Ray McKenzie is the CEO and founder of StartingPoint Technologies, an organization that develops solutions for service-based companies. He has expertise across a variety of fields, most notably strategy development, workforce analytics, and behavioral analysis. Ray joins Melissa to discuss go-to-market strategy, and why product should be involved in the conversation.
Show Notes
Melissa Perri’s guest on this week’s Product Thinking Podcast is Ray McKenzie. Ray is the CEO and founder of StartingPoint Technologies, an organization that develops solutions for service-based companies. He has expertise across a variety of fields, most notably strategy development, workforce analytics, and behavioral analysis. Ray joins Melissa to discuss the ideal marketing strategy that product leaders should be adopting.
Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Ray talk about in this episode:
How Ray got into product management.
Product leaders need to consult with customers and rely on other uses and experiences to outline how to build products.
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to a company startup is opening yourself up to criticism and feedback. However, allowing yourself to get feedback, both positive and negative, can benefit your business.
Melissa expresses that when building a product, leaders’ main focus should be on how they can make products easy for customers to use.
Product management should be tied into strategic decisions in the organization. Product leaders need to be present in decision-making so that they can understand the vision for the business and build products to align with that.
Product is a revenue driver and not a cost center.
Being product-led is a go-to-market strategy. Building a product-led company means that product building becomes ingrained in the day-to-day work.
The different go-to-market strategies that companies need to be thinking about, and how they should decide on which strategy is right for them.
The main way to experiment with your go-to-market strategy, or test it, is to talk to people. Talk to your ideal customer, your colleagues, and do market research. “If you just talk to people they will lead you in the direction of where it is easiest to go. And if you're taught to understand who your ideal customer is, talk to as many people of that kind as possible, and they'll tell you where you should invest your go-to-market dollars or go-to-market strategy,” Ray tells Melissa.
Companies that aren't software-based need to think about their ideal customers, what their competition is doing, and what differentiates their product from everyone else.
Resources Ray McKenzie | LinkedIn | Twitter StartingPoint
Episode Transcript
Melissa Perri: Creating great products isn't just about product managers and their day-to-day interactions with developers. It's about how an organization supports products as a whole. The systems, the processes and cultures in place that help companies deliver value to their customers. With the help of some boundary-pushing guests and inspiration from your most pressing product questions, we'll dive into this system from every angle and help you think like a great product leader. This is the Product Thinking Podcast. Here's your host, Melissa Perry.
Melissa Perri: Welcome to another episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Today we're joined by Ray McKenzie, who is here to talk to us all about go-to-market strategy. So welcome, Ray. Thanks for being on the podcast.
Ray McKenzie: All right. Hi, Melissa. It's an honor to be here and to talk to you today. So thank you.
Melissa Perri: Great. So I met Ray through our CPO Accelerator. He was a friend of one of the people who was working with us, Tammy. And Ray has been a fantastic mentor and guide to all of our Chief Product Officers. So Ray, how did you accumulate this wealth of knowledge that you've been sharing with everybody? What's your story? How did you get into product?
Ray McKenzie: My path is probably a bit different from people. I studied management information systems, the business side of computers and technology at San Diego State years ago. And then I entered kind of the tech environment through service delivery and support. So in terms of service delivery and support that then grew into server-running services for companies, professional services, account management, you know, network ops, tech ops.
And I had a lot of hands-on experience with product during this time. And so I was also the conduit for our customers in terms of what they needed with product. And so then I was introduced to this world of product management, which was so much, hey, Ray, what do our customers think about these products and services?
Or how would you use these if you were a customer? Or what should be the next thing that we should build in terms of the product? And then that then opened me up to this world of product management and working with early stage companies and publicly traded companies, primarily in technology, cybersecurity, internet infrastructure, and identity and authentication.
And so from there, that kind of opened up the world of product. Like how do we make the right decisions in terms of building, one, a product our customers want, and then, two, a product that prospects, customers, can really change the world in terms of what we're doing and how we're doing it. And then developing strategy around those products to continue to expand the portfolio.
And what's that look like? And what do our customers want? And so from there, gosh, I spent 15 years working for early stage and publicly traded companies. And then about seven years ago, I started my own management consulting firm, Red Beach Advisors, that works with companies around strategy, go-to-market product, corporate and business strategy, operational efficiency, and the digital transformation through modernization of technology.
