 Hello everyone, my name is Kanakshila Thandan. I go by Kanak. Today I'm here to talk about B2B and B2C PME. So I start with a quick intro for everyone. I actually have around 20 years of experience and most of it is as a product manager. I worked in B2B space. I also worked in B2C space. So here I am to share my experiences that I have gone through and some tips and strategy. I start with a quick intro. I have worked in past I have worked with companies like like Microsoft, HP, Meta, bunch of startups. I founded my company also at the point of time and I started in PM space in 2006. So I would say what kept me into PME is probably the notion of tapping into unknown territories and then carving something out from those ambiguous situations, carving something out which is going to solve a crucial problem for the customers. This is what kept me going and with that I'm going to dwell into the topic that we are going to discuss today which is B2B versus B2C PME. Just give me a minute. Let me share my screen quickly. I already covered the intro. So okay the three topics I would be touching today. One is if you are a mature PM and you are just starting your journey and you are trying to figure out what suits me more B2B and B2C space. This is something I would be talking through. Then we'll go through some cultural differences between B2B and B2C organizations and then I will share some strategies based on my experience how to innovate and lead in B2B PME. So with that let's move ahead. So first let's talk about this is this is a very light slide. Let's talk about what is common between these two. So the underlying PM principles I still a few here are common in both the both the areas. So these are the overlapping you know regions. For example identifying the problem. Identifying the right problem is the start of a successful product and that pays the part for the right product market fit. So irrespective of whether you are in B2B and B2C that is going to be the same. Customer empathy the ability to feel and live the life of the customer is going to take you long way in either of the scenarios. Especially in B2B where you have broader you may have broader set of personas than B2C. Then strong productions once you are done with the discovery of the problem space the customer and problem discovery and that time you know when you are exploring the solution having our strong productions is going to help you a lot. So these are the common underlying principles between B2B and B2C PME. Now let's talk about what's different in B2B and B2C. I would say the nature of the problem. The nature of the problem may differ in B2B and B2C. B2B often is more deep problem space that may require niche skills and sometimes industry expertise. However B2C is more broader problem space. You may have broader personas in B2C. So I quote a few examples here like think of cloud computing, think of networking, think of security. All these requires a deeper dive as compared to the B2C problem space. Now let's talk about the product cycle. B2B often have longer product cycle and may not have frequent releases. So if you have patients through it you want to go deeper into the problem space then B2B may suit you more. B2B is also many a times saturated with bigger players in market. So for any newbie to penetrate into such markets requires some strategies. A few examples are innovate, differentiate yourself so that you can create your own niche market. So you should be prepared to kind of ready to encounter these situations. Then data. B2C is more data driven. You will have ample of data to kind of go through it and make decisions which are backed by data but in B2B data may be limited. It may be qualitative but still limited. So often at times protect sense helps kind of moving ahead in those situations where data is limited. The next point I listed here is communication. Communication is an essential skill for PM in either case but in B2B it's more crucial. The reason is you will be having more larger portfolio of stakeholders, internal teams, external team, cross you know our team, global team and most of the time the flexibility is limited in B2B space which means you have to go through tougher negotiations to get everyone on one roadmap having concerns from everyone. So that requires elevated communication skills. And also the personality I would say if you are more towards relationship on end then result oriented then this is something you may want to explore. B2B requires investment in long term relationship especially you know with the sales counterpart. Make him an ally of yours. It's going to help you personally to be successful in the company. So long term relationship and working closely with the teams, building close relationship that actually helps in B2B space. B2B often requires deep and niche technical skills which I already test upon networking, security, cloud computing or maybe you know the industry expertise that would be required in B2B as compared to B2C. Also monetizing strategies may differ. So in terms of monetization if you are addressing the customer problem in a right way the willingness to pay is more. With B2C your product sometimes may fall into commodity market. There is always like you know you have to come up with a competitive pricing strategy to gain the market share. However in B2B you can try different pricing strategy. It could be subscription base, it could be allocate, it could be you know premium you know versions with niche features upsell, cross sell. So there are different strategies that you could claim based on your expertise. However contrary B2C is more broader problem space. It's more consumer facing. Sometimes UX heavy you would be paying more on volumes. Frequent release cycles are