By Melissa Perri · melissaperri.com · @lissijean on X · LinkedIn
Melissa Perri argues that product leaders planning a company's next phase should survey a standard set of growth strategies rather than fixate on a single path. She organizes 16 options around three business objectives: adding new logos, improving retention, and decreasing costs. Each strategy can serve one or more of these goals, but none fits every company equally. The piece is framed as a menu to check that all options were considered, with the fuller tips and favorable conditions provided in an accompanying deck. For leaders managing several products, the right choice may differ by product depending on its situation.
01Key takeaways
- Start from proven growth playbooks and adapt them to your own company.
- Deliberately compare several growth paths before committing to one.
- Map each candidate strategy to adding logos, retention, or cost reduction.
- Check whether a strategy's conditions actually fit your company's situation.
- Evaluate each product in a portfolio separately, since their situations differ.
02Key sections
- Why use standard playbooks
- Established growth playbooks exist and can be adapted, so leaders need not reinvent them from scratch. The advice is to start from known options before customizing.
- Explore alternatives before committing
- Teams tend to fall for one path without weighing others. Deliberately considering less obvious routes can change the outcome.
- Three primary business objectives
- Every growth strategy maps to adding logos, improving retention, or lowering costs. Framing options this way helps leaders compare them.
- Strategies depend on context
- No single strategy suits every company, and the favorable conditions for each must be checked. Portfolio managers should judge each product separately.
03From the post
“As a product leader, you have the responsibility to plan strategically for your company to grow its customer base and revenue. Thanks to years of other people growing companies, there are standard playbooks for how to accelerate your company’s trajectory. Simply because they are standard doesn’t mean that you can’t execute them in your own special snowflake way, but it’s…”
04Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.