A newly promoted CPO reached out with a question: “How do I prioritize my time?”

It’s a fair question. The role is broad, and the surface area only grows.

The CPO’s job is to own the “questions that fall between functions”, that don’t clearly belong to Product, Sales, or Marketing, but determine whether the business works.

These questions show up in three areas: Get. Keep. Grow. Not as a framework, but as a useful way to know where the system is breaking.

1. GET: Are we reaching the right customers efficiently?

  • Which segments convert well when you factor in sales cycle, deal size, and retention?
  • Where are deals stalling and why? Is it a product gap, messaging gap, or how the product is being demoed?

2. KEEP - Are customers seeing value, and staying?

  • How long does it take a new customer to see the product working as promised?
  • How much of the retention is coming from product vs the strength of relationships?

3. GROW - Are we earning the right to expand within customers?

  • Are we seeing natural expansion, or is every upsell a new sale?
  • What is the cross-sell attach rate?

A senior product leader can go deep into these for one product.

A CPO has to look at them across the portfolio, and deal with what happens when the answers aren’t clear.

How much time to spend on each depends on where the pressure is in the business, and the market stage. Time allocation follows that. The harder part is making sure these questions are being answered.

The shift from product leader to CPO is not so much about scope, as it is about different questions.

If you’re working through these kinds of cross-functional questions in your role, I work with product leaders on exactly this.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on this post on LinkedIn.