 Hey, I'm Trishan, founder and CEO of Vederotile and today we are going to talk about product discovery So before going to product discovery would love to talk why it matters so You know, there's a I have talked to almost Thousand plus product leaders in the last two years and One of the study I found actually it was I think by Pindu that Around 60% of all the product which we are building is never used imagine 60% of all the effort You me or any product person is making is wasted and it's billions of dollars wasted because People are building products and they're not getting used Why is that happening? Why are we wasting the smartest minds on earth? about building something no one cares about and Trust me in the rest 40% most of them Don't miss Achieve the target they fit out for they don't create a business impact. So Before we go into product discovery, I would like to introduce myself. I'm Trishan founder and CEO of Vederotile I have been a product manager all my career like one of those they agreed where I started my career back in 2014-15 years and Directly out of college became a product manager and have been building products since then I have worked in four Unicorn four billion dollar plus companies two of them have done IPU. I have three case studies Done on my work one by Howard Google and one another company. I have Been featured in four mind the product product account product collective The products folks and couple of other communities. I've been speaker in Vietnam Dubai Singapore USA India couple of other places and have around 30 plus webinars and podcast on internet I have mentored a lot of pms via pms school product school Plateau edb list and LinkedIn so Yeah, I hope What I'm saying make sense With almost around a decade years decade of experience. So let's get deeper into it so What is the problem? Like why are we even talking about product discovery? The first thing is Product teams are building products that don't solve the real problem like we get a sales call We get a customer support ticket. We have a backlog and we pick out of that and start building these things Don't move the needed Another thing is a lot of things are shipped based on biases You might have heard about the term hippo hippo is the highest paid person in the organization or it could be the loudest Voice from your team engineering team sales support marketing team that oh if you ship this will close this another thing is Most of the people don't talk to their customer like it's very tough in multiple organizations to even have a direct connection with your customers and I believe as a product manager. I have I'll be honest. I'm not a very data oriented person But I do believe the biggest force of data is customers by the way Sam Walt then the Founder of Walmart he said one thing that the Most important person in an organization is customer They can make a CEO fall just by start paying somewhere else So I think it's very powerful message that We all know that we need to talk to customers, but how many of us actually do talk so that's why Product discovery became one of the biggest challenge that What should you be building and then why should you build that? What and why they were very important questions. They'd like We all have a backlog. We all have a road map, but What is in the road map? That is the question that is the problem that Why are we building a versus B? that important for that when you go to your Leaders when you're in a meeting You can ask that question and also you can justify your these things. That's why you're Imagine this problem on a 10x level where You are a publicly listed company like I Don't know if I can take name But there are certain product leaders from publicly listed companies, which I talked to And for them their share price moves with the product they launch imagine if it's a billion dollar company and What you shift impacts the share price Just go way beyond your control like way beyond how it impacts your outcome, but economy depends on it and Coming to economy economy stuff That's the other problem that We are building things which are not moving the needle like If we skip the product discovery part and we start building something because we got a requirement will write the uv story will Write the PIDs and then put it on Jira, then we drag it and we tell oh it went like so That is not what we are Working every day. We are not working on shipping Jira ticket But what is the impact of that Jira ticket? That's what we are. I think every good product manager should think from that. I Don't care how many Jira tickets I shipped But even if I ship one Jira ticket, what is the impact it creates? That's the bigger thing and Another point to add here is that in this economy if we are putting effort and that that is not Co-related to the business outcome. We are just moving a wall Why I say moving a wall is like I Am I have been laid off? I know a lot of friends who got laid off now I was laid off back when in pandemic a fave happened Companies need people who Move things not put their energy on moving a wall like you can spend all day and say that if a shan I have spent eight hours with all my energy Pushing a wall, but it won't move So that makes you your effort based in and in that respect for company It's easier to replace people who are not making impact so I'm talking now from a company perspective because I'm a founder and CEO of a company that I Would want my resources to be optimized for outcome like We ship one thing that makes the business impact if we have people who are working on something, but that does not have impact We are wasting resources there and Then in the layoff of it. Now that is where I Have been laid off. I have been from it and I would