Understanding and optimizing product-market fit—market position, product usage/adoption, customer retention, pricing and loyalty—is as important as the product itself. At Orchid Black, our pricing consultants compare a company’s product to the leaf (and potentially leaves) that grow from a plant’s stem (operations). Marc Andreesen famously pointed out that when a product is not aligned to its market, you can see it: “because customers aren’t getting value from the products, and press reviews are kind of ‘blah,’ the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.”
To avoid these problems, you need a clear understanding of why customers are using the product, and how to get more customers to use the product. But beyond this, founders should be thinking about the big picture: How well does the product fit into the market? Will it result in longer and deeper customer relationships?
“Working with Orchid Black has been a real game-changer for FinListics Solutions. Their team of highly qualified professionals has helped us enhance our product-market-fit, enrich our marketing messaging, and improve our sales and other processes. All while catapulting growth. If you are not already engaging with Orchid Black, I strongly recommend you do so. You owe it to your top-line and market valuation.”
Product Portfolio Analysis: Review products, technology, and data against markets, accounts, and buyers, to accomplish product-market fit by addressing an urgent problem that a buyer will pay to solve.
Product Management Services: Optimize product management best practices, including idea prioritization, development, testing/quality assurance (QA), release management, adoption, and optimization.
Pricing Optimization & Strategy: Overcome buying constraints by extracting maximum value, and aligning pricing to scale with customer growth.
Packaging & Messaging: Package something the market is compelled to buy, understanding that some customers want simplicity, while other customers want maximum flexibility. Then, develop stories to answer the question “why change?”
Customer Success Strategy: Shift to a customer-centric mindset, resulting in satisfied customers who drive long-term growth and profitability.
Customer Experience & Engagement: Optimize the customer journey to provide an engaging experience and make it a competitive differentiator.
Check out these episodes of Orchid Black's podcast featuring 'Product':
Good reads and great information on 'Product' from Orchid Black's expert operating partners:
Software companies’ product issues regularly lead to investor skepticism. This is due to the inability to retain existing customers or poor product, pricing, and customer management. It can also mean a declining market share. The culprits can be many: changing user behavior, poor go-to-market readiness, poor product messaging, price pressure, user-unfriendly product, or poor customer experience.
To optimize your product-market fit, Orchid Black leverages its product management services to help you map and execute your product, pricing, packaging, and customer needs. Our growth program includes multiple product growth services:
