I collaborated with the Product Lead for our client-facing app to plan a new product line for enterprise users. Purpose: Get cross-functional buy-in for a core offering expansion by educating stakeholders about a product gap and market opportunity.

We realized through close collaboration with our Enterprise BD Team that every won engagement had something in common — a GM or director-level product leader from our network was heavily involved in the sales process, helping the client through their discovery journey. But the expert didn't stop after conversion. The expert stayed on to lead the team through execution.

Hypothesis: For PFM for enterprise, execution (via cross-functional teams) wasn't enough. We needed to expand our offering to include strategy.
Expanded Core Offering: Strategy (via expert network) + Execution (via top tech talent)

There was a lot of excitement over the opportunity. And an "aha" moment over the customer research.

Essentially, we were building a new product line. The hardest part was to propose a cross-organizational plan and build it into our quarterly planning — deploying the right stakeholders across operations, BD, product, customer success as a united team.

Tori Curtis

I developed this outline of a new offering based on years of learning where our customer’s needs were. In this case, the need included a new product.

Over the last three years of assembling high-performance product teams, we’ve started to identify what client’s needs are and where they need extra support. We’ve also seen new trends in the fractional workforce market.

Currently, A.Team's core offering is focused on helping clients assemble the right full-stack team to drive execution support. However, many clients have expressed the need to de-risk their growth plans in response to the tightening market — and the shift away from the "grow at all costs" mental model. We’re now in a “do more with less” era where companies need to make strategic bets.

As a result, there has been an increased demand for expert services that provide strategic confidence in growth plans and increase support in determining what to build, how to validate, and how to scope complex solutions more efficiently.

This happens at an interesting time in the market when fractional experts (GM, director, C-suite-level) are on the rise. There is an addressable $1.3B “expert network” market and $20-50B “micro-consulting” market. Both Fractional leadership staffing and consulting have grown 30% since the pandemic. Meanwhile, we are seeing the highest turn-over rates in executive and director-level leadership in 20 years.

Already a known marketplace for fractional teams and talent, A.Team is in a good position to own a big piece of the fractional expert market.

 The market for fractional experts is on the rise. A.Team is poised to own a big piece of this market as it’s already a known marketplace for fractional teams. Read WSJ: Your Next Career Move: Part-time Executive; Reforge: The Rise of the Fractional Executive; Forbes: The New Wave of Fractional Leaders  

Expert Networks make up a $1.3B market — The expert network market size tops $1.3B, after years of double-digit growth. (Read more)

“Micro-consulting” makes up a $20-50B market —Global management consulting is worth $260 – 300B if we bridged the gap between traditional consulting and technology micro consulting. By 2019, about 20% of this industry worked in micro consulting — anywhere between $20 – 50 billion. (Read more)

Exec fractional staffing firms grew 25% in 2022: Companies like Chief Outsiders (a leadership staffing firm with 1,500 companies) saw a 25% revenue increase in 2022. “When we started, we were explaining what we meant by fractional,” she said. “We’re not doing any more education.” (Read more)

Consulting grew 30% since 2020: Reports show that management consulting firms have achieved a growth of over 30% since the pandemic

High turn-over rates in leadership: In 2022, executive and mid-level leadership turnover reached its peak in 20 years.

Founders and C-level executives struggle to keep up with rapidly evolving technology landscapes. They need expert guidance to navigate challenges in ideation, advisory, and planning. Without access to this expertise, companies may miss opportunities to expand their market or execute effectively on their vision. They also may make a bet on the wrong initiative. Having the right expert on the team can determine whether a product is successful or not.

Without expert guidance, first-time founders struggle to make strategic decisions, know who to hire and how prioritize initiatives effectively. This can lead to a lack of focus and wasted resources, making it even harder to succeed in a competitive market.

The hiring manager combined DevOps and an Engineer into one role to look for one person handle both functions. An advisor was able to identify that this was not the best course of action and articulate a better plan.

Street’s non-technical founders needed help to spec and roadmap their MVP coffee delivery app. The advisor specced the MVP, defined the technology milestones, and identified what roles and skills were needed to build the app. The advisor then led the team through execution.

C-level executives - need strategic support to scope and get buy in from the board

C-level executives face risks such as falling behind competitors, losing customers, or wasting resources on initiatives not aligned with their goals. On top of that, they also lack insights on emerging technologies, market trends, and best practices. Modernizing a large company requires planning, decision-making, and expert guidance. They may not have access to experienced advisors that can help them navigate these challenges to seize opportunities for growth and success.

The Chief Innovation Officer needed to convince his board that building an app was a good bet. Rapid prototyping & scoping with an advisor gave the board the confidence in the initiative to move forward.

