Dealing with the Messy Reality of B2B Product Management with Jason Knight | Interim CPO with 25+ Years in Tech

Jason Knight has over 25 years of experience in tech and product and currently works as the founder of One Knight Consulting, where he has a portfolio career as an interim and fractional CPO, Maven Course creator, PM coach, and also content creator.

Jason is the man behind the One Knight in Product podcast, which I was on a few months back. He’s been one of my inspirations to start this podcast in the first place.

In today's episode, we break down:

* The Messy Reality of B2B PM | 0:00

* Challenging B2B PM Orthodoxies | 17:35

* Building a Product Culture in B2B | 37:30

* Product Discovery in B2B | 52:20

* The Art of Influence in B2B Product Leadership | 1:01:15

* Product Strategy in B2B | 1:06:38

* How to Prioritize Features | 1:12:30

* Future of B2B PM | 1:18:27

Available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

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If you don’t have time for the full episode, here’s what you need to know:

1. The messy reality is that B2B product management is not always going to be like the books:

A. You’ll have to build features for revenue, because “any revenue is good revenue,” or it can feel that way to pressured B2B execs trying to make the quarter at least.

B. There will be less agile development that you always hoped for, because sometimes you do have to bring a long planning and collaboration process to building a feature — that looks perfectly waterfall.

C. The "accountable for delivery" trap is real and dangerous for PMs: Many B2B PMs find themselves acting as quasi-scrum masters, constantly chasing status updates. This disempowers both PMs and engineers, wasting valuable time on tasks that should be owned by the development team.

2. Effective B2B product discovery is not just about customers. You have to balance direct user research with insights from sales, customer success, and account management teams.

3. B2B product strategy must extend beyond the product team. PMs need to actively influence go-to-market strategy, pricing, and market segmentation. Without input on these areas, your ability to drive meaningful product success is severely limited.

4. Prioritization in B2B requires looking beyond numerical frameworks. It’s usually best to focus on use cases and user journeys rather than disconnected feature lists. And always make sure to consider the needs of both users and buyers; ignoring either can lead to products that fail.

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Update on the Podcast

This little podcast is already taking off. I never even considered being top 3 in the Technology category in India and Pakistan, but there we are.

Next up: #3 in the US.

How are we getting there?

* Sound - From today itself, you should be seeing a great upgrade in sound quality. We’ve upping the bar on guest mics (buying them for guests!) plus have hired on an ace sound engineer to the team.

* Video - We’re also constantly upping our game on video and this is the first video in 4K.

* Conversations - I’m going to stay super close to the ground on feedback. And, to the point, please reply to this e-mail with your feedback about the episode.

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Where to Find Jason

* LinkedIn

* Maven Course

* One Knight Consulting

* One Knight in Product podcast (which I was on a few months back)

Website to not get Podcast emails but the get the rest is here.

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Up Next

I’m super excited about upcoming episodes with Andre Nader, Stephanie Leue, and Mirela Mus. Look forward to them soon!

On the newsletter front, I have several paid deep dives at 80% completion but the consistent thing I’m hearing for you guys is to take the extra time to up the quality. So I’m doing that.

The pieces?

* Ultimate Guide to Growth Design

* How to Answer Why this Company

* The Ultimate Guide to Retention

Get full access to Product Growth at www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe