What is a SaaS product strategy?

A SaaS product strategy is a comprehensive plan that guides how a Software-as-a-Service company develops, positions, and evolves its products to meet customer needs while achieving business objectives. Unlike traditional software, SaaS products are delivered through the cloud on a subscription basis, creating unique strategic considerations around continuous development, customer retention, and recurring revenue growth.

Viewing SaaS product strategy through the lens of Jobs To Be Done theory focuses on the underlying goals customers are trying to achieve rather than simply responding to feature requests or competitive pressures. This approach helps SaaS companies create sustainable competitive advantages by truly solving customer problems better than alternatives.

Why is a product strategy essential for SaaS companies?

SaaS companies face unique challenges that make a well-defined product strategy crucial:

1. Retention is revenue - With subscription models, customer retention directly impacts revenue stability and growth.
2. Continuous delivery expectations - Customers expect regular improvements and updates, requiring a coherent roadmap.
3. Market saturation - Many SaaS categories have numerous competitors, making differentiation critical.

As companies grow from startup to scale-up, product decisions become more complex and impactful. A robust SaaS product strategy addresses these challenges by providing clear direction on which customer problems to solve, which features to prioritize, and how to position against competitors in both the short and long term.

What are the components of an effective SaaS product strategy?

Market Definition

Traditional market definitions based on product categories (e.g., "CRM software" or "project management tools") are limiting and can blind companies to emerging competitors. Instead, define your market based on the customer's Job To Be Done—the goal they're trying to accomplish.

For example, Slack didn't define its market as "business chat software" but rather focused on the job of "enabling team communication and reducing email overload." This job-based market definition opened up strategic possibilities beyond the constraints of existing product categories.

Target Customer Identification

SaaS products often serve multiple stakeholders with different needs:

• Job beneficiaries - Those who directly benefit from getting the job done
• Job executors - Those who use the product to help beneficiaries
• Purchase decision makers - Those who decide which solution to buy

A B2B SaaS company might build core functionality for job executors while developing security features and analytics for purchase decision makers. Understanding these different stakeholders helps create a product that not only performs well for users but also addresses the concerns of those who control the budget.

Unmet Needs Prioritization

The most valuable SaaS products address unmet customer needs—areas where customers struggle to get their jobs done with existing solutions. Identifying these needs requires both qualitative and quantitative research to understand which job steps cause the most struggle, how quickly and accurately customers can execute these steps, and how much they value improvements in speed and accuracy.

By quantifying customer effort to complete job steps, a SaaS company can identify the highest-value opportunities to differentiate its product. This data-driven approach removes much of the subjectivity from product decisions and ensures development resources focus on solving real customer problems.

Competitive Positioning

SaaS markets are increasingly crowded, making strategic positioning critical. A strong product strategy positions your solution against competitors based on how well you satisfy unmet needs in the customer's job, not just on feature comparisons.

This requires:

• Understanding how competitors perform on key job steps
• Identifying their weaknesses in satisfying specific customer needs
• Emphasizing your strengths in areas most important to customers

Effective positioning means deliberately choosing which aspects of the job you'll excel at and which you might de-emphasize based on your target customers' priorities.

Pricing Strategy

SaaS pricing strategies should reflect the value delivered in helping customers get their jobs done, not just the cost of developing or delivering the software. Value-based pricing considers the customer's willingness to pay to get their job done better, the economic benefit they receive from improvements in speed and accuracy, and the level of struggle they currently experience with alternatives.

This approach often leads to tiered pricing structures that align with different customer segments' willingness to pay based on their specific needs and usage patterns. The right pricing strategy not only maximizes revenue but also communicates your product's value proposition to the market.

How do we create a SaaS product strategy using Jobs To Be Done?

Creating an effective SaaS product strategy using Jobs To Be Done involves these steps:

1. Define the customer's Job To Be Done

Start by clearly articulating what goal your customers are trying to achieve, independent of any product or technology. For example, Salesforce helps salespeople "acquire new customers," QuickBooks helps accountants "manage cash flow," and Zoom helps professionals "collaborate remotely."

