Making Sure you REALLY Know your Customers and Pulling out of Growth Stalls (with Adrienne Barnes, Founder @ Best Buyer Persona)

Adrienne Barnes started out working to help people with their user personas but found that her work pointed to an even bigger problem - companies entering growth stalls and unable to recover. She is now here to tell us all how we might maintain our flightworthiness and get back onto the path of sustainable growth. A message from this episode's sponsor - Product People This episode is sponsored by Product People. If you’re a company founder or product leader who needs to get a product management team up and running quickly or cover parental leave check out Product People. They’ve got a thriving community and 40 in-house product managers, product ops pros, and product leaders. They onboard fast, align teams and deliver outcomes. Check out Product People to book a free intro chat and quote code OKIP to get a 5% discount. Episode highlights: Growth Stalls can happen to anyone and often happen after really strong growth Companies can be growing, growing, growing and then all of a sudden just stall. There are factors that influence this, but if they're not addressed then growth stalls can last for years or decades There are some red flags that indicate growth stalls and leaders need to listen Too many leaders believe in themselves too much that they miss the signs of a growth stall & fail to address them. Status quo bias and ignoring dissenting opinions can impede efforts to fix it. The earlier you catch a growth stall the better but it's never too late Identifying stalls early naturally helps, but if you catch it late then you can still turn it around as long as you're realistic about what "turning it around" means and adjust your expectations. Growth comes from understanding your customers & too many companies don't If teams have different user personas defined, no one has user personas defined. There needs to be a concerted effort to understand your ideal customers and it should be a top-down, aligned effort. Alignment is crucial for any of this stuff to work The top reasons for growth stalls are: Not understanding your customers, Not understanding your positioning, Knowledge gaps & misalignments between teams. You need everyone to know the same stuff & pull in the same direction! Contact Adrienne You can connect with Adrienne on LinkedIn, Twitter or check her website, AdrienneNakohl.com.