Every week I have the privilege of working with product marketing managers from a wide range of companies. For the most part they’re in a technology related business and most of them have one consistent, blaring issue. That issue is getting salespeople to sell the products that they - the product marketing managers - are responsible for bringing to market.
The biggest complaint I hear is the amount of time that product marketing managers spend supporting salespeople with things like one-off PowerPoint slides and one-off brochures. Some of you report the amount of time you spend supporting salespeople can exceed 80%!
I have news for you. If you’re spending that much time supporting salespeople you’re not in marketing, you’re in sales support. Assuming a 40 hour work week (LOL) that means you have 8 hours to dedicate to product marketing. One day per week. Four days per month. Product marketing in this case can hardly be called part time. Is it any wonder you’re not getting ahead?
I couldn’t find a Product Marketing for B2B marketers so I created one. The group is named “Product Marketing” (I know, it is clever) and the link is here - http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=36705556089. It’s a way for those of us responsible for bringing products to market to help each other. This economy is going to get tougher and we’re going to need all the help we can get.
I found Facebook to have the capabilities to encourage group discussion and share experience. I hope you’ll join, participate and pass it along to others.
On a recent flight on a major US airline I like to fly, I was on a 757 that had a new inflight entertainment system. It looks really cool and offers a lot of functionality including movies, TV, music, games and a flight map (my favorite). The installation even required a change to the food trays because a little cut-out was required to fit the inflight entertainment screen. But while operating the system it became obvious to me that it’s a nice idea with not so good execution. Granted the product does what it’s supposed to do. My issue is with the user interface.
All user interface functions are by a touch screen. The touch screen is not very sensitive, requiring multiple pokes to get what you want. The first poke being light and subsequent pokes getting harder and harder. Ultimately annoying the guy sitting in front of you. Then he reclines. While at the same time the lady sitting behind you is doing the same thing. I recline and a vicious cycle ensues.
What problem is this airline trying to solve for it’s customers? If they would have placed some of their staff in planes to observe and interact with customers they would have learned that many people have MP3 players, their own headphones and watch movies on DVD players or their laptops. Oh wait, they do have staff on planes already. It’s the flight crew. Did anyone ask them? My buying criteria for whether I fly on one airline or another has absolutely nothing to do with their inflight entertain system. It’s not like I can choose the plane that has one or doesn’t when I make a reservation.
Time to get back to iTunes on my laptop with my JVC noise canceling headphones. Joe Satriani’s “Summer Song” is playing. Way too loud. Sorry I missed your gig in Phoenix Joe. Could Seth Godin and Joe Satriani have been separated at birth?
Product marketing managers in technology companies don’t see the forest from the trees. I interact with lots of you on a weekly basis in my role as an instructor for Pragmatic Marketing. What I’m referring to is the mistaken belief there is a magic set of deliverables you can produce for each new release of your product that would make all your problems go away. With this set of magic cookie cutter templates you could produce everything your sales guys need to be successful in the market and you would be a hero.
Sales would get off your back because you’ve given them everything they possible could need. Your time would be freed up to focus on more strategic issues. Maybe you’d even get to have dinner with your family.
I wish it were that easy folks but it’s not. What gets you the street credibility you crave with Sales and Marcom isn’t your expertise in the features of your product or your mastery of PowerPoint. It’s your expertise in understanding your buyers, their problems, their buying criteria, the buying process (notice I didn’t say sales process) and how to influence each buyer through the buying process.
When you are the expert on your buyers your interaction with Marcom and Sales will become considerably smoother, less combative and with greater results for everyone.
I was preparing to deliver a webinar on Product Launch in an Agile Worldrent a car bulgaria and it brought up memories of my days as a developer (fond mostly). While I’m very familiar with Agile at a conceptual level I wouldn’t claim to be a practitioner. That’s for the Agile experts. However, I’m passionate about launching software products and I find it fascinating how Agile has become such a concern for Product Management, Marketing and Sales.