often observed and also opportunity to take feedback from end customer as you are delivering and lots of data and sitting with the CS team that you could leverage to finalize your predict strategy. Overall I would say if you have a tendency to go deeper into problem space, if you are a strong communicator, if you are passionate about technology and if you have background in some technical space, by personality you are relationship oriented, then probably B2B is a space that you may want to give it a try. Now let's talk about switching between B2B versus B2C PMA. If you started on one and you are thinking okay would I be able to switch? Yes that is very much feasible. I have done it in past a few times. More important is to have that underlying product principles strong and clear. So if you are a strong PM probably you know switching it's not a issue here. However I should be honest as the market is shifting. What I am observing is that nowadays more expertise are required in either scenario. So if you are building a carrier, your carrier track probably would be good to focus on certain expertise that you want to build as the track of your carrier which are going to kind of help you moving forward. And in terms of switching I would say a change of mindset is required on overall how we approach the problem and in B2B probably keeping yourself and your team more nimble and flexible to upcoming changes is going to help. In B2C you have more flexibility how you move. In B2B there may be you know certain scenarios when you have to kind of make some sacrifices. So how you approach the problem is different the change of mindset is required but other than that yes it's feasible to switch between B2B and B2C PMA. Now let's talk about some cultural differences here. How the culture differs between an organization who is more B2B versus B2C. The first one is B2B maybe more sales driven. The reason is see partners who have bigger share of pie who are bringing more business they often comes with customized request and if those requests are not managed well then that may lead your application to get a handful of the customer and in those scenarios the application may not be fit or may not be competitive to kind of to be launched to a broader market. Over time the company actually instead of being customer focused maybe become more sales driven or more delivery driven and for any new idea to try to do a short experiment in such scenarios going back and doing it would not be possible without impacting a sheer amount of your development. So that is something to kind of keep a record on and there are strategies to avoid those situations which I'm going to discuss in next slide. But before I touch the next point of innovation I want to share in my own experience working with with the company. So I was working in a startup and I myself have observed that there were a couple of very strong partners who were driving business and sometimes in time pressure or under fear of not losing those customers the product team was kind of taking those requests and most of the roadmap was then built by the customers in collaboration with the sales team and slowly I was noticing that how the product managers were shifting towards you know project management mostly the roadmap was preset and they were holding hands with their inch counterpart to run the development cycle. And in terms of innovation most of the time what competitors had launched is trying one or two add-ons on the existing features but that is not going to give the company a leave to differentiate or to stand or be customer focused. So this is something to be vigilant about and as I already touched innovation may stifles in those scenarios. Another reason is if you have customized versions multiple versions then experimenting or implementing something may not be you know may not be visible and that requires some cost. Product roadmap in B2B includes investment in long term relationship building so you will be seeing features like customer loyalty and retention. Also please keep in mind that technology integration adds another layer of complexity it may be a cross-platform integration with your partners it may be a cross cloud or hybrid also and so forth so that often requires deep and niche technical skills or at least the ability to kind of ramp up quickly in those technologies. Now consider the scenario if you want to go global in B2B so if you are going global in B2B localization is often required more catching to the needs of local market. You have to make the audience feel that you understand their culture and also the customers and personas are diverse in B2B as compared to B2C you may have different personas you have multiple persona and not to forget to list down the B2B to C as one of your customers because if you are catching the needs of your B2B to C well you are actually helping your customers really well so this is something not to be missed. Okay before I go to this slide if you have any questions comment you can just edit or find in the chat and I will try to answer those after after this presentation I just put something quick this time but I'm also going to join our on July 18th on a QA session so irrespective of B2B or B2C any question that you have in fact I have more experience in B2C so you can bring any PM questions and I would try to answer as per my ability. Okay with that let's talk about how to keep product or more focus and innovative what are the strategies you can take how to lead and innovate in B2B space first one as I already mentioned close relationship especially with your sales counterpart if internal teams are your partner then it may be your tech counterpart that is personally going to help you move those close relationship helps