From Value Proposition to Competitive Advantage with the 3 Trees
How Delibr pivoted to find enticing value for their ICPs and how they selected their strategic focuses combining three different trees
Most of us work in environments where there are at the same time many opportunities and many competitors. From a strategic perspective, this creates several challenges:
The need to focus while at the same time knowing that we leave behind many valuable opportunities
The need to differentiate while at the same time playing “catch up” games with competitors
The need to balance constant customer feedback with the opportunities we are getting from the market and non-yet-customers.
In this episode, I spoke with Nils Janse, CEO and co-founder of Delibr, a tool to help Product Managers organize and structure decision-making across the entire product flow. We covered amazing insights, going from pivoting to crafting a strong value proposition, followed by how to select the focus areas and how to be stubborn on the vision while flexible on the execution based on customer feedback.
Pay special attention to Nils’ definition of the “three interacting trees” (minute 20 approx). He uses three interacting models: an opportunity solution tree for specific outcomes, a higher-level JTBD-tree, and a Product-tree focused on the components. Amazing discovery to balance all the different opportunities you may need to handle.
The conversation was a bit “meta” since we discussed their process and, at the same time, Delibr’s strategies to support the process.
Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, and YouTube, and read on for my takeaways and highlights of the episode.
My takeaways from this episode
The first one isn’t really about strategy, but it was great the intro story to Delibr, discussing the use case of “structured decision making” for Product Managers. It’s remarkable how this “feature,” which was not attractive in other markets, was a critical early differentiator to make Delibr thrive in the Product Management space.
When discussing how they started with the strategy, Nils focused on understanding the ICP (ideal customer profile) and doubling down on the set of needs they were trying to achieve, analyzing the gaps the product has to get to a value proposition that will attract customers.
A good way of framing how you find insights through interviews: at first, using a more exploratory script. But once you identify patterns, switch to a validation script, and with it, you see “what you got wrong” and refine the problem.
The conversation went through a meta-level when we were discussing what the PM process is, so Delibr could identify where it can add value. There is a natural tension in strategy execution (and product development in general) when PMs try to combine their proactive “upstream” topics with the reactive “downstream” topics that come from all the feedback and friction the product is receiving in the market.
Nils split his opportunity exploration into 3 kinds of trees:
The first one is “JTBD-based.” The root node is a role or function, and then the branches are all the activities this person does. These ones are broader and help focus on the value proposition. The approach is very similar to the one discussed with Alessandro Pintaudi in episode 18.
The second ones are OSTs, and naturally, they are focused on improving an outcome, so it's much more focused. We used the “improve onboarding” example.
The final one is “Product-trees.” The branches are each product component. In this way, it can be easy to explore the feedback or problems we are getting from the product and provide a more natural way to think about this type of opportunity (instead of trying to “force them” into an OST).
Selection: the way they achieve focus is by covering one part of the PM process at a time. To choose which one, they base on what will move them closer to their vision, plus the most pressing points to convert in the selling process. They are strict on vision but flexible on the order of the steps to get there.
We discussed a strategy based on output and the risk of the feature factory. In their case, they were trying to make the value proposition more appealing to get more people at the door. My biggest takeaway is that it was still an outcome-driven idea, but since it was harder to measure (or at least not in terms of product improvement), it was easier to rally around “delivering on the value proposition.”
Considering the AI hype, we discussed if AI was a true differentiator. Nils shared why LLMs are so crucial in so many of the very-text-focused PM tasks, which matches what Delibr focuses on.
The final advice was great: pick your battles (vs. competitors). Compare, but identify the areas in which you will have something “just to tick the box”, versus others that are fundamental to your value proposition, and you will be much better.
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