And then about, I'd say, almost a year and a half ago, I founded my own startup called Starting Point. And so instead of building others' products, I built my own product. And so we took that to market in June of 2020, and we're coming up on a year now. So that's kind of my path and my background.
Melissa Perri: That's awesome. So what is Starting Point, too? Tell us a little bit about it.
Ray McKenzie: Starting Point is a workflow productivity and customer operations platform for service-related companies and teams. And so it helps service-related teams manage everything after they've closed a client. So your onboarding, your project management, your service and support management, and your team management, and then comprehensive visibility top-down and bottom-up for your clients to see everything that's happening and executive management and anybody in between to see what's happening.
Melissa Perri: What is different for you now? You're in the driver's seat. You started your own company. Now you're the CEO. You're the head honcho. What's it like coming from management consulting, being in the companies? What do you not expect, I'm curious about, too?
Ray McKenzie: It's completely different. It's completely different. When you're part of a larger company, you have your directive and you understand what you have to do and where you have to go. And you have a lot of different stakeholders that have to provide that value. Then you go into starting your own firm, which is a services-related firm, and you're not necessarily delivering on products, per se, and you're not necessarily engaging opportunity costs in terms of building and performing.
You're kind of like, hey, I've got this client, I've got this customer I need to execute on this scope of work. Let's get it done. Then when you get into actually building a SaaS company, it is completely different. You have to, one, I know my industry really well in terms of what I built and why I need to build it, but also there's a lot of things that come with how people use products and see them that you need to incorporate into your product.
And usability is a big thing for us because our product can be deployed within one hour and no action takes more than five clicks. And so to keep that functionality, we need to work with our customers and prospects intently to say, is this exactly how it should be? And so you're not relying on yourself so much, you're relying on other eyes and other uses and other experiences to outline how you build your product.
And so that was very different. That was definitely a big customer-focused challenge that we had.
Melissa Perri: Yeah. It's interesting too, because for me, when I was consulting, my big thing too is you don't always get to see the product all the way through. I can advise, and I tell people this all the time, I'm like, I can advise, but I can't actually act. And whether or not you take my advice, it's not up to me, it's up to you. And that's fine. That's just the act of consulting, but it's so different when it's actually your company too, because you got to make all the choices. It's not like you're advising anymore. You're like, I'm going to go my way, and now I got to see what's happening. It's a different kind of pressure there too.
Ray McKenzie: Exactly. A much different type of pressure. Every decision that, like you said, in consulting, you're giving advice, you're giving guidance and suggestions. And then they have the ability to say, hey, we're going to continue to use this method or what you taught us or these principles or best practices.
And you can just walk away and say, hey, okay, that's fine. When you have a product, it's completely different. You find that you need to make a decision on this one feature, this one product or this one function, and then you spend four to six weeks building it, and then nobody buys it or nobody finds it useful.
It's on you. It's on you. You really have to own it, and you got to see it all the way through. And so a lot of these decisions that are now made are focused around what the long-term vision is, what the long-term strategy is, what our customers really want, where the industry is going. And you have to take all of that into account in terms of the SaaS product.
Melissa Perri: Yeah. So you've been an investor. You've been an advisor. You've worked with lots of these companies. You've also consulted. I'm sure you've seen, like I've seen, a ton of people doing things wrong. So when you came into the startup and said, all right, I'm going to do this well for myself, and I want to make sure that I'm leading this correctly and we're building this correctly, what were the top things you kept in mind that you saw people doing wrong? That you said, I'm not going to make that mistake. I'm going to do it right this time.
Ray McKenzie: One of the biggest challenges when you're starting a company or when you're starting your own company as a founder is actually opening yourself up to other people and trying to say, hey, I built this. How do you feel about this? I like in the analogy is, hey, if you go home and you say, hey, I want to build a car and you just work on the car and work on the car and work on the car and work on the car and that's your passion.
And then the next thing you know, you decide to take your car to a car show. You take your car to a car show and then everybody's like, that car is the worst car at the car show. Like opening up how you feel and your passion is tough. It's a challenge for people. And so for me, I originally said day one, I'm going to start telling people about what I'm building and once I have it built, I'm going to start sharing it with people to get their feedback.