For years Product Management, Marketing and Sales have complained that Development can’t deliver products on time with the right mix of capabilities. I’ve lived on every side of that problem and it’s never enjoyable to be on the Development side of the discussion when promised features are missing. Now Development steps up to the plate and embraces a way to get things done faster, with more completeness and higher quality, and the triumvirate has heartburn.
I’ve been talking with people in Product Management, Marketing, and Sales whose Development teams have embraced Agile (with varying degrees) and many are freaking out. The more I dig into it the less I see where there’s a problem. Let me explain further.
Product Management is responsible for identifying Market Problems and developing Market Requirements. We’ve been teaching that for 15 years at Pragmatic Marketing - nothing new here. Development translates the Market Requirements into a product. Check. Product Marketing drives the launch process, develops sales tools, trains the Sales team and coordinates with Marketing Communications to develop marketing programs to support Launch goals. Check. The Launch comes and the Sales Team does their thing. Check.
Where everyone outside of Development is getting all hung up is with predictability. But they’ve grown accustomed to what I believe to be a false sense of predictability. That big, monolithic, waterfall documentation that defines all the features that will be in the next release becomes obsolete just about as fast as you hit “save”. Assumptions about what is possible will change. Whether you like it or not there’s never enough time to go back and change the original product requirement docs because there’s a date that needs to be hit.
With Agile development methods, Development focuses on short iterations. Each iteration produces 100% of something (coded, tested and ready to go). If you’ve decided that the best time to launch the next release is October, work backwards through the iteration schedule and choose an iteration that will be completed prior to the Launch planning window. This will be the iteration you can trust to be completed. But realize that you may not know the exact release content until the iteration is complete. Even better though, you will see evidence that the release content is done. Here’s where I’m going to ask the folks in Marketing to be a little flexible.
During the Launch planning and readiness window Development will continue to plow ahead and work on more iterations. As each iteration completes, you need to ask yourself if there are features in those iterations that justify inclusion in the Launch without negatively impacting the Launch date.
Here’s the deal. If you’re a Product Manager, make sure you’re doing your job and keep feeding Development with what needs to be done next. If you don’t they’ll just start creating what they think is cool, whether it has any marketability or not. Development, you don’t get to decide when a release is ready to Launch. That’s a decision for Product Management. Acknowledge that Marketing and Sales need a longer window to plan and ready the rest of the organization than a few weeks. They have a limited capacity to absorb rapid releases. All those great features you’re building will just get buried. Marketing continue what you’re doing. Your world is one of dates and timing. Release dates still matter. A product launch is about generating sales velocity and you need enough time to plan for an effective Launch.
If you are in a technology company chances are you have at least one person with the title “Product Manager”. This post is my view on the role of the product manager and why their role is misunderstood, and I’m talking to the CEO. You are probably frustrated with your product managers because your not quite sure how to measure them and make them accountable for the things you find most important.
The Role of a Product Manager
Product managers are CEOs of their products. It means that product managers are responsible for the success of their products as it supports the goals of your organization. For most it’s revenue, market share, and margin. It is an inbound marketing role. By inbound I mean product managers are responsible for observing what is happening in their markets and learning what problems are worthy of addressing.
Do your product managers manage their product as a business or are they experts on features?
Your product managers should be experts in the markets their products serve. They should understand the problems that exists and how their products address those problems. They should understand the impact those problems have on the people who experience them. They are messengers of the market.
Your product managers are people who must spend a lot more time outside the building than they do now. Why? You’re not going get any meaningful information about the market from inside the walls of your building. Ever. And you should budget accordingly for product managers to get out of the building.
If you are trying to grow market share, why are you spending so much time talking to the people who have already bought your product?
Product Managers who are not visiting at least 10 visits to non-customers per quarter and documenting their experience are not doing their jobs. You can start by making this activity part of how you measure them and make them accountable. This single activity will increase their understanding of the market and their credibility within your organization on an order of magnitude. If they can’t or are unwilling to get out of the building and call on non-customers you may need to move them into a role other than product management.
Which Group Owns Product Management?
This is a fuzzy question for CEOs. Product managers will usually reside in Development, Marketing or Product Management. If you have product managers reporting to Sales, you have it all wrong and need to reset the table.
