3 Seismic Shifts in B2B Product Management
And why it must evolve beyond traditional playbooks or risk obsolescence
Product Management emerged as a strategic business function, tasked with driving commercial success through product capabilities. Over time we started talking in features and sprints instead of business growth outcomes. We confused the means for the end.
But the world is changing right beneath our feet. And for product management to remain relevant, we must go back to our “roots“ and re-claim the business mandate.
In this article I go over the three main “seismic shifts” I see in the business software market and analyze how exactly they demand transformation to the “traditional” approach.
Shift #1: Evolving Customer Expectations
Today, the model of “top-down” B2B sales is crumbling.
We live in a world of intuitive, self-serve consumer apps. We’ve become smarter, faster, more capable. We’ve seen what “good” looks like, and expect the same from our work software. Spending time talking to people to understand, try, or purchase products feels very 2010. Even economic buyers prefer to let their employees organically adopt software and only pay for proven usage.
Yet, most B2B software remains a mere collection of features, stitched together like a patchwork blanket, leaving customers confused, frustrated, and forced to ask for help — a direct path to churn.
I meet enough founders who genuinely believe that new features will magically solve their churn and NRR problems. But features don't drive mass engagement; deliberately crafted experiences do. Who should craft them? The same teams that build these features.
But when teams are focused only on their piece of the puzzle and pressured to just ship value, connecting users to that value is often left to chance. In a self-serve world, that's a losing game. Enterprise B2B may not feel it just yet. They will.
Shift #2: Efficiency-First Business Mindset
Layoffs are ongoing since 2022. Metrics like ARR per FTE have made it to the top of business health KPIs. The "growth at all costs" motto is dead, every hire is scrutinized, and companies can’t afford to scale by headcount only.
An unpleasant fact is that payroll is typically the highest cost on a company's balance sheet, making it a viable profit growth lever. Employees with incremental impact are at risk.
What makes a high-impact product team? Their ability to drive outsized business results with the same production bandwidth.
In this efficiency-first business environment, product is no longer just about building. It's about enabling businesses to scale and drive customer and revenue growth via product, not via people.
Shift #3: The AI Revolution
Here I want to highlight two fundamental ways AI is redefining B2B product management.
The AI-Fueled Hyper-Competition
Today, a business can launch and validate faster than ever with as little as one person. Competition is intense, and growth is getting harder and more expensive, while willingness-to-pay is lowering due to the economic climate.
Strengthening engagement and retention is not optional anymore — it’s a question of survival. The emphasis shifts from building more to building stronger. Because more value doesn’t automatically translate into business impact.
Features must become mini-ecosystems that provide proper discovery paths, seamless onboarding and continuous engagement strategies, pricing alignment that drives adoption, and robust support mechanisms.
If your product is a “patchwork planket” of disparate functionality and unpolished MVPs, you’re diluting core value, confusing customers, and leaking revenue.
But if done well, B2B products can leverage their unique advantage — the opportunity to sell more to existing customers who are growing with you and increasing their usage and spend.
This is a significant growth lever where product teams must contribute with workflows that allow customers to discover, understand, and get hooked on additional value for their entire organization. In reality, this responsibility is often relayed to Customer Success teams (the unsung heroes of B2B) — and this doesn't scale.
AI as an Impact Accelerator
AI is reshaping day-to-day product development and is increasingly assisting in even critical tasks. It is speeding us through execution that previously required hours. This efficiency will only grow.
Another profound implication is that lines between traditional roles are blurring. Designers and Engineers, powered by AI, can now accomplish increasingly more of what was recently the exclusive domain of Product Managers.
PMs’ role as facilitators is diminishing. Their worth now is measured by their product, analytical, commercial, and organizational sense. PMs and leaders have to actively cultivate often underdeveloped capabilities like:
Ability to find unique, differentiated customer & market insights.
Crafting strategies that demonstrably contribute to the company’s top and bottom lines.
Thinking in feature portfolios that strengthen adoption, engagement, and monetization.
Rallying cross-functional leaders to execute focused strategy as a united front.
Many product people possess developed analytical, product, or strategic sense. Most have a profound lack of commercial sense. They know their metrics and OKRs but have never seen their company’s balance sheet. They don't understand how their business makes money, what drives profitability, or what the scaling costs are.
Let me ask you: How can you make an impact if you don't understand how impact is made? How can you build value if you don't understand how business value is captured? How can you be strategic if you don't understand the structure of company growth?
We’ve barely moved from “output-driven” to “outcome-driven” paradigm, but now it’s time to take the next step and move from top product outcomes to financial impact. 🤷♀️
So What?
These three shifts are not going anywhere, meaning a fundamental recalibration of priorities and operational models:
From outputs to financial impact: Product must demonstrably contribute to revenue and operational efficiency.
From human- to product-centric scale: Scaling efficiency relies on automating internal processes and customer workflows to reduce reliance on costly human resources.
From acquisition-only to retention & expansion-focused growth: Sustainable growth comes from solid product engagement as the foundation for revenue retention and expansion.
From features to ecosystems: Features are no longer standalone units. They must be designed as interconnected ecosystems that facilitate growth outcomes within the product itself.
However, the product management function, in its majority, isn't well equipped to handle these shifts. This reveals critical gaps that hinder true strategic growth:
Organizational perception of product teams as feature owners without explicit accountability for their downstream business effects.
A deficit in understanding fundamental business and financial concepts, and how product drives value capture.
Fragmented customer journey and user experience ownership, leading to weak product engagement.
Underdeveloped organizational leadership skills, leaving PMs perceived as facilitators rather than strategic business leaders.
The new playbook isn't about more work – it's about a different kind of work. The product organization must transform from a perceived cost center into a direct driver of top- and bottom-line impact. This is the new imperative.
In this blog, I’ll be writing about what this imperative entails, necessary transformation for the product function, and Product Growth. Sign up to not miss my next post :)