And so I was always able to incorporate feedback from our ideal clients or customers because that's my industry. That's kind of who I knew. So I was able to open myself up, get a lot of criticism, give a lot of really good positive feedback and it's benefited the business and the product to a certain extent.
I also said I would build something that would be easy to use. And not just easy from my point of view, but I needed people who were very entry level to be able to understand and grasp the concept. Like usability and ease of use is very important. Like, you know, we've been in environments where people build tools and we buy them and we try to put them into place.
Next thing you know, the product goes 6, 12, 18 months before anybody's really started to grasp towards it and use it. And so I really wanted to stick to principles of saying, hey, we need to be able to have somebody get a return on their investment or time to value very quickly with our product. It needs to be able to happen within 15 to 30 days so that they can see how important this is and how it improves how they do work.
And we've been able to stick to that, you know? And that's some of the things people are like, hey, let me add this bell and whistle onto the product. Let me add this. Let me do this functionality. But they're not thinking how are customers going to be able to use it quickly? And is it easy to use? And so I really wanted to stick to that as much as possible.
And then probably the last thing we wanted to focus on in terms of the business and building the business itself was really, to a certain extent, making a difference in an area that has traditionally been the same in terms of companies or software that people use. You know, a lot of companies that are tackling the problems we have after companies close clients are using things like just regular email and Excel or master spreadsheets, or they're using enterprise software that takes 12, 18, 24 months to be able to implement. And so we really wanted to go out and say there's a new way, a new innovative and easy way for people to adopt an easier way to work.
You know, make work easier. It's kind of what we're talking about doing. And that's really how we're trying to make it happen.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, that sounds very ambitious and good. I am fully on board on your usability thing though, because I have seen so many horrible enterprise products out there that are not taking that into account. And it's a shame. You know, I talk to people about it and they're like, well, you know, the teams just have to use our product because the CMO bought it or the CTO bought it, right?
And they're not really thinking about what that experience is like for all those people in that company every day. It's like you spend 40 hours a week at work using horrible software. You can be a very unhappy person when you want to go home. It carries into your life.
Ray McKenzie: Exactly. Probably both done interviews with customers or clients or prospects, and we asked them about our competitors. And the first thing that comes up is we hate the product. Oh, it causes me so much frustration and so much pain. Oh, just to get a change done in the product takes 20, 30 steps. And so, because I've used it, if I build something, I don't want to build that. Yeah. That's just how it is.
Melissa Perri: Exactly. Or the one that I hate with the customers on this side is yeah, it's really awful to use, but it's what we have, so it's okay, right? They're just so resigned to their fate because they can't imagine a better life. They can't imagine a better product. And I'm like, oh God, that's so depressing to me that we put people in those positions as product managers.
So I think that should be core to I think anybody's strategy is really thinking about how do I make this easy for people to use? But not just well designed, but just something that people if they have to do work, like you said, you should make work not hard. It should be easy to do your work. It should be easy to get your work done.
That doesn't mean that we're going to sit there and be wow people to death with these really cool things. It's just don't make it a burden. It doesn't have to be super flashy. It's just don't make it a burden, which I think is key to that. So I like that. That's really in your thought process with the strategy of what you're doing.
It's interesting to think about that. A lot of the stuff that you were saying was very product related. As a product leader, when you're thinking about the role of product management in an organization, how it contributes to strategy, what it should be thinking about, especially now as a CEO, when you're setting both the business strategy and the product strategy, what should product management be involved in from a strategic level in an organization?
Either from day one or at scale. What have you seen be the responsibilities of product managers in there? And maybe also, what do you think they're not getting involved in as much as they should be getting involved in?
Ray McKenzie: I think product management should be intently tied to strategic decisions within the business when it's focused around product and the growth of the business. If it's focused around personnel and spending and things of that nature, maybe not so much. But when you come to the root of the business and you're talking about revenue growth and you're talking about product growth and you're talking about expansion of the business, product should be in those discussions.
Because one, they need to listen and understand where the vision of the business is going. But then two, they also have to give feedback in terms of what else are other people doing from a competitive point of view? And also, what are people doing to use our product and use our service? What are we providing?
