Beyond the Basics: Making Your B2B Product Vision Stick

A follow-up to "Build a Product Vision That Doesn’t Suck"

Photo by Karly Santiago on Unsplash

You’ve crafted a product vision that’s sharp, inspiring, and ready to guide your B2B SaaS company into the future. Congratulations, you’ve cleared the first hurdle. But here’s the challenge: most visions, even the brilliant ones, fizzle out before they take hold. They get lost in the grind of daily priorities or diluted by competing agendas. Let’s change that.

In this follow-up to "Build a Product Vision That Doesn’t Suck", we’re tackling why visions fail to stick, how to set your product vision apart from the strategic clutter, and how to communicate it so powerfully that your team, investors, and customers can’t help but rally behind it.

Why B2B SaaS Companies Struggle with Vision Implementation

A great vision is only as good as its execution. Too often, B2B SaaS companies trip over the same obstacles, turning their bold ideas into forgotten slides. Here’s what’s standing in your way:

The Revenue Obsession

Many B2B companies operate with "generate more revenue" as their only real strategy, creating:

• Short-term decision bias: Teams consistently prioritize immediate revenue opportunities over strategic positioning.

• Feature bloat: Products accumulate any capability that might generate revenue, regardless of coherence.

• Value dilution: The product gradually loses focus, becoming mediocre at many things rather than exceptional at a few.

When revenue becomes the sole compass, product teams lose sight of the transformative future they initially aimed to create. The vision? It’s sidelined for the next all-hands slide deck.

The Sales-Led Hijack

In B2B organizations, especially those with founder-led sales or enterprise focus, visions frequently get derailed by sales priorities:

• Deal-driven development: Roadmaps shift based on requirements for the next big deal.

• Custom feature promises: Sales teams commit to customer-specific capabilities that fragment direction and delay making progress on the product vision.

• Disjointed evolution: The product becomes a collection of sales-driven commitments rather than an expression of a coherent vision.

This approach is great for early wins but boxes you into a niche so tight you can’t grow.

The Vague Vision Trap

Many product leaders will be pressured into maintaining flexibility, which requires keeping their vision intentionally vague. Making bets can be scary, but these nebulous visions create:

• Execution confusion: Teams lack clear guidance for prioritization decisions.

• Misaligned interpretation: Different departments develop contradictory understandings.

• Strategic drift: Without specificity, nothing prevents gradual departure from market opportunity.

It’s like handing your team a map with no roads, only a big X for treasure. Everyone nods in agreement, but no one knows where to step next. Priorities clash, teams drift, and your product loses its edge.

The Technical Indulgence

Another common pitfall is creating visions centered on technical capabilities rather than customer outcomes:

• Solution-first thinking: Teams focus on the technology they want to build rather than problems worth solving.

• Developer-centric priorities: Features evaluated based on technical interest rather than market value.

• Innovation without purpose: Pursuing technological advancement disconnected from customer needs.

Tech can be seductive, tempting you to build something because it’s cool, not because it’s needed. It’s like a startup chasing cutting-edge AI while ignoring basic user needs. When your vision fixates on shiny capabilities over customer outcomes, you’re innovating for applause, not impact.

The Stakeholder Alignment Challenge

Even with a well-crafted vision, achieving organizational alignment presents significant hurdles:

• Executive disagreement: Leadership teams often harbor competing priorities.

• Middle management resistance: Those responsible for execution may resist changes to established patterns.

• Incentive misalignment: Compensation structures frequently reward behaviors contradicting the stated vision.

You get what you incent. Nothing undermines a Product Leader’s vision like a CEO’s bonus structure tied exclusively to quarterly profits. Without aligning incentives to the long-term vision, you’ll remain trapped in short-term optimization.

Product Vision vs. The Strategic Soup

Your product vision isn’t your corporate vision, mission statement, strategy, or roadmap. It’s its own beast. Mixing them up breeds confusion. Here’s how they break down:

I can’t believe substack can’t build tables!?!

