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A product can stop paying long before it stops being used. What makes retiring it a decision late is that its own revenue is small enough to fall below the level at which anyone reviews margins by product, so it moves for years without an advocate and arrives on an agenda already described as a burden, with a saving on the page and nothing beside it. That is not the comparison. Keeping a product that loses money is one option and retiring it is the other, and retiring has a price of its own: the one-time cost of the ending, plus the customers. The people still on the product buy other things from you, and a share of them leave you entirely when it goes, taking everything else they buy with them. This pack turns that into a subtraction and an annuity. What the product loses a year, across the years you would otherwise keep it and discounted, is what keeping it costs. Against it: the one-time cost of retiring, plus the wider spend of the customers who go with it, less what a replacement earns from the ones who move. Both sides are linear in the loss, so the whole question reduces to the break-even loss, how much more the product would have to lose a year before retiring it is cheaper, and the distance from it to today's loss is what a board can watch. It stops on two halts: no one has joined the product's customer list to the sales ledger, and no one has estimated the share who would go, which cannot be surveyed because asking announces the ending.
What is the Sunset Strategy Pack
The Sunset Strategy Pack is a complete decision-support kit for one question: customers still use it and it does not pay, so what does retiring it cost? It is built around one organizing claim: a product that does not pay is not the same as a product worth retiring, and the second finding needs a number almost no one has, which is what goes with it. Sixteen files carry it: the foundations, a concept deck, a scored decision wizard, a sunset model blank and worked, the moves at each reading, nine sourced retirements, a fit worksheet, a roadmap template, a practitioner manual, a field checklist, and an orientation page.
The test that runs through every file
whether what goes with the product costs more than what keeping it loses. It is the argument in the deck, it becomes the wizard’s axes, it drives the model’s inputs, and it reappears as lines on the checklist. That is what makes 16 files a product rather than 16 documents.
The model resolves to one number you can negotiate with: The break-even loss — how much more it would have to lose a year before retiring is cheaper. It ships blank and worked, and every input is a named cell rather than a figure buried inside a formula, so the number arrives with its assumptions attached rather than on its own authority.
Why a product sunset strategy starts with the customers still on it
Not with the saving. The saving is the one number every room already has: what the product loses a year, and what stopping it would free. Stated alone it invites a decision to retire rather than a decision, because the other half of the comparison lives in two systems that no report joins.
The customers still on the product buy other things from you. What they spend on everything else is in the sales ledger, and the product's customer list is in the billing system, and in most companies the two have never been put side by side. When they are, the figure is usually several times the product's own revenue. A share of those customers leave you entirely when the product goes, and that share cannot be surveyed, because asking announces the ending.
This pack turns that into arithmetic. What the product loses a year, across the years you would otherwise keep it and discounted, is what keeping it costs. Against it: the one-time cost of the ending, plus the wider spend of the customers who go with it, less what a replacement earns from the ones who move. Then the whole decision reduces to one figure, the break-even loss, which is how much more the product would have to lose a year before retiring it is cheaper.
When to discontinue a product, and when the evidence says wait
Nine sourced retirements run through the pack, and eight of them held. Google retired Reader in 2013 against a 154,283-signature petition and the ending held. Intuit pointed Mint's 3.6 million users to Credit Karma on the day it announced the shutdown. Apple retired the Newton and kept the ARM stake that had grown alongside it. Those are retirements done in the order the evidence recommends: the destination named, the date announced once, and what the product built kept.
The evidence also says when to wait. Nokia announced the ending of Symbian, a product still paying, before a Windows Phone device of its own had shipped, and lost more than half its smartphone share in a year. SAP set end-of-support dates for 2017, 2019, and 2025 before confirming 2027, and nearly half its customers are projected to be still on the older software when it arrives. The customers price the ending the day they hear it, and a date that has moved before is read as one that can move again.
What is in the Sunset Strategy Pack
- Foundations. The framework: why a product stops paying before it stops being used, the arithmetic, the endings that actually happen, and the eight halts.
- Concept deck. Twenty-two slides for a board or a product review, with nine sourced retirements and what each does not establish.
- Decision wizard. Eight scored questions returning the band, the weakest answer, and either of the two halt conditions.
- Sunset model. Eleven candidate movements in the upkeep across the columns, what goes with the product, and the break-even loss that decides it.
- Strategies and tactics. The moves at each of the four readings, what to do when the model halts, and four ways to make the next sunset cheaper to judge.
- Case studies. Nine sourced retirements — eight held, one is too early to call — and the one that stated what went with the product.
- Fit worksheet. The single page of record: what it brings in, what it costs to keep, the customers on it, what they spend beyond it, the share who would go, and the cost of the ending.
- Roadmap template. Five phases with gates and owners, the assumptions register, a reporting change and a periodic review line.
- Practitioner manual. The revenue, the upkeep, the wider spend, the years, the share who would go, the ending, the board paper, six failure modes.
- Field checklist. The one-pager that survives outside the binder.
- About the package. What each file does and the order in which to run them.
Who the Sunset Strategy Pack is for
A chief executive with a product that has been described as a burden for two quarters and valued for none of them; a chief financial officer being asked to approve a retirement against a saving with nothing beside it; a chief product officer who knows the customer list has never been joined to the sales ledger; an engineering lead carrying an upkeep no one has costed on the product; a head of customer accounts who suspects the customers on it are worth more than the product; a board member reading a proposal to retire with no figure for what goes with it; and the adviser who would otherwise start from a blank page. It is worth buying when a real decision is in front of you. It is not worth buying to read.