say that no one wants to do that. So if we spent good time in discovery like Asking the question what we are building and justifying the why What happens is number one You're shipping things which move the needle now that needle could be depending upon the company It could help you close more deals. It could help you grow revenue. It could help you increase the uvert option reduce churn Increase engagement or just number of you first, but you're moving from leader That is the top line. The other thing is if you're building something After putting thought behind it like after putting doing the discovery exercise then You are reducing your Cost like you are you might just be focusing on things which are valid Which are going to make move the needle and not on things which are not valid. So How do you optimize in this economy either by increasing the top line or reducing the cost? How do you do that by? concentrating on your efforts To shipping out things which make business impact. I hope that makes sense So Why are we like what is the benefit like we talked about the problem why and that if you ship out things Which don't make impact that impacts the company cause that Can waste your effort all those things? but I Don't know if you remember there they used to be I don't know if Albert Einstein actually fade or not, but I Rated from there. That's why I'm saying that that if I have 100 hours to cut a tree I will spend 99 in sharpening the X because I'll change that a bit to say that if you have under dark sharpen your X and Then figure out which tree to cut because if you're like What is the goal of that tree? Do you need the biggest tree to create furniture or you just need wood to light a fire? If your goal is to light a fire you don't need to cut a very big thick tree you just need to cut 23 small trees, which are very like you can burn five of them so the idea I'm trying to explain is What tree to cut and why are you cutting these are two very important and then did you succeed with it? Let's get to the benefits of this machine. No one it can save time and money Obviously if you are concentrating all your efforts at shipping the right product, then you're not wasting time in Building something which no one cares about that save time money energy and your time wasted in meetings number two You gather information like Why are we building it? What are the number of deals? We are gonna go what metric it's gonna move What is the? Goal it will achieve. What is the will it help me achieve my okr or not? How much it's gonna cost to burn? Can I do something else instead of this because in the end as I said Your input doesn't matter the outcome matters. So if you can get similar outcome with less input do that and Lastly understanding the customer needs That I cannot stress more about it Customers are the you were by the king like You spend time talking to them and you'll be a better product major That's the difference between like if you have to do one thing which can make you a better product major now if Reach out to 10 you first tomorrow ask them. What are their challenges? Don't talk about your solution forget it Like what are their problems? What are they need? What are they trying to achieve and how are they feeling it? Like what was the experience like you bring your product? Those are the questions like if you understand customer needs Everything becomes better. So and then by the way, I just want to clarify this You can't ship what customers need right Customers need might be something which might which are totally not related to your business So there are two factors to it number one customer needs customer pain points customer experience and The other one is business code. You have to be in between you have to Be the product manager's job is that only like be the balance between the business, which is company and the user their needs and You need to understand How and this that's the role of discovering? How can you merge? The user you will need you for expectation the solution to company code company business okay as tech capabilities Does your company even have a mobile app the if I might say Like is that in the roadmap? Is that possible? Do we have the talent all those questions? so Understand this the balance between users and the business the other thing is if you Do the right discovery? How that impacts the number one you can This is about how do you do this company number one is segment your customer like What customer do you want to optimize for some companies are PLG they target for SMB in mid-market other companies are enterprise. They target bigger companies. They feel cycle is bigger now if you are a PLG motion and you ignore the SMB and you start listening to an enterprise request You are gonna miss your okay, which is maybe number of new signups adoption so What is the When you are doing this company number one, what is the ICP? What are the different segments of customers? They could be our interface mid-market SMB Highly active customer Not so active customer is your goal company goal to Reduce turn or close more deals if it is to close more deals You will be looking at gong or a porous or CRM data that perspective deals If it is to reduce the turn you might be looking at amplitude and customer support ticket. So again segmenting the cohorts and customers is very important and aligning it to the business second New opportunities when you talk to users new talk customer Or sales people or market trains like AI you uncover opportunities, maybe something you might not have thought about something you might Uncover a new insight that is the importance of discovery so figure out What is new versus what is existing and other parties obviously? If you do the discovery right