This job definition should be stable over time, unlike product features or technologies which constantly change. The job should be specific enough to guide product decisions but broad enough to accommodate evolving technologies and approaches. It serves as the foundation for all subsequent strategic decisions and creates alignment across product, marketing, and sales teams.

2. Map the job steps and customer needs

Break down the customer's job into 10-20 discrete steps, following a pattern of:

• Understanding the job requirements
• Planning how to accomplish the job
• Executing the core job activities
• Monitoring progress
• Making adjustments
• Concluding the job

Within each step, identify 5-10 specific needs that measure how quickly and accurately customers can execute the job. These needs are defined as actions and variables independent of any product. For example, in the job of "acquiring new customers," one need might be "determine which leads are most likely to close."

The job map becomes a powerful tool for aligning teams around customer needs rather than features or technologies. It provides a stable reference point as markets and technologies evolve, ensuring the product strategy remains focused on what truly matters to customers.

3. Identify underserved segments and unmet needs

Use quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to determine which customer segments struggle most with the job, which specific needs are most difficult to satisfy, and how much customers value improvements in these areas. Look for patterns of struggle that reveal underserved segments willing to pay for a better solution.

This research often reveals surprising insights that challenge conventional market wisdom. Segments that appear similar based on traditional demographics may have dramatically different patterns of struggle with the job. The most valuable segments are often those experiencing high levels of struggle with needs they consider important.

4. Analyze competitive solutions

Assess how well existing solutions satisfy the customer needs you've identified. This isn't about feature-to-feature comparisons but about measuring how quickly and accurately each solution helps customers execute their job steps. This analysis reveals competitive weaknesses you can exploit and strengths you need to defend against.

You may discover that:

• Apparent competitors aren't actually solving the same customer job
• Non-obvious solutions are satisfying customer needs better than expected
• Significant opportunities exist where all competitors perform poorly on important needs

These insights help identify your true competitive landscape and inform differentiation strategies.

5. Develop your strategic choices

Based on your research, make explicit choices about:

• Which customer segment to target
• Which unmet needs to focus on
• How to position against competitors
• What key capabilities to build or acquire
• How to price and monetize your solution

These choices should form a coherent strategy that directs product development, marketing, and sales toward satisfying your target customers' most important unmet needs.

How do we implement a SaaS product strategy?

Implementation is where many strategies fail. To successfully execute your SaaS product strategy:

Translate strategy into roadmap

Convert your strategic choices into a concrete product roadmap that prioritizes features based on customer needs, not stakeholder opinions. Balance short-term wins with long-term strategic goals, include measurable success criteria tied to customer outcomes, and allocate appropriate resources to each initiative.

The roadmap should clearly connect each planned feature or enhancement to specific customer needs identified in your strategy. This creates transparency about why certain items are prioritized and helps resist the pressure to add "nice-to-have" features that don't address strategic priorities.

Regular roadmap reviews ensure the plan remains aligned with strategy as market conditions change and new information becomes available. These reviews should evaluate progress not just in terms of feature delivery but in terms of satisfying customer needs and achieving strategic objectives.

Align your organization

Ensure everyone understands the strategy by:

• Communicating the target customer and Job To Be Done clearly
• Training teams on the job steps and unmet needs
• Using consistent language to discuss customer problems
• Creating shared metrics that measure progress toward strategic goals

This alignment extends beyond the product team to include marketing, sales, customer success, and executive leadership. When everyone understands the customer's job and the strategic focus on specific unmet needs, they can make better decisions in their respective roles that support the overall strategy.

Build feedback mechanisms

Implement processes to validate your strategy, including:

• Customer advisory boards focused on job execution, not feature feedback
• Usage analytics that measure job completion, not just feature adoption
• Regular competitive analysis to identify emerging threats
• Quarterly strategy reviews to adapt based on market changes

These feedback loops help identify when the strategy is working and when it needs adjustment. They provide early warning signals about competitive threats, changing customer needs, or implementation challenges that might require strategic reconsideration.