And then, what are other people doing out there in the marketplace? And then, what makes sense for us to go after from a differentiating point of view? What is going to be that aspect of our product or service or company that's going to be different from everybody else? And we see a lot of companies that have strategies that are like, oh, we want to be different from this company or we do this a little bit different from them.
But really, once they get in terms of product functionality, it's really the same. There's no differentiation between that. And so you say it, but you don't really live it. The product is in a lot of those strategic discussions in terms of revenue, product growth and expansion, and partnerships as well.
Then you have some sort of vision moving forward. And product can build to that, can develop to that, and is aligned with where the business is going. And then they can develop that forward thinking strategy to be competitive and or surpass competitors in terms of features and functionality. Because there's a lot of industries out there with products that have been in the market for three, five, seven years, where it's really just table stakes.
One company builds something, the other company builds the same thing. The other company builds something, the other company builds the same thing. And nothing really is transformative. If you get product in the room from an executive point of view, in a strategic point of view, they can say, this is where we need to go.
Where do we think we can align that with revenue? This is where our customers are going, and this is where our competition is going. And they make decisions to say, we want to pursue this, we want to pursue that, or maybe there's another avenue or channel they want to pursue.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, so I think it's incredibly important what you're saying. And I think a lot of companies are not doing that work to actually figure out how to differentiate. Like a lot of conversations I've been in so far, not so far, but like lately, have been about how do we keep up with competitors, but not actually how do we differentiate against competitors.
So I think that's absolutely key when we think about product management and setting visions, like how do we do something different? Because catching up is just, you're just going to be the same as somebody else, right? Like why would I choose you over somebody else if you're not actually differentiated?
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Visit productinstitute.com and learn to think like a great product manager. Use code THINKING to save $200 at checkout on our premier course, Product Management Foundations. I completely agree with your point as well about product management being involved in growth, because I think a lot of times, especially in enterprise companies that have a sales function, sometimes we think revenue is all sales, and we don't see how much of it is tied back to product.
And I think that's a dangerous place to get into because now product just becomes like a cost center in our minds instead of a revenue driver, which, for many companies, it is, right? It is a revenue driver, and we have to remember that.
Ray McKenzie: Yeah, definitely. One of the things we've tried to incorporate at the starting point is being a product-led company, product-led growth. That's kind of where we want to be. And by building what your ideal customer wants and putting it out there for them to use and try and experience, that can be a big driver for the business, a huge revenue driver for the business.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, exactly. You know, I read a really interesting article the other day, too, on how to tell if your company is truly product-led by OpenView. And I thought it was insightful because they started doing this ratio, right? That was the spend between R&D and the spend in sales and marketing. And they're basically saying, if your sales and marketing spend completely outweighs your R&D spend, you are not product-led.
You actually are sales-led. You have people out there drumming it. But if your R&D is outspending your sales and marketing by quite a bit, you are product-led because you're focusing on building the drivers of that revenue, the product itself, to grow, to get there, which is a go-to-market strategy, right?
Like being product-led is a go-to-market strategy. I'm curious how you think about that, too. Like, it is a different go-to-market strategy than a lot of companies are thinking about. When you want to be product-led, how do you make sure that you can get in front of people and that you do... Like, what do you have to think about that's different than your typical go-to-market strategy, which might be like sales targeting?
Ray McKenzie: Companies that traditionally follow the sales model of let's hire a bunch of salespeople, let's hire a solid marketing team, let's put people on every continent, country managers, territories, industries, verticals. The challenge for that is that's really heavy in terms of over. If you build a product-led company, and I read the same article from OpenView as well, which was fantastic, is you're focused on building a product that once you get it in the hands of people, they can have a quick time to value, see the immediate benefits of it, and then it becomes ingrained in how they work day-to-day.
And then once it becomes part of their day-to-day work, they're automatically going to share the solution with other people. And from there, those new people become customers. Then those people see the value, and it continues to cascade, become viral, repeat itself, and you get more and more customers or more and more referrals.
And really, the focus is building a company or building a product that's easy to use, that you can get in the hands of customers and they can use it quickly. Then they can take it and run with it and see the value on a day-to-day basis. We're following, trying to follow that from our side and trying to build it in that manner.
And a lot of companies, you know, they start out saying product-led, but then in the effort to get revenue, they shift to, hey, we're going to hire 20 salespeople. That came from that growth strategy.