An honest note on fit
This is a kit for running a decision, not a research report and not a forecast. Worked examples use an explicitly fictional company with numbers tuned to teach rather than to flatter. In the worked case a desktop product still installed at 1,800 customers brings in $6.4m a year and costs $10.6m to keep running, losing $4.2m a year, with five years to the platform date and $16.3m of cost across them. That is the fact that gets it onto an agenda. It is not the decision: those customers spend $31.0m a year with the company on everything else, an estimated 22 percent would leave with the product, and retiring it would cost $25.8m, so keeping it is cheaper by $9.5m and it would have to lose $2.4m a year more before that reverses. The answer turns at a 14.1 percent share, and the 22 percent was borrowed rather than measured, which is the halt.
Four limits are stated on the page rather than worked around. The model does not forecast the share who would go: that figure is your own estimate, and the Sensitivity tab sweeps it from nothing to twice your figure precisely because it cannot be surveyed. It holds what goes with the product at the product's own horizon, which is a simplification worth testing where the answer is close. It does not price what announcing the ending does to a product that still pays before the replacement exists. And it says nothing about what the product carries beyond its margin: an approval, a reference, or a reason a customer chose you in the first place. Nine cases carry the evidence and the framework content is the larger share; few cases anywhere quantify what retiring cost in retained-customer terms, and the pack says so.
Questions about the Sunset Strategy Pack
- What numbers does the model produce?
- Two headlines and twelve supporting rows. What keeping the product costs over the years you would otherwise keep it, and the break-even loss: how much more it would have to lose a year before retiring is cheaper. Around them: what it loses per customer, what those customers spend with you beyond it, what goes with the product if it is retired and what the replacement earns back, the break-even upkeep movement, the distance in years of profit, and the product against revenue. The Model tab sweeps what it costs to keep running, and one row turns from Yes to No at the point where keeping stops being cheaper.
- Our product loses money. Should we retire it?
- Not on that fact alone, and that is the whole point of the pack. A product that does not pay is not the same as a product worth retiring. In the worked case a product losing $4.2m a year is cheaper to keep by $9.5m, because retiring it would cost $25.8m, and most of that is the wider spend of the customers who would leave with it, which was not in anyone's paper.
- We do not know what the customers on it spend with us.
- Most companies do not, because the product P&L carries the product and the account view carries the account. It is an afternoon with the sales ledger and the manual sets out the join. Until it exists the room is comparing a saving it has to a cost it does not.
- Does this apply to sunsetting a feature customers still use, not a whole product?
- Yes, if the feature has customers who can be listed and an upkeep that can be separated. The arithmetic is the same: what the customers who rely on it spend with you on everything else, what share of them would leave if it went, and what the ending costs once. Where the feature cannot be separated from the product, the product is the unit.
- Are the case studies real companies?
- Yes. Nine sourced retirements: Google Reader, Nokia's Symbian, Intuit's Mint, SAP's older software, Atlassian's Data Center, the Sears catalog, Apple's Newton, Ford's sedans, and CVS's tobacco. Each is dated, read through what was decided and what went with the product, and each states what its evidence does not establish. CVS is in the set to hold the other end: a product that paid, retired on purpose, with what went with it stated by the company in its own comparable sales. The worked model, wizard, and worksheet use an explicitly fictional company, labeled as such on every file.
- Is this a subscription?
- No. One payment, one download, sixteen files, yours to keep and to use inside your organization under the license included in the pack.
- What is the Sunset Strategy Pack?
- The Sunset Strategy Pack is a decision-support kit for one question: Customers still use it and it does not pay; what does retiring it cost? It contains 16 files — foundations, concept deck, decision wizard, sunset model, strategies and tactics, case studies, fit worksheet, roadmap template, practitioner manual, field checklist, about the package — built around a single organizing test: whether what goes with the product costs more than what keeping it loses. It is what a leadership team uses to run the decision and leave a record of what they assumed, rather than a report about the topic.
- Who is the Sunset Strategy Pack for?
- Anyone who has to make this call and answer for it: an operator or owner facing the decision, the executive team running it, the board or investor testing the reasoning, or an adviser who would otherwise build the framework from a blank page. It is worth buying when a real decision is in front of you. It is not worth buying to read.
- What is in the Sunset Strategy Pack?
- 16 files in Word, PDF, PowerPoint and Excel: Foundations (Word + PDF) — The framework: why a product stops paying before it stops being used, the arithmetic, the endings that actually happen, and the eight halts. Concept deck (PowerPoint + PDF) — Twenty-two slides for a board or a product review, with nine sourced retirements and what each does not establish. Decision wizard (Excel) — Eight scored questions returning the band, the weakest answer, and either of the two halt conditions. Sunset model (Excel, blank and worked) — Eleven candidate movements in the upkeep across the columns, what goes with the product, and the break-even loss that decides it. Strategies and tactics (Word) — The moves at each of the four readings, what to do when the model halts, and four ways to make the next sunset cheaper to judge. Case studies (Word) — Nine sourced retirements — eight held, one is too early to call — and the one that stated what went with the product. Fit worksheet (Word, blank and worked) — The single page of record: what it brings in, what it costs to keep, the customers on it, what they spend beyond it, the share who would go, and the cost of the ending. Roadmap template (Word) — Five phases with gates and owners, the assumptions register, a reporting change and a periodic review line. Practitioner manual (Word + PDF) — The revenue, the upkeep, the wider spend, the years, the share who would go, the ending, the board paper, six failure modes. Field checklist (PDF) — The one-pager that survives outside the binder. About the package (PDF) — What each file does and the order in which to run them.
- How is the Sunset Strategy Pack delivered?
- As a single download of all 16 files, immediately after payment, with the same link sent by email. It can be downloaded 3 times and the link is valid for 30 days. There is nothing to install and no account to keep.