Development
When product managers are in Development they won’t succeed at being CEOs for their products. Development is about features, users and schedules, and that is what your product managers will end up doing.
Product Management
When product managers are in Product Management, they have a chance to succeed provided they have the executive leadership to go head-to-head at the executive table.
Marketing
When product managers are in Marketing they also have a good chance of succeeding. But let me share a little secret with you. The marketing VP in your organization probably came from a marketing communications background and doesn’t have a clue about the role of a product manager. Your marketing VP spends his day worrying about providing support to the sales channels, corporate branding and the design of the new ad campaign. Product managers in this kind of Marketing environment end up as glorified sales engineers and never have time for product strategy or gaining important market insight.
What’s Best?
You want your product managers to be market driven and whatever group helps that happen most effectively is the right choice. While I’ve seen product managers thrive in all of the above environments, the least likely is in Development. My preferences is in Marketing first and then as a stand alone group.
What the Role of a Product Manager Isn’t
Let me share with you what activities your product product manager shouldn’t be doing:
Demo Dolly - if you have product managers doing demos, stop that activity today and hire sales engineers.
Product designer - that’s a role that belongs in Development not Product Management. If your Development team lacks product design skills then hire them.
A project manager for Development - if your Development team can’t manage their own projects then you have a Development problem, not a Product Management problem.
A sales engineer - if Product Managers are going on sales calls you are making them part of the Sales team. Stop that today and hire sales engineers.
The reason that the role of a product manager is misunderstood is they are expected to do the things no one else wants to do. Product managers hop around from crisis to crisis filling gaps that exist in your organization.
We have witnessed one of the most significant product launches of the year, the launch of Sarah Palin as nominee for VP of the Republican Party. The launch was well planned and executed, and there are many examples that can be emulated.
The Republicans had many good potential VP picks among their party ranks. The easy thing to do was to choose a running mate that would be acceptable to the party base, much like Obama did choosing Biden as his running mate for the Democratic Party. But the McCain camp went much further. They analyzed their market and developed a deep understanding of their Buyers (voters).
There are many undecided voters that are looking for something different. Those voters see the pluses and minuses of both presidential candidates but were missing something. And there are millions of Hillary Clinton supporters up for grabs that feel cheated in the Democratic primary process.
The McCain camp responded with Sarah Palin.
McCain’s strengths are his experience, being a war hero, and his maverick style. But his liabilities are his age, being part of the Washington establishment and not being conservative enough. By choosing Sarah Palin, McCain was able to capitalize on his strengths, shore up his liabilities and appeal to disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters.
While the Democratic Convention was underway, McCain kept his VP choice under wraps. This caused the media to get worked up. Cable news shows and radio talk shows spent hours of air time guessing who McCain would pick for his running mate. They focused on the usual suspects. Sarah Palin was never in the discussion.
Then the day after Barack Obama’s speech in Denver, the McCain campaign launched Sarah Palin, and it completely stole the media attention from Obama’s historic speech. The media was caught off guard and scrambled to get information about Gov. Palin and the McCain camp was prepared to supply the information.
I set the Tivos in my house to record Sarah Palin’s speech on different network and cable news channels because I wanted to hear the commentary of the hosts and their guest experts leading up to the speech and afterward. Most of the discussion before her speech focused on her lack of experience and her unknown status.
Then Sarah Palin delivered a knockout speech. It was well written and well rehearsed. She stole the show. It was a product launch event second to none. It was a launch that even Apple should be impressed with.
Knowing your market. Capitalizing on strengths. Addressing shortcomings. Identifying and exploiting your competitor’s weaknesses. Timing. Leverage. Surprise.
Thanks to everyone who attended the Product Launch Readiness: Planning for Sales Velocity webinar today. The webinar was recorded and is now available for replay here. Feel free to replay it as much as you want and be sure to pass it along to friends and colleagues (family might be pushing it).
There were a large number of questions that I will do my best to answer over the next few days. The answers will be posted on the webinar archive landing page.
