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?

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?