Over a series of weekly posts I want to create a story around a product launch scenario. I thought it would be a useful exercise for me personally, but more importantly I believe it will be of value to those of you who are in various stages of launching a product. Your comments will help drive the direction of the story and its outcome, so the more comments that come in the better.
You see the thing is we didn’t have access to a class in school on how to plan and execute a launch, and there is a nearly infinite number of permutations of what can go right and what can go wrong. Experience becomes our compass to navigate this dangerous and unforgiving territory.
Even with all the planning and rationalizing of what will work great and be cool, “No plan survives contact with the enemy” - to paraphrase Prussian Field Marshall Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke,
Widget Software and Chen
Our story begins with Chen, the product marketing manager for Widget Software. Widget Software is a $30M software company that builds enterprise scalable, open, extensible, and state-of-the-art solutions (insert your trite and meaningless adjective). Chen is responsible for the Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and execution of a new product, the Widgetizer. Chen is in unfamiliar territory.
He has lots of experience in point activities around product marketing - positioning, presentations, demos, packaging and the like - and doesn’t consider himself technical. He hates being called a “Demo Dolly”. Chen spends most of his time working with marketing communications (Marcom) people. He has good working knowledge of Widgetizer but relies on the Widgetizer product manager for technical information. This is the first time Chen has been given the responsibility of developing a GTM strategy and been held accountable for the results. The only GTM tools at his disposal are:
- What Widget did for the last launch
- What can be derived from how competitors have launched
- Hit or miss information from searching online
- Plenty of unsolicited ideas from the Sales team
Robin the Product Manager
Robin is the Widgetizer product manager. She has done an impressive job of identifying a need in the market and translating that need into requirements for the Development Team. Robin is counting on Chen to launch Widgetizer in such a way that it generates the revenue that was projected in her business case. This will be an important personal win for Robin.
Up until now Widget Software has largely been a Development-driven organization. Meaning that Widget developers would decide what would be built and product managers would largely be project managers. Robin was determined to change this approach and be Market-driven. The success of Widgetizer would set the stage for the transition. Even with a great product, Robin knows that if the market doesn’t know about it and if Widget Software isn’t operationally prepared to sell and support it, her efforts will have been in vain.
A History of Bad Launches
The CEO of Widget Software conducted an audit of previous launch efforts and found what they already knew. Widget has done a great job of engineering products and lousy job of bringing them to market. But the excitement of finishing a new product would quickly give way to the disappointment of missed revenue projections, followed by finger pointing and blame. You’ve probably heard it before. The product sucks. The price is too high. The sales guys are useless. The customer’s don’t get it.
There is cautious optimism for the Widgetizer launch from the management team. The product quality is high and the early feedback from evaluators is better than expected. With a history of bad launches, the management team is concerned of a repeat of history.
What’s Chen’s Next Move?
If Chen can pull off a successful launch his personal capital within Widget will go up significantly and he will build a strong ally with Robin. Robin will prove the value of being a Market-driven organization. There could be promotion or a big bonus in Chen’s future as well as Robin’s.
So where does Chen start? What should he focus on next? What misteps could he take now that will doom the launch?
July 11th, 2008 at 7:11 am
There’s a lot involved, though if you’re looking for where to start, you have to go to the basics:
- What are the goals for the launch?
- How would Chen and others at Widget Software define a “successful” launch?
- What are the metrics that they will use to measure success?
Once you have that figured out, Chen can start developing the strategy around the launch. For example, if there are goals around having a certain percentage of current Widget Software customers also buy this new product, then you would focus your strategy on acquiring current customers, rather than people who are not currently familiar with Widget Software.
After the high-level strategy is created, Chen can start identifying the tactical launch activities which fit in with the strategy and would best help the business meet the goals.
A major misstep is that often these “big picture” discussions do not take place, and marketers / managers just jump right in to the tactical discussions (e.g. “We should write a white paper!”). Without the bigger framework to judge the tactical ideas against, it’s just a bunch of ideas and opinions without any way of determining what the best one might be.
I have plenty of other ideas and suggestions, though since it seems like the story will be continuing, I’ll hold off on them until future posts.
Jeff
Blog: How To Be A Good Product Manager
July 14th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Jeff, as usual, makes a great point about focusing on the big picture. When in doubt, begin with articulating the problem we’re solving for the personae. The artifact to ensure focus on this point is the Positioning document. This will get everyone on the team in sync as to our go-to-market message, our key strengths, and our unique selling proposition. Chen should work with Robin to get this right and then roll it out to the team.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Chen’s first move should be to get Robin an LCD display. He’s going to need her, and it appears that her ancient CRT monitor is giving her migraines…
But, more on point, Chen really needs to initially do two things:
First, he needs to form a cross-functional launch team with stakeholders from various core functions including sales, marketing, development, legal and accounting, etc. Not necessarily the veeps – depends upon the size of Widget Software – but individuals that have the ability and authority to represent function-specific issues, commit to deliverables and overcome obstacles. It appears as though Chen may have an ally in the CEO who can help him drive this disciplined approach and process forward.
Additionally, Chen needs to develop a product launch roadmap. In effect, this document serves as a “cradle-to-the-grave” guide that details everything required to build, launch, promote, sell and service AND, eventually, retire the Widgetizer. The roadmap includes, among other things, quantifiable launch objectives, definition of the target audience, analysis of competing products, pricing structure, identification of key benefits, the launch timeline with associated milestones and their respective owners and, of course, the overall launch budget.
As they say, the devil’s in the details. I suspect later installments will provide the forum to capture more of these critical points in a more granular fashion.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Thank you