Melissa Perri: It sounds like when you're figuring out what to build as your product, though, a lot of this has to come into play, right? Like, you have to be able to think about what is your go-to-market strategy to be able to build your product correctly? So I imagine there's a lot of... You have to have product management involved in that.
Product management needs to be involved in that. They need to be thinking about that. What have you seen typically in companies, especially ones you've worked at or ones you've worked with, where that goes awry? Because sometimes I feel like... I've seen companies personally where a lot of people think the go-to-market strategy belongs in product marketing and they don't bring the product team along, right?
They don't bring the product management team in there to actually think these things through. But I see beautiful products get built that just never get adopted. Like, what have you seen out there in the market? How are people traditionally thinking about go-to-market strategy?
Ray McKenzie: I've been a part of several different companies and experienced several different types of approaches. One approach I saw early in my career was hey, we've got a great product but our go-to-market strategy is going to be let's hire salespeople, let's hire marketing, and let's throw a lot of dollars at it and people will continue to adopt the product. And that didn't work.
Eventually the company who said hey, we're not going to invest in product growth anymore and not investing in product growth actually stunted the complete revenue of that business division. You have to keep pace with what else is out there, what other people are doing. And that company and that division has suffered some rough times over the years.
Then I've seen companies that say we're going to invest heavily, our strategy is going to be investing heavily in the channel and invest heavily in partnerships and integrations. They go out and they pass that down to product and products not necessarily involved in the discussion. Next thing you know, they build a lot of integrations with other products.
They embed their product into other third-party large enterprise-level softwares and it never takes off. It doesn't take off at all and now product has spent 9, 12, 18 months working on this channel and partnership-led initiative that didn't really pan out from a GTM perspective. Then I've seen companies that there's plenty of examples of these nowadays to where you'll see products that are lightweight, easy to use, functional.
You get in the hands of people, people are like oh my gosh, I love them, you or I have probably used several of them today what we typically use. And really one of the challenges I've seen with just the GTM perspective and go to market is product should have some insight in terms of what they believe makes sense because they're closer tied to the product but then they're also taking a look at the competitive positioning of their product or they should be. And if they are, they can tell hey, this is one of our competitors is doing this really well versus one of our other competitors is not doing this very well and this is where we can take advantage of certain features or functions or maybe a positioning or maybe somebody's not doing this or that.
And when product is not in those go to market discussions it goes back to being aligned with the vision and strategy of the business. They're not aligned. They may build something that doesn't make any sense at all. And that lends to more complications and failures and lost revenue and customers not being happy or lack of growth.
Melissa Perri: So how do you propose product get involved in go to market strategies if they're not being included? Let's say you are a product manager over something that's going to launch but the product marketing team is like no, we'll just take that over. What should product managers do to make sure that they can be in the right conversations?
Ray McKenzie: I think one of the duties of executive product management is to definitely have right-hand experience or tie-ins with the CEO or the executive team in most of these discussions. And if you have that, that senior product leader should definitely work with their product team to get insight and just have those discussions which is in organizations that I've been a part of, organizations that I've ran, sit down every two weeks and just say where do we think we should go that we don't have right now? Just a simple question and just say ideas.
What do we think we should build? What's new? What's exciting? And share those with executive management and share those ideas. And then executive management can take a look and say, okay, this makes some sense. This aligns with our strategy. This aligns with where we want to go from a strategic point of view and then start the what's it going to take to get this done situation.
But without capturing that information from product managers and then from senior product people sharing that with executive management, you distance yourself from the strategic vision of the business or even providing some insight. I've seen organizations and been a part of organizations where product has, for the most part, just accepted directives and not proposed ideas or initiatives. And in doing so, they just build what the company says build.
And then the product managers come back and say, well, I just decided to build what they told us to build. They don't have any passion behind it. They don't have any drivers behind it. And it doesn't lead to a great outcome.
Melissa Perri: I've seen that in a lot of cases. And I also hear from product managers on the flip side. They just don't feel empowered to make the decisions or to be part of those conversations. But I do agree, like a lot of it does come down to product leadership. If you don't have super strong product leaders, I see them wreak havoc everywhere, which is really, really sad.
