell Data
Focus on the land and expand model to accelerate growth
Data as a Service Differentiators:
- You can’t set it and forget it
- Excellent service means holding hands
- Land and Expand helps customers and your sales team
- Data is everywhere, value needs to be unlocked.
What I Know
I’ve worked for multiple Data as a Service (DaaS) businesses as a product manager and grown data product lines to multi-million dollar successes. How did I do it? Well I wrote a whole article on what I consider critical product management skills so I won’t cover it all here — but check it out:
A product manager can make all the difference when building a DaaS business because in order to deliver amazing service in DaaS you have to be willing to solve problems. A great product manager in DaaS has a seek and destroy mindset.
Stay with me, I’ll elaborate.
How did we get here?
The necessity of immediate access to products and services has blossomed out of our desire for instant results. The ability to achieve such timely delivery of services continues to be fueled by the advancement of technology — Moore’s law at work.
In 1965, Gordon Moore made a prediction that would set the pace for our modern digital revolution. From careful observation of an emerging trend, Moore extrapolated that computing would dramatically increase in power, and decrease in relative cost, at an exponential pace…https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/moores-law-technology.html
Such advancements have taken the world from the days of dial-up to today’s always-on high-speed internet of things(IoT) world. This connectivity has facilitated the movement from on-premise technology generalist solution providers to cloud-based solutions delivered by organizations with narrow and differentiated expertise. The Software as a service(SaaS) framework with a recurring revenue model is now the gold standard of success — and valuation.
It’s no surprise that as a service delivery now supports more than software — DaaS offerings are flourishing. Data has quickly become one of the most valuable assets and the desired resource for organizations looking to provide differentiated products and services.
1. You can’t set it and forget it
There is a place for the “set it and forget” model, even in the DaaS space BUT there is also something to be said about ensuring your organization continues to provide a quality service. I’ve seen this accomplished in a few ways — let the data provide the value, let your team do the work for the client, and of course some combination of the two. If you’re a product manager, ensuring success is literally your job!
Data as a Service
A lot can be said about DaaS businesses and how they are different from SaaS businesses — according to Auren Hoffman:
“In the end,great data companies look like the ugly child of a SaaS company (like Salesforce) and a compute service (like AWS).”
Auren has produced two pieces (DaaS Bible & DaaS Bible 2.0) that are must-reads for anyone working in or looking to join a data business.
Everyone wants data, but can they use it? The data landscape is disjointed and the level of sophistication of organizations utilizing data is still not mature. In my experience, the excitement of a new dataset can overwhelm a new client and lead to their premature signature of a contract because they think they know how to extract value. Sounds great, right? Who doesn’t want to sell a product where the risk of not having it is a greater cost than actually buying it? Perfect until renewal.
With DaaS, there really is nothing to be seen until the client puts the data to work. In most cases, the deliverable is some sort of large data file delivered on a regular cadence — and that’s it. At the bare minimum to utilize a data offering teams need to be capable of handling an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) process to feed it into their environment. At that point, the possibilities become limitless and the sophistication and capabilities of the client really start to make a difference — that is unless your team is providing the details to get them off the ground.
2. Excellent service means holding hands
Providing a product as a service can quickly result in toeing the line between a professional services organization or unhappy customers. Particularly in data where if you don’t spell out how your clients may never extract the real value.
To accomplish delivering a successful data product without becoming an embedded resource for the client you have to build a proper arsenal of resources — white papers, case studies, implementation documentation, FAQs, etc. You’ll never be able to anticipate every implementation obstacle so that’s when it’s important to remember you are providing a service and offer up your time — product manager, sales engineer, customer support et al.
This can be difficult for any organization to figure out but especially for small startups looking to achieve maximum growth with a limited team. It becomes even more important for all members of the organization to understand your dataset and be capable of articulating its value proposition. Put on the white glove, hold your customer’s hands, and you’ll certainly see greater success.
3. Land and Expand helps customers and your sales team
There has long been this driving force toward businesses operating with a self-serve model. For DaaS, the divide between self-serve and full service will continue to become more visible at least until the sophistication and capabilities of data teams ramp up. Until we get to that point, providing the edge — the how — can be the differentiator needed to land that new client and continue to expand your partnership. The Land and Expand model is a staple of a successful sales plan but with products delivered as a service it becomes even more feasible as the importance of not just selling a product but building a partnership with your customers makes all the difference.
A key here for my own success has been a “sales engineering mindset”. Many smaller organizations haven’t reached the point at which sales engineering is established and the product team becomes the de-facto owner of those responsibilities. This is great for learning your product and your customer personas, not to mention working hand in hand with your sales organization helps build collaboration between teams. This won’t be sustainable forever, trust me you’ll want a dedicated sales engineer but in the meantime reap the rewards of customer face time.
The road ahead
4. Data is everywhere, value needs to be unlocked.
Data is everywhere. Look around, you just processed an immense amount of data. Understanding, expertise, and necessity of data will continue to grow stronger as teams move from striving for data-informed decisions to requiring them (I talk about How I let Data Influence Choices Here). The key to getting there is wrangling the data so that value can be unlocked.
About Me
I work solving problems, driving operational excellence, and launching products. Along with being a DaaS focused Product Manager, I consult for organizations focused on maximizing value through product-focused growth and data value. Reach out to continue the conversation or work together.