The Architect worked with the Chief Innovation Officer to build and scope a product roadmap, identifying numerous technical initiatives, the roles that would be needed, and the technology.

We propose to expand A.Team’s offering to include highly experienced builders as expert advisors ‘Architects’. These advisors will provide guidance and support to clients in areas such as ideation, advisory, and planning. Architects will leverage their years of experience and deep industry knowledge to jump-start, by-pass and navigate internal complexities.

We will work with clients to identify their specific needs and match them with the most appropriate Architect for their unique situation and create a new product offering that supports these new challenges.

Architects are industry veterans with 10+ years of experience in product, engineering, data, and marketing. They are experts (GMs or director-level individuals) who’ve done it before and have ample experience influencing strategy, leading execution and making key company-wide decisions. They’ve built many high-revenue products from 0-1.

During the Architect Pilot Program, Team Advisors brought technical and product experts into client conversations. The goal was to determine whether having experts on calls can help demonstrate early value and assist with activation. During the pilot program, we validated that working with architects helps convert — and adds value for clients.

🪂 AIR Learnings & Case Studies [link redacted] 

“Architects almost always help clients see something differently”

Validation: Architects help clients validate initiatives or validate why a spec /plan isn’t right for their goals

Scope: Architects help clients scope a mission from A→Z; Help scope out what the proper builder profile(s) should be for open roles

De-risk the mission: Architects help clients feel more confident in what they are building — that they’re building the right thing with the right team. Architects also vet the builders they bring to the team to a higher degree.

Trust: Architects add trust to a client’s first impression of A.Team

Establishes us as Advisory: Architects build credibility for us, positioning A.Team as partners rather than “order takers.”

Conversion: It appears that Architects help us close deals. Over the last four months, we are seeing an average of xx% closed won rate. Architects usually join the second call before team requested. So we're comparing against a x% close rate baseline.

Larger teams: Deals with architects likely lead to larger teams. (Pending data from several enterprise deals in progress)

Mission Visibility: Architects can prep builders applying to missions with important “inside info” on the mission. They also can act like are our “eyes and ears” within the company once mission is launched.

13 architects in the network have already been onboarded and active on a call/ mission as architects.

There has been increased demand for services that provide strategic confidence in growth plans and increase support in determining what to build, how to validate, and how to scope complex solutions more efficiently:

Mitigate risk/ validate initiatives: Architects help clients feel more confident in their big bets, validating they are investing in the right initiatives, building the right way, with the right team

Scope, and staff initiatives: Architects offer clients partnership and advisory as they tackle their biggest business challenges and plan their product strategy to drive the most impact.

Manage burn & resources: Architects can help clients manage their burn, identifying when they can scale their team down — or shift resourcing to another higher impact initiative.

From the Architect Pilot, we learned that architects help us convert. And we also learned that they can potentially help us close bigger teams if they are leveraged to map out larger initiatives (like Walmart). We’ve observed with clients like Lifepoint and McGraw Hill that Architects can increase the LTV of a client if they stay on to lead the team — identifying new initiatives and opportunities for extensions.

Conversion/Cross-selling: Architects produce more closed/won deals. By proactively offering Architects to clients in the client app, we can scale that impact. An Architect product offers another “way in” to A.Team’s core offering — and can be used as a cross-sell.

Larger teams: We learned in the Pilot that introducing an Architect inherently widens the lens of the conversation, expanding to an outcomes conversation — opening us to larger initiatives which require larger teams (Lifepoint, Walmart)

Upsell / Expansion: Having architect lead initiatives gives us “eyes on the inside” for potential expansion (new builders, new missions, new stakeholders within company who could use an A.Team)

Our phase 2 plan will include the following:

Define the offering / use cases: internal selling, risk management, validating, scoping and staffing

Determine pricing/packaging: how to price, package and integrate architects with the existing product offering

💲Architects: Offering, Pricing, and Packaging [link redacted]

Determine how to identify, organize and grow the Architect audience

Create program information about how this works for builders and what to expect

Create a seamless user experience from discovery to onboarding for architects in the client app that integrates nicely

Identify how to track, measure and integrate this process with sales to determine the influence of Architects on sales pipeline and key metrics in the company

Create a plan on how to match supply with demand and how to formalize these two dynamics between client demand and architects

Create a new set of measures for these flows that call track impact to key company KPIs

Create a compelling launch plan matching the tier of this roll out

Launching a new program like the Architect program always comes with some potential risks.

Pivoting a Core Offering to Move Up Market at A.Team

Next steps for Architects

Background

Identifying a client need

Why now? A market opportunity

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