30+ years senior product leadership
J&J MedTech, Sky, ASDA, Covéa
From £945

What is a product strategy service, and do you need one?

A practical guide to what product strategy support actually includes, the signs you need it, and how to choose a provider that will actually help you ship.

Talk to us about your product Read the guide

Written by Rosalyn Potts and Matt Hodgkinson • Dual Perspective

What a product strategy service actually includes

A product strategy service is senior, external support that helps you answer three questions: what should we build, in what order, and why. Done well, it combines real customer and market evidence with ruthless prioritisation, and ends with a roadmap your team can actually execute against, not a slide deck that gets filed away.

It's not the same as hiring a product manager. A PM typically owns execution: writing specs, running the backlog, coordinating delivery. A product strategy service sits above that, setting the direction the PM then executes against. Plenty of teams have a good PM but no one with the seniority or spare capacity to set that direction clearly.

Signs you need one

You're probably a good candidate for outside product strategy support if:

  • Your roadmap is really just a prioritised feature list, with no clear rationale behind the order
  • Different stakeholders have different ideas about what success looks like
  • You're building based on internal opinion rather than customer evidence
  • The team is busy but progress doesn't feel like it's compounding
  • You're heading into a fundraise or board review and need a credible plan
  • You've grown past the point where one person can hold the whole strategy in their head
The most common mistake

Treating "we have a roadmap" as the same thing as "we have a strategy." A list of features in a spreadsheet isn't a strategy until there's a clear, defensible reason for the order and what's deliberately being left out.

What good product strategy support looks like

Good product strategy work is grounded in real evidence, not workshop opinions. It results in a roadmap your team can act on day to day, not just a document for quarterly board reviews. And it comes from someone senior enough to have made these calls before, under real constraints, not just in theory.

Doing it yourself vs a product strategy service

What actually differs in practice.

Factor
Doing it in-house
A product strategy service
Objectivity
Shaped by internal politics and sunk cost
An outside view, unattached to past decisions
Customer evidence
Often assumed rather than tested
Gathered and validated before committing budget
Time to clarity
Weeks or months of internal debate
Often a single working session
Stakeholder alignment
Hard to referee your own disagreements
A neutral facilitator surfaces real trade-offs
Cost
No direct fee, but real opportunity cost
Fixed price, from £945

What to look for in a provider

Good signs and red flags when choosing who to work with.

Good signs

  • Senior practitioners who've set product strategy before, not just advised on it
  • Transparent, fixed pricing agreed upfront
  • A clear answer to who will actually do the work
  • They ask about your customers and evidence before proposing a framework
  • They stay to help you deliver, not just to hand over a document

Red flags

  • A generic framework applied without real customer evidence
  • Vague scoping calls that never turn into a fixed price
  • Senior people in the pitch, juniors doing the actual work
  • A polished deck with no plan for what happens after it's delivered
  • No willingness to say what you should stop doing, only what to add

What it typically costs

At Dual Perspective, product strategy support uses the same fixed pricing as everything else we do:

  • Clarity Session, £945: a single intensive working session to turn fuzzy priorities into a clear next step.
  • Momentum Sprint, £2,400: two weeks of focused strategy and delivery work.
  • Embedded Partnership, from £3,000/month: ongoing senior support, cancel with 30 days' notice.

The Dual Perspective model

You work directly with Rosalyn and Matt, not a rotating account team. More than 30 years of senior product and delivery experience between us, across Johnson & Johnson MedTech, Sky, ASDA, and Covéa Insurance, now applied to founders, enterprise teams, and third sector organisations who need the same senior thinking without the enterprise overhead.

See our full approach on the Product Strategy service page, or start with a single Clarity Session to test how we work together.

Not sure what your product needs?

Book a £945 Clarity Session. We'll spend the morning understanding your situation and give you an honest view on what would actually help.

Book a £945 Clarity Session

Product strategy service questions

What is a product strategy service?
A product strategy service is senior, external support that helps you decide what to build, in what order, and why. It typically includes customer and market evidence gathering, prioritisation, roadmap creation, and stakeholder alignment, delivered by someone who has done this before rather than a generic framework in a slide deck.
How is it different from hiring a product manager?
A product manager typically owns day-to-day execution: writing specs, running sprints, managing a backlog. A product strategy service sits above that, setting the direction the product manager then executes against. Many teams have strong PMs but lack anyone with the seniority or bandwidth to set that direction clearly.
Do we need a product strategy service if we already have a roadmap?
Having a roadmap document isn't the same as having a strategy. If your roadmap is really just a prioritised feature list without a clear rationale for the order, or if stakeholders disagree about what it means to succeed, a product strategy service can help turn that into something your team can actually execute against with confidence.
How much does a product strategy service cost?
At Dual Perspective, a Clarity Session starts at £945. A Momentum Sprint, two weeks of focused strategy and delivery work, is £2,400. Ongoing support through an Embedded Partnership starts from £3,000 per month, cancel with 30 days notice.
What should we look for in a product strategy provider?
Look for someone senior enough to have made these calls before, transparent fixed pricing, and a clear answer to who will actually do the work. Be wary of generic frameworks applied without real customer evidence, and of providers who hand you a deck and disappear rather than staying to help you deliver against it.
Can a product strategy service help us get investor buy-in?
Yes. Investors want to see that you understand your market, your customers, and the product bets you're making. A credible product strategy, grounded in real evidence rather than internal opinion, is one of the most useful things you can bring to a fundraising conversation.

Further reading: How to prioritise your product roadmap · When do you need a CPO? Hire vs fractional

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Tell us what's going on. We'll come back within one working day with an honest view on what would help most.

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Prefer email? contact@dualperspective.co.uk