The Biggest Key to Product Growth

One of the most difficult transitions for an entrepreneur is trusting their growing team to do a lot of the things that they used to do. For a SaaS company founder, this can include stuff like actually coding, designing interfaces, coming up with all the new innovation ideas, setting product feature priorities, deciding how a feature should be implemented and / or creating product marketing materials. Essentially, the founder did everything at some point…unless there was a co-founder, then each did half of everything.

The founder is also likely to have deep domain expertise in the product area(s) the company serves, and this is difficult to come by. But, as the company grows, the founder(s) are likely in a CXO position and if they’re still involved in the same day-to-day decision making that they used to be, then they’re not being effective as leaders of a growing software company.

So, it’s difficult to let go. But letting go is the only way to scale the company and foster business growth. The biggest key to letting go is trust, and this is easier said than done. Without deep trust in your growing team, you won’t be able to grow the business effectively.

In our experience with small, growing SaaS companies, here are a few strategies and tactics that will drive towards this essential trust.

Hire great product people. Part ways with less than great product people. 

The #1 prerequisite to trust is having the right people on board. Nothing sinks trust like a few folks that are underperformers, apathetic and a drag on the rest of the team. This is especially true for your Product Managers, as they need to be trusted to guide the product towards the high level vision and business goals set by the company leaders. Essentially, the PM is charged with making this vision a reality. This takes someone who is sharp, savvy, self-motivated and a leader, among other things. If you’ve hired anyone that doesn’t fall into this camp, it’s best to cut your losses quickly and move on. Otherwise you’ll never have that essential trust and your opportunity cost will continue to mount.

Set a clear vision for the team to follow.

You may have a really strong supporting cast, but if everyone has a different idea of where you’re trying to go as a company, then you’re not setting them up for success. If everyone has a different definition of success, then you’ll always struggle with what you perceive as disappointing results, and a lack of trust. Set a clear “north star”, put it down on paper in the form of a strategic plan and share it with the rest of the company. This provides the basis for success and you give your team a great chance to earn your trust.

Provide high level, measurable goals for each Product team.

Related to the one above, it’s a huge win for trust when you have a clear way to assess progress and the team understands what that is. For instance, assign each Product team a set of key performance indicators that they’re always trying to improve upon and set up a clear, accessible scorecard that shows progress on a weekly / monthly basis. This way, you can trust that everyone is working towards the same goals and you have a way to keep tabs on progress in case things start to veer off in the wrong direction.

Set up mission based Product teams.

Building on the two previous points, you’ll sleep better at night when you know that you’ve got cross-functional Product teams (product managers, developers and designers) focused within a particular value area. The more focused a team is and the longer they’re focused as a team, the more experience and domain expertise they build up within the problem space and the more successful they can be. It’s a comforting feeling when you know that at any particular time, you have your best, most equipped team working on a particular product opportunity. This builds trust.

Have occasional check ins with team leaders to review direction of initiatives.

If you’re doing the things above, then you can rest easy that you don’t need to be in the mix of day to day product decision making. But, we’re all human and frankly it just helps on the trust front to see glimpses of the works in progress. So, try having a check in with each Product team every few weeks to see how things are progressing. Quick demos of early prototypes, glimpses of design mockups or hearing about early user feedback can be great trust building exercises between you and the team.

Have faith in your talented team to execute.

Finally, you’ll need to have faith in the strong team you’ve hired to execute on the goals that you’ve clearly defined. At first this will be tough, and you’ll likely go through a period of trial and error where it appears that the team is making too many mistakes…mistakes they surely wouldn’t have made if you were more involved 😉 However, realize that success requires patience and your growth as a company requires scalability…and frankly there’s no path to scalability that doesn’t involve trust. So, take your initial bumps, learn from them, have some patience and at the end of the journey you’ll have a foundation of trust that will enable your growth.

This may be a lot to swallow at once so if you’re not doing any of the above, take a gradual approach to improving. Start at the top of the list with hiring rock stars, and work your way down. This step will buy you some time as you work towards the rest.