The very kind comments were welcomed and humbling. Thanks also to the new Twitter followers!
Thanks again.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the slides from the presentation and a buying cycle funnel like the one I used in the webinar are available for download by going to:
I just completed the slides for a webinar I’m giving tomorrow morning at 10am Pacific titled Product Launch Readiness: Planning for Sales Velocity.
The topic originated by asking the question, “Why do some products takeoff at launch (sorry, bad pun) and others appear to start strong and fizzle out like a lawn dart?”
I’ll address specific ways to stack the deck and create an environment that ensures Sales Velocity.
You won’t get any boring death by PowerPoint. I’ve got lots of visual slides that will move quickly, so you will need to fasten your seatbelt and put your tray in the upright position.
To signup for the Planning for Sales Velocity webinar go here. It will be recorded and available for playback on the same day. I’ll write another post with the details when the recording is available.
with David Daniels Instructor at Pragmatic Marketing
Lack of organizational readiness is the #1 killer of successful product launches. You’ve identified a market problem that is pervasive, urgent and the market is willing to buy. You’ve developed a great product that satisfies the need. You are ready to go to market, but are you confident that the rest of your organization ready to sell and support your new offering? You could easily lose an entire quarter or more while the rest of the organization catches up. Learn some of key secrets to a successful product launch that can set the stage for sales velocity.
Thanks to Steve, Jeff and Mike for their insight. You all make great points. I’m going to align with Jeff on the first step is to establish the goals for the product launch. Any tactics and strategy will suffice if there are no defined launch goals. The effort will be all over the map, not aligned with the goals of the business and waste a lot of money - all things where Marketing loses credibility with the management team.
Management Goals
Chen’s next step is to establish the goals for his product launch, but before he does he needs to meet with senior management to understand their primary goals for the year. After meeting with the CEO, VP Marketing and VP Sales, it’s determined that the management goals for the year are to increase revenue by 50%, improve customer retention from 70% to 80%, and to increase the awareness of Widget Software in the market by 10%. Improving revenue is the most important of the three goals.
So armed with the knowledge of management’s goals, Chen starts the educated guesswork (strategy) of establishing a revenue goal. Since there will only be new customers for Widgetizer, he can’t affect the customer retention goal. Since Widgetizer is new, the awareness of it is 0%.
No Sales History
Chen assembles a small team to arrive at a revenue number for Widgetizer. Robin, the product manager, forecasted $20M in revenue over 3 years in the Widgetizer business case. But before putting his reputation on the line, Chen wants to understand what it will take to sell Widgetizer. Since there is no previous sales history he works with a few sales guys he trusts and maps out a sales cycle. They also strategize on who is likely to be involved in the sale.
Prospect Interviews
Realizing there are large gaps in their guesswork, Chen collaborates with Robin and they begin the process of narrowing the gaps by interviewing 10 potential Widgetizer customers. They would like to interview more prospects but they don’t have the luxury of time. The goal of the interviews is to understand:
The buying criteria
The path to a buying decision (are there others involved that aren’t obvious?)
The length and steps in the buying cycle
Knowing this information would be a solid starting point for developing a defendable revenue goal for Widgetizer. While some of this information was postulated by Robin in the product planning process, the type of detail that is needed now is around how to sell, not what should be in the product. It will be fundamental to training the sales team.
The Surprise
After the interviews Chen and Robin discover that the buying process and the people involved in the buying decision are different than the Widget Software team is accustomed to. This could cause a disconnect with the sales team and cause them to avoid selling Widgetizer. There were disconnects on three key dimensions:
A different buyer is involved in the sale (VP Operations)
A different price point (Widgetizer is priced higher than other products sold by Widget Software)
A distinctly different sales cycle
The Revenue Goal
Based on a realization that there will be some significant sales training involved Chen establishes it as a significant risk factor in the success of the Widgetizer product launch. Chen and Robin agree that a first year revenue goal of $1M is reasonable and meets with the management team to make their recommendation, supported by their research and findings.
Your Turn
What will management say? Is the revenue goal far lower than expected? What kind of pushback will Chen receive?
