Painting It Black Is Diagnosis

A German B2B telecommunications carrier wanted to build a second pillar in the B2C mass market. A fibre-based consumer product, in the coverage areas where the infrastructure was already in the ground. The idea came from the CEO and the head of strategy. Two arguments carried it: growth ambition — the B2B business had reached its size, B2C promised a second axis of scale — and better utilisation of existing infrastructure in the areas where the fibre was already laid. The logic ran: if the line is there and has capacity, why not also offer it to B2C customers?

On paper that makes sense. On the balance sheet it doesn't.

I came in in July 2022 as an interim manager in a hybrid role of project manager and product manager. My brief: build the product, define the end-to-end customer journey, develop persona- and jobs-to-be-done-driven marketing strategies (online and door-to-door), orchestrate the process mapping from acquisition to provisioning, MACDs, billing and finance processes. A fifteen-month engagement.

B2C unit economics don't carry on a B2B-margin-driven process architecture. That is the short form. The longer form is exactly what wholesale and build-to-buy demand as commercialisation logic: every customer call, every service activation, every invoice, every contract change has to run at a level of automation compatible with the unit economics of a consumer customer.

In the carrier's B2B business, that wasn't necessary. Few large customers, high margins, personal sales, manual processes that paid back per contract. In the B2C mass market, that architecture breaks at its first scaling step. Order-to-cash, service activation, customer service, billing — all four process tracks would have had to be built at an automation level that didn't exist in the B2B business and for which there had to be C-level investment readiness.

It wasn't there.

My brief stayed in place. The product was built. The end-to-end customer journey was defined. Persona model and jobs-to-be-done-driven marketing strategies — online and door-to-door — were prepared. The fibre-based B2C mass-market product was, by the end of the engagement, available on the website and orderable.

That is the only correct posture when the diagnosis is dismissed: deliver what is commissioned cleanly, restate the position on the investment gap soberly in every meeting, and otherwise build the project that can be built. Not passive-aggressive underperformance, not angry departure. Build what was asked to be built. Whoever ends up being right without seeking it has warned honestly.

1. Unit economics are a change topic, not a pricing topic. When a company wants to build a different product segment — B2B to B2C, or vice versa; premium to volume, or vice versa — it isn't only the per-unit margin that shifts. The requirements on order-to-cash, on service, on billing, on the entire operational architecture shift. Whoever treats this as a pricing exercise builds a product that doesn't scale. Whoever treats it as a change topic at every level — processes, IT, sales, service, organisation — receives an investment decision in the order of magnitude of the new segment. That is the honest reckoning. It is often not done willingly.
2. Painting it black is diagnosis, not mood. When a product owner places requirements and status next to each other in a C-level meeting and the picture turns uncomfortable, the executive reflex is sometimes to read the picture as a mood problem. That is human. It is also expensive. Whoever refuses the diagnosis in that moment and starts the project anyway buys the manifestation of the diagnosis along with the project. That is not the same as a teaching moment — it is a teaching moment plus the costs that come with not having wanted it any other way. A mature executive board knows the difference between someone painting things black and someone describing what is black.
3. A B2B-to-B2C pivot is an executive investment decision, not a product-management decision. What a product manager can deliver in this constellation is the diagnosis, the architecture, the mapping of the necessary investment blocks. What he cannot deliver is the investment readiness itself. Whoever draws this line for himself does the job that needs to be done — without taking responsibility for an outcome that lies beyond his mandate. That is not abdication; it is clarity about one's role in a hierarchy where investment decisions fall one floor above.