The most valuable feedback focuses on how well customers are able to complete their jobs using your product, not just whether they like specific features. This job-centered feedback keeps the organization focused on customer outcomes rather than product outputs.

How do we measure the success of a SaaS product strategy?

Traditional SaaS metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and churn are important, but they don't directly measure how well your strategy is working. To evaluate your product strategy's effectiveness, also track:

1. Customer Success Metrics

• Job completion rate - The percentage of customers who successfully accomplish their job
• Time to value - How quickly customers can execute their job after starting to use your product
• Effort reduction - How much you've reduced the time and mental energy required to complete job steps

2. Competitive Position Indicators

Tracking your competitive position helps validate whether your strategic choices are creating market advantages:

• Win rate - The percentage of competitive situations where prospects choose your solution
• Competitive displacement - How often you replace incumbent solutions
• Market perception - How you're positioned in analyst reports and customer reviews

3. Strategic Execution Metrics

These metrics help maintain strategic focus and prevent organizational drift:

• Strategy alignment - The percentage of roadmap items directly tied to strategic priorities
• Need satisfaction - How well your product satisfies the prioritized unmet needs
• Strategic drift - How much resources are diverted to non-strategic initiatives

Common SaaS product strategy mistakes

Many SaaS companies make these critical strategy errors:

Feature-first thinking

Building features based on competitive pressure or the loudest customer requests rather than understanding the underlying job customers need to accomplish. This leads to bloated products that don't solve core problems well and become difficult to maintain over time.

Ignoring consumption jobs

Focusing only on the functional job (e.g., "manage projects") while neglecting consumption jobs like "learn to use the software" or "integrate with existing systems." These consumption jobs are often where SaaS products fail to deliver value, leading to high churn despite strong core functionality.

Targeting the wrong customer

Building for job executors (users) without addressing the needs of purchase decision makers, or focusing on purchase decision makers without making users productive. Successful SaaS products balance the needs of all customer types.

Misaligned pricing

Pricing based on implementation costs or competitor benchmarks rather than the value delivered to customers. This leaves money on the table or prices the product out of the market.

Lacking a clear growth path

Failing to plan for expansion beyond the initial product offering, leading to growth stalls once the core market is saturated.

How Jobs To Be Done helps create effective SaaS product strategies

The Jobs To Be Done approach helps SaaS companies develop product strategies through:

1. JTBD market research - Identifying customer jobs, steps, and needs through qualitative and quantitative research
2. Segmentation analysis - Finding the most underserved customer segments with high willingness to pay
3. Competitive assessment - Evaluating how well competitors satisfy customer needs to identify strategic opportunities
4. Strategy development - Creating a coherent strategy based on customer jobs and unmet needs
5. Implementation planning - Translating strategy into roadmaps, messaging, and organizational alignment

This approach helps SaaS companies create sustainable competitive advantages by truly understanding what their customers are trying to accomplish and building products that help them get those jobs done faster and more accurately than alternatives.

By focusing on stable customer jobs rather than changing technologies or features, this methodology enables SaaS companies to create product strategies that drive long-term growth and equity value creation in increasingly competitive markets.

How thrv supports SaaS product strategy development

thrv provides specialized expertise, methodology, and tools to help SaaS companies develop and implement Jobs To Be Done-based product strategies. Through proprietary research methods and software, thrv helps identify customer jobs, map job steps and needs, and quantify which needs are most underserved in the market. This research forms the foundation for strategic choices about target customers, unmet needs, and competitive positioning.

The thrv platform enables SaaS teams to document their strategy, align cross-functional teams on the customer job, and prioritize product roadmaps based on unmet customer needs. For SaaS companies struggling with market differentiation, growth plateaus, or high churn, thrv's approach provides a clear path to identifying high-value opportunities and developing products that truly satisfy customer needs better than competitors. The result is accelerated growth, improved retention, and increased equity value—all driven by a deeper understanding of what customers are really trying to accomplish.