and try to do the right thing you will accelerate the sales versus That is there Remember to talk about two problems one was increasing the revenue of previous light to care of that the second is Which I said reduce your cost now How can you reduce the cost by the right discovery? Number one is obviously very simple that you are going to Align the resources to the thing which are going to move the needle That is going to reduce the conflict imagine Tomorrow if that's what Again Google and other companies take they let go of people of Personals which were not making impact and then they whoever goes remaining. They were like, okay these this is where you should go so Always focus on things which are going to move it Then is automating product operation now once You know that okay these are the four things which you are going to focus on Like your goal is this your ICP is this now you can automate a lot of things If per customer or let's I'm gonna take an example that If your goal is to increase revenue and your ICP is Enterprise customer now your automation could be If the deal comes on top spot or a gong call Talks about a particular feature request which will help and the potential deal size is more than that 300,000 dollars then You just want to filter that forget all the noise forget what SMB said what customer support said because your OCR is to increase revenue from Enterprise customer to just ignore other things and Plan it out because if your product leader VP of product whoever reporting managers, they ask you Oh, what are you gonna build? You have a very simple answer. I'm gonna build this feature because These are the 10 customers who are enterprise our ICP asked for this in the hub for toy con calls Now they they don't have a Imagine from a product leader perspective. They are impressed that their work reduce. They're gonna be oh, yes Thank you go for it. You don't your efficiency increases You don't have to get approval. You don't have to convince them. You have a data other thing is measuring the outcome now Once you ship out something, let's say taking the previous example that if you ship this you get You get deal closure Now if you have to do okay review, all you have to do is These are the insights from these customers We shipped it out. Did we actually close the revenue or not? Did the deal closure happen or not? If yes, congrats if not Why it did not happen and then you can improve like every other product mention improving and I treated lastly Customers I'm I know I keep coming back to customer. But that's like very important like it is the most important thing I mean I I can't keep on talking about recently I was watching a linear degree podcast by Scott who's from Adobe he talked about customers then I Every book which I read like continuous discovery habit by Teresa again talks about customer So that is there if you are able to talk to customers get insights You are able to address the concern You are gonna have happier customer more deal closure and Every company loves it like every company wanted if you are able to make your customers happy Trust me your CEO your sales your engineers your designers your customer support your CSM Your market is everyone is gonna be happy and proud of you period and if you just make Like I'll hire a person who says that oh, yes, you can talk to my customers that they love me I'll hire the person immediately Like managers, they love they are diplomatic customers love you cannot buy it Another thing is feature factory, I know we have heard this term feature factory company Matty Kagan talks about it a lot that Move PM5 just shipping out product team by shipping out feature But imagine if you are transforming your approach to Why what you're building and why you're shifting from a feature mindset to an outcome mindset? That's the company's are paying millions and dollars to Product coaches and paintings and everything that is very simple just spend time in product difficulty so This is the closing thought It's not about how much effort you put in but outcome you deliver I Mean is he did it again? It's not about how much you effort you put in but outcome you deliver No one I know product. I mean I have been doing product management and it's a very Time-lapse job like No one is going to say great work you wrote a PID engineers might say but If you apply for your another job No one is gonna ask how well PID you write the first thing in the left me is that what outcome you deliver imagine if you go talk to Your product community or you meet me at a meet up or you meet anyone in the meter You don't talk about oh, I I write very good Jira tickets. I make very good wife teams I like very good PIDs. No People talk about the outcome Every day you go every thing you do in the morning if you just think from an outcome perspective that Is this gonna deliver outcome? You're gonna have a different film and that's what about product difficulties now Outcome is again what comes out But you all know what comes out Depend on what goes in so if you want to create food Ingredients the pressure to get in matter. Similarly, if you want to get better you need to spend time in discovery so That's the first principle thinking a lot of people start thinking about outcome outcome is the result Discovery is what you have in control. So Focus there making a great discovery Yeah, that that is about it I hope I was able to convey the importance of a good product discovery how it impacts a customer relationship how it can Make you your mindset won't customer focused deliver personal school reduce your operational efforts and Help you become a better product manager Define my LinkedIn and Twitter if you ever want to connect I'll be more than happy to thank you