There's so much just riding on that that can make a huge difference. So I also want to ask you about evaluating different go-to-market strategies. Because there's a lot of different ones. And I've seen companies start with one go-to-market strategy, where they're like, oh, I'll just have a sales team.
And then they find out that their go-to-market strategy that fits really well with them is maybe a partnership instead. What are the different go-to-market strategies that companies should be thinking about? And how do you evaluate what's right for you? Early on too, so that you're not building in a different direction for so long.
What should product management be doing to think about the various go-to-market strategies? And how do they figure out what's right for them?
Ray McKenzie: It really depends on the product that they are building. And how their audience or client profile would find their product. If you're building a product-led company, a product-led growth company, which we've talked about, your product and your go-to-market strategy, if it's going to be product-led, should lead into product functionality and how it can be adopted.
And so the product leaders, along with executive management, should say, hey, we want to be a product-led company. These are the principles we want to abide by. We want to make sure it's easy for people to sign up, easy for people to use, easy for people to onboard, easy for people to implement, and they become sticky within their everyday workflow.
If you're a company that wants to build via channel or partnerships or integrations, then maybe you don't have to prioritize ease of use with end users. You have to focus on your integrators and your channel and how they would get a hold of the product and how they would use it or resell the product. And that can be a completely different approach, which is maybe you're just selling via having an open API.
You're having different matters like that. Now that's not easy for everybody to do. So you have to build in that chain and build towards developers and talk to developers. And maybe you decide to launch a developer community instead of just a business operations community to spread the word. And those are two different languages and two different ways to communicate.
And then if you're building via a method of a sales team, a marketing team, a professional services team with engagement, then maybe you're building a product that takes a longer time to actually see that time to value. Maybe it has a longer time for setup and implementation. Maybe it is extremely robust and functionality that can solve problems across multiple organizations.
And so if you're going to do that as a product team, we can go ahead and we can say, hey, we're going to tackle 10 or 20 different products and features because we know we have a services team that can integrate and implement our solution for our customers. And that's the approach we're taking. So really you have those three different methods for how you want to go to market and what makes sense and what's most effective for your end customer.
Does your end customer have the budget and have the opportunity to pay for consultants, integrators, people to come in and training for staff to help implement the solution? Or do you need a solution that somebody can just plug and play right into their environment that they can use? You know, all of those things will play a factor in terms of how product gets involved and hopefully they're involved earlier so they can build towards that decision track.
Melissa Perri: So is there a way to experiment on your go-to-market strategy, kind of the way that we talk about experimenting with your product? Are there tactics people can use to test these different areas? What would you do to narrow down your hypotheses there?
Ray McKenzie: Talk to people. That's the first thing I would say for everyone is talk to your ideal customer, talk to your colleagues, even possibly do market research in terms of understanding what go-to-market strategy would be best. Like, you have to think that's the best way to find out how to do it. For us, what we've done is, and I've seen it done multiple times before, is we just get it in the hands of 10 to 20 beta testers and give feedback and give thought and ask them the question how would you find our product?
And if they can give you feedback in terms of, oh, well, more than likely somebody another company told me about this product, or how did you find the use of this product that you're using now? Share this a lot with people. There's not a lot of things in the world that are free, but opinions definitely are.
People are always willing to share their opinions no charge. And so if you just talk to people, they will lead you in the direction of where is easiest to go. And if you understand who your ideal customer is, talk to as many people of that kind as possible, and they'll tell you where you should invest your go-to-market dollars or go-to-market strategy.
You know, there's been products that people have used that they found via like I said, developer communities. There's products that people have bought because of sales. And then there's products people have bought because of other colleagues or referrals. And by just talking to people, it will help you kind of refine how your go-to-market strategy works.
I'd ask those two questions. How would you find a product like ours? And how did you find the product you're using that does what we do? And that will typically lead you in the right direction.
Melissa Perri: Great. I think that's fantastic advice. I'm curious, too, because we're talking a lot about like software businesses. And you've done digital transformations. I've worked with a lot of companies that do that, too. And when we get into topics like product-led growth and all these different things, I always hear the companies that are not traditionally built on software go, but like that doesn't apply to us. Does this apply to your banks and your insurance companies and anything that's really going through a digital transformation, or like what should they think about differently there?