to kind of unblock many things early in the stages so being an ally of of your counterpart and keeping them on your side is going to go long term second is investing building relationship with your client so you need not to always go through your sales team to interact with your client and especially if you are a people manager and you have a team you have to make sure that your team is close to the customer it's okay to attend some sales call with your same sales team if possible interact directly to kind of collect the requirements you can also form user group for your research team or for your design team to work with the customers so these are the ways how you can bring your team close to the client and try to work directly CS is another way also to avoid kind of building a product which is so close to a few customers is to make a diverse user group so that you can hear their voice in early venues and you can steer those through as you build your MVP you put your blueprint together so make a diverse group just do not focus on handful of the customers and keep a percentage of investment for new ideas and experiment I share another example with you here so I spoke about the company and keeping the company innovative and customer focus is not just going to help the company overall but also going to keep your own team inspired so in one of the company I have noticed that as the leadership decided to pause on new ideas and investment and kind of adding through what has already been launched and catering to the customized request over time like six to eight months there was a good attrition especially from from the design function they were not seeing it's so inspiring you know all the new ideas experiment learning quickly going and moving so slowly we have seen that the company was losing really a good know how and talent so this goes to to the leaders as well it's a good tip to keep some percentage of investment on new ideas and experiment it may be 10 20 30 depending on the tolerance level of your company and broadcast it broadcasters truly in your all hands and to your stakeholders as well the next point is build consolidated roadmap across all stakeholders and broadcast it early so if you have multiple partners it essential to provide that visibility and make a consolidated roadmap so that they know what is going to cut if we run on you know any sort of resource crunch or time crunch and why you know those are the problem that we are addressing in the roadmap plus making them part of this journey of road mapping even if you broadcast it at the end of your quarter in your all hands meeting it it may know it may not land that well as compared to if you make them part of it you give them those wide spaces to internalize on the roadmap give you feedback and go through those discussion of not incorporating or cooperating their request there's also a good reason of doing that because you will get early chance of seeking a collective intelligence from all your stakeholders plus sense early signs of misalignment and you can manage them through so I would say it's it's a very good tip that I could share from my experience to kind of keep that visibility on and take them through this road mapping or exercise provide them that visibility now the next one is define ancient milestones especially for B2B because oftentimes as I said the product cycles are long and and what happens is over time if it's taking few months your stakeholders and your leadership may get curious of how we are progressing so if you define certain milestone you are providing the visibility of all the effort that your team is putting together and having that sensitivity you know towards towards your team is really essential for a for a leader to be successful or many times I have seen really talented people just working in silos and their effort is not kind of brought through or came in like came in light so it's essential if you define those milestones and then celebrate generate a report or broadcast then the last one take a conservative approach on customized request because that is going to bring long term consequences on maintenance costs on versioning if you're not sure of taking a request run the exploration phase just tell your partner okay I'm going to run exploration phase and come up with my findings to you until that you know whether you are going to take it or not going to take it at least you get time to kind of think through it um so and again um it's very essential in a B2B space that you do not take that pressure their request may be legitimate their request may may help to boost the product or may incur more cost or whatever it is you know it's no harm asking to run a exploration phase and that way you can discuss with your teams you can take their feedback inputs and you may have an ocean of solution to kind of kind of you know select from so that is something I also do you know whenever I'm not sure of going ahead with any any of the request um with that I'm going to conclude again um if you have any question just shoot a uh you know shoot it in chat or join my uh July 18 uh QA session I will try to answer it as per my abilities and based on my experience and just a quick wrap up on what we have covered I just I built this uh deck uh you know this deck quickly so uh we did covered a good ground we discussed uh the quiet skills um for B2B and B2C PMA uh the culture differences in both the organization and the complexity associated with B2B we also discussed how one could innovate and lead in B2B uh product states and what could be the pitfalls that you should be aware of and how you could uh navigate through the strategies uh you could try with that I am just signing off so thanks everyone for uh joining today thanks