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The Fourth B2B Product Launch Process Step

February 17, 2016 //
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In our third B2B product launch process step, we were busy gathering our requirements, making sure that we had as much information at our disposal for the next stage.

The fourth step in the B2B product launch process step is to do your planning.

Here’s a process that I find works for me:

  • Work backwards from the launch date
  • Figure out the individual tasks that need to be done by each department or function, noting any dependencies, or sequential tasks that cannot be done until another task has been completed
  • Decide when the tasks need to be done by, in other words how many days before launch
  • Assign an individual responsible for delivering each task
  • Calculate how long each task is going to take
  • Make sure that some individuals or functions don’t have a total of days that looks too challenging to fit in before the launch date. If the total number of days is greater than half the available days for a person or team, they might be too stretched to deliver on time, and you may need to look at scaling back their tasks or finding someone else to help out
  • Plot when all the tasks need to start. As each task naturally becomes a line item on a spreadsheet, you can then monitor progress as you go

With your planning done, you can set about getting your people ready to execute, and get into the fifth stage.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

The Third B2B Product Launch Process Step

February 8, 2016 //
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In our second B2B product launch process step, we looked at the kick-off call and how the project team members shared their expectations and requirements. Now it’s time to do something with those requirements.

The third step is to gather those requirements.

What is your objective for this project? Sure, you want a successful launch, but you need to get more granular in terms of specific requirements that you can subsequently measure to get a sense of how you did when you come to the review stage. Also, these requirements need to work across your launch team. You’ve already heard a range of opinions in the kick-off call. Now you need to consolidate them into a set that works best for the business and get everyone behind them.

Here are some of the basics you need to think about:

  • What revenues are you looking to achieve from the project? This may already be stated in your business case document. Numbers of customers, partners, average attachment rate – number of products per customer – increase?
  • What kind of a launch do you need? A phased, ‘soft’ launch with an extended beta phase and a gradual expansion of availability across customers, prospect groups, regions and so on? Or perhaps a ‘hard, big bang’ launch, which carries more risk but gives you more awareness and a quicker hit?
  • What use cases or scenarios will your product cater to? What kind of customers or success stories will you use to best endorse the launch?
  • What will the product do? What is the scope of the product?
  • What are the specific requirements that each department or function involved in the product will have to deliver to? Development, testing, marketing, sales, product management, operations, professional services and implementation, support?

Once you’ve defined all your requirements for your product launch, you need to socialise them with the rest of the team, and be prepared for some toing and froing, before you have an agreed set. Then you can set about figuring out how you’re going to meet them, which is the topic of our fourth step.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

The Second B2B Product Launch Process Step

February 5, 2016 //
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In our first B2B product launch process step, I recommended you get the fundamental information together and check your facts. Once done, you’re ready for the second step.

This step is to have your kick-off meeting or call. If you’re well organised, it shouldn’t matter if you can’t get people to a physical meeting. A call should be fine.

In this call you need all the major players – or else their delegated representatives – in the product launch to be present. This is where you set your ground rules, make sure expectations are aligned and roles and responsibilities understood. The kick-off is a great opportunity for all those who don’t know each other to get acquainted and understand how their own contribution will butt up to or overlap with the contributions of others.

On this call it’s a good idea for people to share their expectations and their requirements for the project so that everyone is aligned towards the overall objective for the launch – whatever the project team decides that overall objective should be. You can’t do any decent planning without the over-arching objective agreed, so it’s important to agree this before proceeding. This is also an important time for establishing what any dependencies or interdependencies might be for elements in the project. What stages can run in parallel, what have to be sequential, what the rate-determining steps are.

From an interpersonal and cultural perspective, the kick-off is the chance for the project manager of the launch – which might be you – to set the tone for the meetings, how they should be run and what the protocols are for reporting, meeting attendance, escalation procedures and so on.

You can use software or design fancy spreadsheets to help you automate much of the operational stuff, especially with large or comprehensive launches. You still, however, have to get the basics right – the basics I’ve outlined above.

With a good kick-off call under your belt and your objective and requirements defined, you’re all the set for the next stage.

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Re-Work

February 1, 2016 //
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Very little in work is genuinely new and original. The huge majority of it is re-examined, revised, re-worked. A document used as a base for something else, a presentation template where you can borrow the formatting and graphics, a white paper where you can adapt the ideas: it makes sense to do this.

Working from a solid base that has already found acceptance is sensible, a productive use of your time and investment.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t strive for something that starts from a blank sheet of paper. Sometimes it’s the only way to come up with something that’s fresh, exciting, or game-changing.

But in the day-to-day passage of getting things done, re-work, re-use and recycling is a good thing.

It’s not plagiarism, where you’re passing somebody else’s work as your own and plagiarising their intellectual property. Properly acknowledged, cited or quoted, someone’s work you have built on is generally the better for it.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales

The First B2B Product Launch Process Step

January 27, 2016 //
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OK, so you’ve seen the signed-off roadmap, or heard about the launch, or perhaps you’re already involved in the earlier steps of the product management lifecycle. Regardless of your personal situation, the first step in the B2B product launch process is this – check your facts.