Ray McKenzie: For companies that are not software-based, if you're developing products or products and or services for people, I really always fall back on who is your ideal customer and what is your competition doing and what really differentiates your product from what other people are getting into. I've seen a lot of traditional banks that struggle with things like a user interface for how their customers interact with their bank. There was a period, obviously, in banking to where customers used to always have to go directly into the branch.
And then over the course of the last 20 years, or 20, 30 years, we've now seen where I don't know when the last time you went into a bank branch, but I haven't been in one in a long time. And so you think about when I need to compete for banking or financial services customers, how do they interact with me? What am I building to make it easy for them to use our products and services?
How can I make this easy for them to sign up for maybe an insurance package or maybe a different investment opportunity or any type of account that is on our system? And how do we make that easy? I've actually seen a bank that has probably the worst interface I've seen in banking that does millions and millions of dollars.
But a lot of their customers are primarily enterprise level customers. And they have a large kind of sales staff, customer success staff, account management staff. And then I see banks that are more modern that don't have as much of those in-person people available for their customers to talk to. But their technology is actually very robust.
And you can do everything via your phone. And so you have those different opportunities and it kind of depends on the customers you're working with and your desire to try to modernize. And going back, that goes back to go to market strategy and who our customers are and how product defines what we're building for our customers.
Melissa Perri: I had to go to a banking branch the other day because my deposit did not work on our app because somebody did not think about what happens if the signature is not in the standard signature place in this very secure check from a client. Had it in a random place that I wouldn't go through. And I was like, I don't want to go here.
But I agree. It just sounds like it's so much I feel like, I feel like so much of our worlds are going to be taking place online or in software for the foreseeable future. And you have to think if you're an older school company, let's say, you have to start thinking like that. The battles are going to be won in software and online.
That's like a huge component to it. I agree. I don't know if they're all thinking that way. It's something I think about. But I do hear on the flip side from a lot of customers that the customer service makes a big difference too. So it's interesting. I think there's just so much that goes intertwined into what we should be looking at.
But I agree with you. I think like the go to market strategy, the product strategy, some of that is so intertwined. No matter what type of company that you are, and you have to be thinking about that as a strategic advantage and something that might set you apart from your competition. So I'm curious to see how this is all going to play out in the future as well with the larger companies making these transitions, the smaller startups like you were mentioning with the banks coming through and having really fantastic technology.
How is that going to balance out and what's going to look like in the future? I agree. I think this is such a critical part of product is thinking about how do we get in touch with our customers and who do we want to service there?
Ray McKenzie: Yeah, it's interesting. I think we're both seeing companies, especially in financial markets, insurance, traditional ways of doing business, start to evaluate how we interact with newer companies, newer customers. We've seen I think five to seven years ago, we started to really see, in terms of banks, companies that were built on products that were entirely online.
And now you're seeing banks that are a hybrid of that, but they're primarily 80 to 20. They're 80% online, 20% people you can reach. They don't have banks on every corner. They have different ways where you can get access to your funds and your money and your investments and any type of accounts that you have.
And so you're seeing definitely a transformation there. But they're in their strategy and the products that they build and the products and services that they offer, they're catering to their customer. Customer behavior dictates what they're doing from a strategic point of view, moving it forward, along with how they build products.
And that's why product management should always be in those discussions. So they're aligned with the vision and where the company wants to go. And they're not just getting it passed down to them in a directive saying, hey, to your example, go build this optical recognition capability that can recognize signatures only in this area or in this place on the check.
They should be able to recognize it everywhere. And newer companies have that understanding. And so product management is a core piece of business growth, revenue growth, kind of in the future direction of a lot of different companies now that everybody is definitely moving towards products in a way, along with they're moving towards software.
And it's ultimately important.
Melissa Perri: Fantastic. Yeah, really wise words there. So thank you so much for being with us, Ray. If people want to go learn more about what you do, learn more about your business,
Ray McKenzie: Where can they find you? They can find me on LinkedIn and Raymond McKenzie. And then you can also find me at www. Startingpoint.ai or www. Redbeachadvisors.com and also Twitter, Ray R-A-Y-M-C 2-0-9. And it's been a pleasure being on the podcast and talking with you about all things product.
Melissa Perri: It's been a pleasure having you. Thank you so much.
