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The Seventh B2B Product Launch Process Step

February 26, 2016 //
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Well, we executed the plan. We completed the sixth step of the B2B product launch process.

Now it’s time to see how we did. The seventh B2B product launch process step is to manage the outcomes of the project.

It’s important to manage the outcomes and compare them with the requirements and targets we set earlier in the process. One of the common mistakes is to move onto the next shiny toy and not review performance, so that you learn from your mistakes, celebrate the high points and be better the next time.

In managing those outcomes, it’s important to be fluid. In some areas you’ll have satisfied your requirements, and in some areas you won’t. If you nailed every target, then you probably weren’t ambitious enough.

A fluid approach helps you understand the poorer areas of performance. Did you fail to accurately capture your customer’s needs, or did you interpret their feedback wrongly? Which areas of the business did not deliver to target? What are the lessons learned?

A ‘lessons learned’ meeting, which should be a collaborative rather than a finger-pointing or scapegoat-finding exercise, is a great way to close out the project and feed the lessons – requirements, scheduling, resourcing, delivery – into the next project and across the business.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

The Sixth B2B Product Launch Process

February 24, 2016 //
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In our fifth B2B product launch process step, we made sure our people were ready to go.

In our sixth B2B product launch process step, we go. It’s time to execute the plan.

Of course, no plan ever goes absolutely 100% to plan, if you pardon the repetition. That’s why it’s always good to have a plan B, and perhaps a plan C. For the main pillars of your plan, what will do you if one of those pillars doesn’t stand up as you expect? For example, if you’ve decided for a ‘big bang’ launch, a good fall-back position is to go for a phased or soft launch, starting with a smaller, more manageable set of advocate customers, and moving from there.

During the execution phase, which might take place over weeks or even months, regular progress meetings with all the key players keep the project on track and allow you to take corrective action if key pillars fall behind, affecting the overall RAG – Red, Amber or Green – status of the project.

You’ve done much of the hard work, well done. In many ways, this sixth step is the easiest. It’s like when it comes to game-time. Everyone knows what’s expected of them, and what the steps are to deliver.

And now, for the next step, it’s time to see how you got on.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

The Fifth B2B Product Launch Process Step

February 19, 2016 //
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Following hot on the heels of your planning work in the B2B product launch process is the need to get your people sorted.

The fifth B2B product launch process step is to align your people.

After you’ve planned the launch, you should get your protagonists together to review the planning, get their feedback, and make sure they’re comfortable committing to what you’re asking of them and their departments.

For this reason it’s wise to allow a bit of wiggle room time before executing the plan. This enables you to iterate your planning document so that all the key players are happy with the modified version.

Another useful step to build in is the consideration and incorporation of any feedback and experiences from those of your partners and customers who have had access to any prototypes or beta versions of your product. This work may have knock-on effects for your lead times and planning, so you’ll be thanking yourself for building in buffer before you hit the execute button. It’s also a good time to capture agreement from these early adopters to help with marketing endorsements and – in the absence of paying customers for the product – build credibility and confidence for the launch.

So, you’ve done your planning, got it blessed, and profited from the feedback loop on early versions of the product. You’re good to go.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

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

The Blink of an Eye

January 29, 2016 //
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We all know that life is a terribly slender thread and things like a mis-timed jay-walk can change a life irrevocably.

So it is with business I think. It’s not as final but in a split-second it can turn things on their head for quite a while.

I was at a sales kick-off conference more than 10 years ago, and there were about 15 to 20 of us around a U-shaped arrangement of desks, with our laptops already in use, stealing a few moments before the sessions – and in between them no doubt – to get some day-to-day business done before knuckling down to the meeting.

The walkway between the delegates and the wall was a sea of cables. Walking back to my seat, I tripped on a power cable that was curving up from the floor, yanking off the laptop in the process. The laptop belonged to to a rep, a lady who was a super person and whom I respected a lot. The laptop landed on the floor edge-first. Inevitably it broke. The screen went completely blank.

If you’ve been in this situation you’ll know that if you can’t see what’s on screen, you can’t save your work, power down, restart, interrogate the machine, anything. So imagine you’re this person. You’ve a mountain of things to do, let alone the time you’re giving up for the SKO. You’re a thousand miles from home, with a pre-smartphone-era phone.

I was understandably extremely apologetic and the lady in question was obviously pretty distraught but took it in good spirit as the genuine accident that it was. But in the blink of an eye, I’d turned her day from a good one, to an awful few days.

So how can you legislate for these sudden bumps in the road? It’s the standard answer: you plan for them as far as is economical for you to do, and you hope for the best. The hotel venue could have been configured so that sockets, cables and plugs ran from the centre of the room or from under the tables. Everyone could, I suppose, carry 2 laptops around with them, both synched, which is a touch overkill for an eventuality that might occur once in your lifetime. Or you simply hope that the split-second slip-up won’t get you and simply get on with it if it does.

 

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Categories General, Strategy

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
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