Sounds obvious doesn’t it? It is, but not everyone does it. Here are some facts you want to consider before anything else:

  • Who’s on the launch team? Who’s the executive sponsor? Who’ll work on the project day-to-day? Who’s project managing the launch? You need a good project manager with good communication skills to stay on track. If it’s you project managing it, great 🙂
  • What are the milestone dates? When will development be done? When will you alpha and / or beta the product? To whom? Work back from when you plan to GA (make the product Generally Available) and build in buffer at every stage
  • How much of the strategy is done? Have you sight of a business case document so you can understand the market analysis, objectives, pricing, positioning, features, benefits etc?
  • What other background documentation is there to help you build a picture? The more there is, the less you need to create, and the less time you need to make with people to interview them for the background, their insight and preferences
  • When’s the launch kick-off call? If one isn’t organised, apply pressure for it

Get armed with these facts and you’ve already won half the battle.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

The 7-Step B2B Product Launch Process

January 25, 2016 //
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The product lifecycle can be a complicated beast and varies significantly within industries and regions. Not only that, the roles of people in an organisation who either contribute to or manage the product launch can differ quite markedly too. So, with that preamble done, am I drowning a whole series of process-forming posts before I’ve even started?

Not really, no. While job titles and jobs may vary, there are still some generalities and best practices that work for companies selling stuff – products or services – to other companies.

I see 7 broad stages to the B2B product launch process, and I’ll devote my usual post length – long enough to get your attention but not so long as to distract you from other priorities – to each one of them.

People have written 250-page books on managing the product launch. Then again, they’ve done the same for the B2B marketing process, sales cycle, and customer buying cycle, which are other B2B topics that I have addressed before with a total series length that wouldn’t stretch to a chapter.

But these aren’t text books. They’re the distilled experiences of mistakes I’ve made, lessons I’ve learned and the wisdom of people greater than I. I hope you enjoy them.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Personalisation vs Context

January 22, 2016 //
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True personalisation?

True personalisation?

I got this in my Facebook stream the other day. I can’t deny it’s eye-catching. It’s clearly a clever bit of code that allows an advertiser to drop each FB user name into their image.

It’s personalisation of a sort, but is it really personalisation, or is it simply clever code? I suspect the latter.

Context marketing has been around for a while, and is now getting some major attention as marketers get more sophisticated and better at deciding what content they can serve up to whom, when, rather than sending everyone everything.

But this isn’t context marketing, although it’s definitely targeted to me. FB is a hugely growing channel for B2C ecommerce, but as far as I’m concerned, although I’m the right person, it’s not the right content for me and it’s not delivered at the right time.

I still like it though :-).

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Strategy

Short Term – erm – Memory

January 18, 2016 //
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Short term memory. Lots of people complain that they have short term memory, fear that they’re losing their marbles.

Nothing of the sort. I forget things I heard in the recent past, but it’s not because I have short term memory issues. It’s because I haven’t engaged my brain properly.

There are plenty of self-help books to improve people’s recollection of names, people, events. The key thing to do is to listen – actively. There is of course a difference between hearing someone and listening to them, between seeing someone and looking at them, watching them. When you actively listen, when you put something small on the line that makes you establish a connection and fire a few more synapses than normal, you remember something, for a long time.

I can remember the names of attractive women I might have met only briefly at a party three decades ago. I can do the same with telephone numbers and car registration plates. Why? Because I had an interest in making the connection, so it elevated the information to a different part of my mental filing system.

So, if you want to get better at retaining information, concentrate more. Concentrate on actively listening and watching and making the right connection.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Sales

Enough to be Dangerous

January 13, 2016 //
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Ah, it’s a terribly fine line sometimes. A coin toss if you will. A little knowledge can be all you need to get you started, get some forward momentum and learn as you go. Sometimes it’s all the time you have, otherwise you miss the boat.

Then again, it’s not coincidental that we use the phrase ‘enough to be dangerous’.

A couple of decades ago, a friend of a friend of mine went to live with a Spanish-speaking family to improve his basic language skills. In his first week there, they went out to dinner together. The daughter was 17. During the course of the conversation something was said to make her blush. He wanted to ask her if she was embarrassed.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know the Spanish for embarrassed so took a guess. Worse still, his effort – embarazada – means pregnant. Not good. The father went apoplectic and he had to leave the family shortly thereafter.

Knowing enough cuts both ways. Ask yourself this, do you feel lucky? 🙂

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Language, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Intensity

January 8, 2016 //
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Do you know what really helps accelerate the sales cycle? Intensity.

Oftentimes you’ll hear about sports people – players or pundits – talking about having good intensity, or lacking intensity when their performance was flat. Intensity is about being fully engaged in the sale, and fully engaged with the customer, for want of a better word.

Intensity in a sales and business context is a word similar to the phrase ‘rightful impatience’, which a former boss of mine used to use. And you can add to that adjectives like enthusiastic, passionate and committed.

When you have the right intensity, you’re ‘in the moment’ more often with your customer, in sync with their requirements, their hopes and their concerns. This has the effect of bringing them more swiftly on the journey towards buying from you. You’re sweeping them up with your emotion, in a good way, a way that is focused on the mutual goal of their satisfaction.

In a selling relationship, it’s often not okay to be intense. This is a characteristic that some customers find difficult to work with. However it’s good to have intensity in your approach. There is an important difference here. Good intensity make good things happen more quickly.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Planning, Sales, Strategy
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