A product vision isn’t about listing features; it’s about painting a vivid future. Your mission might be “empower businesses with innovative software,” but your product vision should sing: “A world where mid-market manufacturers outpace giants with AI-driven production tools, no data science PhDs required.”

Vision Communication: Tailoring the Message

Different stakeholders require different vision articulations. Beyond traditional vision statements, more tangible formats often create stronger alignment and excitement.

For Investors

Focus on market opportunity size, differentiation approach, and evidence of validation. Connect vision to financial outcomes and competitive positioning.

Example: "Our vision positions us to capture the $4.2B opportunity in mid-market manufacturing analytics with a differentiated approach requiring 60% less technical expertise than current solutions, as validated by our 140% NDR among current customers."

For Customers

Customers don’t care about your tech; they care about their wins. Emphasize the impact of transformation through concrete before/after scenarios.

Example: "Imagine your production supervisors identifying potential quality issues before they occur, without waiting for weekly reports or requesting data science support. That's the future we're creating."

For Employees

Connect daily work to meaningful impact and provide context for prioritization decisions. Emphasize how the vision creates professional growth opportunities.

Example: "Every feature you build brings manufacturers closer to eliminating unplanned downtime. Your work directly impacts thousands of frontline workers and helps factories become more competitive against overseas alternatives."

Powerful Vision Communication Formats

Words alone won’t cut it. Make your vision stick with formats that grab attention and spark imagination.

Vision Types (Prototypes)

"Vision Types" or vision prototypes transform abstract concepts into tangible experiences:

• Interactive prototypes: Functioning demonstrations of the most important user journeys in the future experience.

• Experience videos: Short videos showing future user interactions with your product.

• Simulated dashboards: Mockups of insights users will access in your envisioned future.

Vision Types are particularly effective because they:

• Make abstract concepts concrete and testable.

• Allow stakeholders to experience the vision rather than just hear about it.

• Provide reference points for ongoing development decisions.

Modern AI-powered design tools like Figma's "Add Interactions" feature significantly reduce the effort required to create these vision prototypes. Foundational Models, like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, or design-specific tools like Tempo, Lovable, and v0¹ can help get your vision out of your head if you lack designers. Do not misunderstand me; I highly recommend you find a way to get designers involved in this process. The earlier the better.

Visual Narratives

Visual storytelling formats dramatically improve vision retention and emotional connection:

• Comic strips/storyboards: Illustrate a user's journey from problem to solution, highlighting emotional impact.

• Day-in-the-life scenarios: Show how users' workdays transform through your solution.

• Customer journey maps: Visualize the complete experience transformation across touchpoints and help communicate the scope.

An insuretech SaaS company created a simple comic strip showing a homeowner’s frustration with their current tools and the relief and efficiency gained through their envisioned solution. This visual narrative became more memorable, digestible, and shareable than their formal vision document, with teams referring to specific panels when making product decisions.

Contrast Frameworks

Explicitly contrasting current reality with the envisioned future fosters clarity and urgency:

• Before/After comparisons: Juxtapose the current state with the future state to emphasize transformation.

• From/To statements: Develop parallel statements illustrating the shift in capabilities or experience.

• Problem/Solution pairs: Link specific challenges directly to their resolutions within the envisioned future.

A liquor brand effectively conveyed its vision by creating a "From/To" framework with its sales team. Previously, salespeople visited restaurants and bars during off-hours to discuss menus and encourage tastings to secure product placements. In the envisioned future, they introduced an app that analyzes customers' existing liquor lists, organizes options by tasting notes, identifies duplicates and gaps in flavor profiles, and recommends their products to enhance the menu. Additionally, it generates revised menus for servers, helping them better articulate options to patrons, enhancing customer knowledge, and ultimately boosting establishment profitability.

1. This list of tools will age, like milk, but I wanted to point to some examples.