How to Choose the Ideal Product Leader for Your Company

Finding the right product leader can be pivotal for your company’s growth. With candidates spanning diverse backgrounds, industries, and stages of maturity, ensuring you make the perfect match is crucial. In part one of our master hiring series, we highlighted five critical considerations and mistakes to avoid before hiring a Product Management leader. In part one of our master hiring series for product leaders, we shared 5 Critical Considerations (and Mistakes to Avoid) Before Hiring a Product Management Leader. In part two, we will navigate eight key decision points that CEOs and hiring managers need to consider as you hone in on precisely what your team and business need help with.

Understanding your needs

What’s the gap, pain point, or opportunity driving this hire? Simply put, what does your business and team need help with? Start by understanding your company’s problems driving the need to hire a product leader. Ideally, you have already hired a few execution-focused PMs to handle the day-to-day work. Below, I unpack the role and unique considerations to understand your company’s needs and, in turn, what to look for.

1) Domain

Is there specific domain expertise lacking in your organization?

2) Bandwidth

Are you spending too much time building product roadmaps when you need to focus on other business areas? Do you have another functional leader who lacks product expertise overseeing the product function?

3) Execution

Are blockers preventing the engineers from shipping due to a lack of clarity on what they should be working on?

4) Strategy & Prioritization

Do you have a promising vision but need help assessing your position in the market? Do you need help determining roadmap priorities and deciding what should or should not be built?

A strategic product leader needs to be deep in the data to validate ideas, look at problems from the end-user’s perspective, determine what to build, who to sell to, when to go to market, and establish frameworks for evaluating and prioritizing ideas, testing, validating, and iterating. While ideation is an integral part of being a product leader, establishing frameworks for assessing and prioritizing ideas, testing, validating, and iterating is critical.

5) Visionary Leadership

Is the future vision lacking? Should you co-share this responsibility or source other areas of inspiration?

The product vision is a foundational element that defines the long-term direction and aspiration for the product’s development and its place in the market. It is the guiding star that creates a sense of purpose and direction. A visionary product leader provides a clear, inspirational, and aspirational direction for the product’s future, including how the product will stand out in the market by addressing unique value propositions and competitive advantages.

6) Go-To-Market

Are you struggling to launch your product successfully and gain initial market traction?

A strong product leader will develop a comprehensive GTM strategy that identifies the target audience, crafts the value proposition, determines effective distribution channels, and coordinates launch activities to ensure a successful market introduction.

7) Growth

Is your user base stagnant, or are you facing challenges in expanding your product’s reach and engagement?

A growth-focused product leader will implement strategies to attract new users, retain existing ones, and drive long-term product adoption. They will focus on user acquisition, retention, product iteration, and leveraging virality to scale the user base.

8) Monetization

Are you struggling to generate revenue from your product or optimizing your existing revenue streams?

A product leader with expertise in monetization will develop and execute strategies to maximize the product’s revenue potential. This includes setting the right pricing strategy, identifying revenue streams, optimizing sales processes, and establishing financial metrics to monitor performance.

You’re starting to get a clear sense of why your business may need to make this hire, which will help determine what this person will be responsible for and, in turn, who you need to search for. The spectrum of product leaders varies. Early-stage startups might benefit more from hands-on product leaders, depending on the company’s maturity, while more established companies require strategic guidance.

No matter the level, effective product leadership requires thinking about the market and customers, understanding how software products are built, and working effectively with engineering. Great product leaders are excellent communicators, inspiring storytellers, and coaches. They gracefully challenge CEOs, rally the team to build great products, build client trust, and inspire the company.

“Product leaders must think about how they can bring out the best in the CEO, aligning an agreed-upon company vision and then channeling that into a clear product strategy. In essence, the partnership between a CEO and a Head of Product succeeds if they can get the rest of the executive team on board to execute their strategy.” ~ Jiaona Zhang (JZ)