DIAGNOSTIC ENGAGEMENT · 2 WEEKS · $12,500 FIXED

Something’s off with your product.
You can feel it. You can’t quite name it.

Two weeks. We get inside the work. You walk away with a written diagnosis and a 90-day plan you can actually run.

Effectively a paid trial. The full $12,500 credits to a Sprint or Fractional if you upgrade within 14 days.

Decision-confidence audit
Strategy · Roadmap · Team · Signal

Is this the right offer for you?

Diagnostic if you’re stuck and not sure why.
Sprint if you’re starting something new and need a real plan.
Fractional if you need senior product leadership embedded for a while.

Still not sure? The Fit Finder will tell you in three minutes.

01The diagnosis

The problem this solves

You’re shipping. Your team is working hard. But growth is flat. The roadmap feels off. And you can’t tell whether the issue is strategy, the team, the market, or just bad execution.

Most founders we talk to think this is an execution problem. Usually, it’s not. Usually, it’s a decision-confidence problem — too many product decisions piling up faster than anyone can make them with conviction.

You don’t have time to figure that out alone. Hiring a head of product is months away. The Diagnostic is what you do in the meantime.

02Our approach

What we actually do

We’ve run this engagement across B2B SaaS, marketplaces, fintech, healthcare, and AI-native products. The shape doesn’t change much: two weeks of structured digging.

We sit with your roadmap and ask whether it’s actually pointing at the right things. We read the customer signal — reviews, support tickets, sales objections, competitor noise — and tell you what it’s actually saying. We look at your analytics for the patterns the team has stopped seeing. We talk to your engineering and product leads to find where decisions are breaking down. We map where leadership and execution diverge — and where they’re pretending not to.

03What you get

What you walk away with

Written diagnostic

15–25 pages of what’s working, what’s broken, what’s missing — ranked.

90-day action plan

Names the highest-leverage moves you can run with this quarter.

Clear next step

A clear answer on whether you need a Sprint, Fractional, or no follow-on at all.

04The pod model

How we work

Two weeks. A senior CPO leads. A senior product manager runs the research. AI handles the heavy lifting on transcript synthesis, competitive scans, and pattern mining — so we get to the actual answers faster instead of paying three people to do work software does better.

POD MODELSenior CPO + Senior PM + AI Workflows — structured as a two-person delivery team. See how it works on the homepage →

Total client time: roughly 2–3 hours of stakeholder interviews plus a 90-minute readout. We do the rest.

05Pricing

Investment

$12,500 fixed

Half on signature, half on delivery. No retainer. No scope creep. The diagnostic is the deliverable.

What’s not included

Implementing the 90-day plan (that’s a Sprint or Fractional). Engineering work — we don’t write code. Recruiting product hires. Ongoing support after the two weeks (also Fractional).

06Fit check

Is this for you?

✓ This is for you if
  • You’re a founder or product lead with a product that’s working but not winning
  • You’re between PM hires and need senior eyes, fast
  • You suspect the problem isn’t your team — it’s the system around them
✗ This isn’t for you if
  • You’re pre-revenue without customers — start with a Sprint
  • You want a long retainer — that’s Fractional
  • You want a slide deck — we ship intervention plans, not theater

“ProductivPM is the Product Management equivalent of the all-star athlete you turn to in crucial moments — when you need a cool, calm leader to take the winning shot. Absolutely clutch.”

— Jason Ables, Team Coach, ethode

FAQ

Why two weeks?

Most consulting diagnostics pad scope to justify the fee. We don’t. The real work fits in two weeks when you stop paying humans to do what AI does faster.

What if I need more than a Diagnostic?

If you sign a Sprint or Fractional within 14 days, the full $12,500 credits over.

Who actually does the work?

A senior CPO owns strategy and the readout. A senior product manager runs research and drafts. AI handles transcript synthesis and pattern-mining. You get the output of three or four people at the price of a fixed two-week engagement.

What if you decide it’s not a fit?

We’ll tell you in the fit call. We’ve passed on engagements where we weren’t the right help — sometimes recommending an internal hire, sometimes a different agency, sometimes no engagement at all. The fit call is honest by design.

Do you sign NDAs?

Standard mutual NDA. The IP is yours.

Recent engagements that started here

Stockpile

Realigned strategy and monetization. New growth path after a stalled quarter.

Read the story →
Quotes

Caught a misaligned MVP early. Found a niche. Saved millions before a single line of new code.

Read the story →

Book a fit call

On the call: 5 min on your situation, 15 min on how this engagement works, 10 min Q&A. You’ll know by the end whether to move forward.

Book a 30-minute fit call

Honest fit check — we’ll tell you if it isn’t right. Or email hello@productivpm.com if a call isn’t your thing.