Sergey Syrvachev’s Post

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Product Leader | Defining product's Next-gen | BESS, Inverters, EMS and solution optimization | Hardware/software solutions in BNEF Tier 1 vendor | Author: data-panda.com | LinkedIn top 1% industry voice (SSI)

Product management thinking, P2: “Bad things happen” This is a funny example of when everything you planned can go wrong. In 2017-2018, we supplied dozens of thousands of lead acid batteries for one of the largest telecom operators. As it was already evident, the market is starting to look to Lithium solutions, so we begin proposing these solutions. The customer was very price-sensitive, so the price was one of the significant factors.  After deep market/competitive research, our team created a complex TCO model with lithium batteries that was acceptable to the customer, had a better price, and had numerous additional advantages. We won the bidding and signed a new agreement; all was good, but something happened…. Regional managers responsible for product procurement didn’t want to buy the product. And you know the reason: -      Lead acid batteries should be utilized when considered “dead” in that country. -      Our customer didn’t have a centralized utilization procedure, so it all was given to regional managers, who just wrote off old batteries. -      When you utilize batteries, you don’t need to pay; you get money from the utilization company. -      So, regional specialists utilize batteries and receive cash bonuses for this operation. Overall, people in these places get about 30-40% salary cash bonuses every few months. Guess what? They didn’t want lithium batteries that would ruin their money flow. In the end, customers gradually shift to LFP solutions, but this is an excellent example of when you can have an unexpected surprise. The end!

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Arkadiy Birger

Product Leader | Agile Transformations | B2B, B2C, SaaS | Driving Product-Led Growth

9mo

a nice case of corruption, it seems :)

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