Onboarding Done Right - Part 2

This is part 2/3 of the "onboarding done right" series focused on getting your new joiners (or yourself) on the track to be productive and useful. And to be productive and useful in an early project/startup, you need a deep understanding of the business, vision, team rituals and what success even means here.

I talked about the first steps in part 1 and today I'm going to talk about understanding business fundamentals which is critical for any business hire, but very important for any product and engineering hires too.

I will repeat that again and again - the main reason why understanding of what you're trying to do on the product and business side is critical for everyone in the early stage of the company is to allow them to be productive and useful as fast as possible. Teammates in the early stages have to make a lot of impactful decisions every day without any handholding. The business & product context is what allows them to do it.

Business Fundamentals side:

What minimum should you seek to understand from business fundamentals:

• key company goals, metrics, KPIs / OKRs (or whatever buzzwords they use for numbers they measure)
• company business & financial model (hopefully that exists)
• competitive landscape, risks & opportunities which can be translated as - markets you as product want to play in.
• product positioning, if it is formulated
• review the opportunities pipeline and what events are going to impact it in the next 90 days.
• Often there won't be a list of immediate opportunities, then ask for ideal target customers - there's usually a list of those (even if just in founder's head).

Customer from internal point of view:

What you should seek to understand about customer from the team's point of view:

• customer journey map - maybe it exists or someone can at least explain it to you. You should have this even if you don't have any customers yet.
• check out (or start creating) the Ideal Customer Profile(s) (ICP). It will help you tremendously even if that sounds formal.
• Is there a difference between user and buyer for your product/service? If there is - you need both personas described.
• review JTBDs (Jobs To Be Done) or create them. Why are customers hiring you, why they should? Add JTBDs to the ICP to formalise your understanding of problem(s) you're solving for your ideal fan. Yes, your ideal customer should become your fan as soon as possible. That's flywheel start.
• E.g. one JTBD assumptions I wrote for Distributed Press (DPress) at the start of our cooperation was:
  • our assumption for next steps will be that "Customer hires DPress to get comprehensive capabilities (without additional hassle) to publish to distributed web & blockchain networks, from which she can pick & choose, in addition to traditional web2 publishing."
• ask what the team believes users most love about the product? Often users will like the idea but not the product (stated vs actual preference and pain).
• review what team knows about what stops customers from buying? What are conversion friction points?
• why do customers churn? And what interviews have we done with churned customers?
• has anything proven effective in churned user resurrection? Any surveys or come-back sequences, discounts, etc. in place?
• read through your messaging - from website, to emails, to in-product message. Does it feel coherent and inline with the rest?
• Ask if the team feels we have message-market fit? (sure, sometimes there's no message yet than N/A)
• Even if you're not joining marketing side of things, you should ask - what are the best performing traffic channels (organic & paid)? What channels were tried and didn't perform?

Customer from customer side

The last part for today is trying to understand the customer from the customer side. Find someone who knows answers to the following questions (or at least has informed opinion about it):

• what makes customers successful?
• what best practices do customers employ when using our product?
• why do some customers not realise value from the product?
• what are the biggest issues customers face?
• what is the pitch that wins?
• what messaging works best?
• what messaging should be avoided?
• If you're gonna be working on the business side of things, I'd definitely recommend to participate in customer success calls as ride-along or organise some calls of your own.

Major question at the end of this excercise is whether things you've learned fit with the overall vision and strategy as you understood it? You'd be surprised how often the business fundamentals and opportunities the teams are seeing now don't match their vision or product.

Remember that the one of the most valuable things every new person brings to the team is a set of fresh eyes that can see stuff you can't see if you're buried in shipping product and solving problems all day everyday. Use that set of fresh eyes to question things and to provide your, maybe uninformed, perspective. This has great value!

Conclusion of part 2 of 3

Today it was all about business points and how they fit with your understanding of the customers you try to serve. Maybe you don't have everything figured out or documented, or it's outdated - it's the to refresh or deepen the understanding while having a set of fresh eyes.

Next time we'll wrap it up by having a look at product metrics that (where relevant) should add the last bit of color to the picture your new team member already has now.