There is some very exciting Launch Clinic news I would like to share.  Pragmatic Marketing has acquired Launch Clinic effective June 1, 2008.  The advantages to Launch Clinic customers and followers are many.  First, Pragmatic Marketing is the recognized leader in product manager and product marketing manager training which opens up new professional development opportunities for Launch Clinic customers.  Second, the Launch Clinic workshops and toolkits are highly complementary to Pragmatic’s offerings.

I have joined Pragmatic Marketing as an instructor and am in training to teach the Effective Product Marketing seminar.  I am also working closely with Pragmatic to introduce the Launch Clinic content into the Pragmatic Marketing Framework.  Fortunately there isn’t much overlap.  The Launch Clinic content will be “re-launched” over the next few months.  In the meantime the toolkits are still available for purchase online and if you have an immediate need for product launch training or consulting please feel free to contact me.

Day 1 at Product Management Educational Conference (PMEC)

AIPMM is the world’s largest professional organization of product managers, brand managers, product marketing managers and other individuals responsible for guiding their organizations and clients through a constantly changing business landscape. AIPMM represents those who manage the entire product life-cycle.

We are hanging out at the San Diego Sheraton Towers and Marina. Here’s a summary of Tuesday’s presentations I attended. There were two tracks so I only have a summary on what I attended.

The Art of the Demo

John Mansour - ZIGZAG Marketing

Tips on how to approach and orchestrate a demo. Made me laugh by reminding me of stuff I’ve been guilty of in the past. Demo styles included the old “Show Up and Throw Up” and the “Spray and Pray”. The point is that a one-size-fits-all demo doesn’t sell. Find out a little about your prospect’s business problems and needs, and then adjust accordingly. Oh, and drop the 50 slides about your company at the beginning.

Pricing Models

Linda Merrick and Mara Krieps - Pivotal Product Management. Linda and Mara provided good information on how to approach pricing.

Segmentation and Position

Lee Shaeffer - PLM Associates

Very nice presentation by Lee. I liked his methodical approach and use of graphics to illustrate important concepts. It was clear from audience response and the full room that this is an important topic to AIPMM members.

Science of a Successful Product Launch

David Daniels (Me) - Launch Clinic

Hot. Very hot. It was fun because the audience was great. Awesome questions and they were kind enough to laugh at my jokes. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that about 20% of the audience had documented launch processes. Very nice.

Technorati Tags: product launch,marketing

I’m pleased to announce that Launch Clinic has been nominated for a Product Management Excellence Award at AIPMM’s Product Management Educational Conference (PMEC) West. PMEC West is going to be held in San Diego, April 1-3, 2008 at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina.

What makes this nomination extra special is that it was submitted by our customers, which we are honored to have received.

Technorati Tags: product launch,marketing

We will be delivering "Product Launches on a Bootstrap Budget" starting on Tuesday April 8.  As the title suggests this webinar is targeted toward organizations with limited launch budgets but still need to maximize results.

Product Launches on a Bootstrap Budget is a 1.5 hour webinar with a live instructor. The webinar will focus mainly on tactics and readiness, with an emphasis on what needs to happen in order to build momentum. Of course, it’s all about how to launch with the least amount of resources.  We’ll cover different tactics you can use "out of the box" that can turn your launch from ho-hum to high-impact.

The techniques you will learn from this webinar have been proven in years of product launches.  While the technologies we use behind the tactics evolve over time, the fundamentals stay the same.  Your messaging needs to resonate with your prospect’s problem, your prospects need to find your solution, the product needs to work, your sale teams needs to know how to sell the value of the solution and your customer support team needs to be able to address any problems along the way.

To learn more about this webinar, follow this link.

Good news to share.  Both Dave and Mike will be speakers at the Product Management Educational Conference (PMEC) in San Diego.  The event is April 1-3 and you can find more about the event here.  The Association of International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM) boasts the world’s largest largest membership and I expect the event will be crawling with super smart people from a wide range of industries willing to share their experience and ideas.  If you have the opportunity you should attend.

For those who can’t attend, I’ll bring the camera and have our blog shined up and ready to go.  We might even sneak in a few Tweets (@launchclinic).

We’ve been working on new webinars that will benefit our customers and are rolling them out over the next few weeks.  What’s been really exciting to learn is the broad range of organizations that Launch Clinic is appealing to: from small startups to large multi-billion dollar organizations.  We don’t believe in  a one-size-fits-all approach and the feedback we’re getting supports this.

Our customers in startups/early stage organizations want to know how to get the most bang for their buck.  Their first time out of the gate is critical and they want to make the most of it.

Our customers from larger more established organizations tend to focus on process and organizational readiness.  Their size has created a whole different set of challenges.

To that end we’re adding five new webinars, each 1.5 hours long.  During this week we will create one post each day to cover each new webinar.  Your comments and feedback are welcome and encouraged.  Each webinar will be delivered by a live instructor.  Recording is still an option but quite honestly we haven’t found the right solution that can give you on-demand access and protect our IP. Solutions definitely exist, we just haven’t found a good fit yet (suggestions welcome).

Version 4.0 of the Product Launch Toolkit was announced today and available for purchase.  Existing customers of the Product Launch Toolkit that are within their 12 month purchase window as well as former attendees of the Product Launch Essentials Workshop will receive a copy over the next few days.

We’ve made changes to almost every worksheet/template and have add a few new ones too.  As a special offer you can go to this page to register and you’ll get a discount off the regular price.

Also, today we’re going to deliver a Product Launch Toolkit customer briefing (webinar) to review the contents of the toolkit and give you an opportunity to ask questions. 

Date: 9 January 2008

Time: 9AM Pacific

Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/701278496

You can register for the event here (it’s free).

You can read the press release here and we added an FAQ here.

Version 4.0 of the Product Launch Toolkit was announced today and available for purchase.  Existing customers of the Product Launch Toolkit that are within their 12 month purchase window as well as former attendees of the Product Launch Essentials Workshop will receive a copy over the next few days.

We’ve made changes to almost every worksheet/template and have add a few new ones too.  As a special offer you can go to this page to register and you’ll get a discount off the regular price.

Also, today we’re going to deliver a Product Launch Toolkit customer briefing (webinar) to review the contents of the toolkit and give you an opportunity to ask questions.

Date: 9 January 2008

Time: 9AM Pacific

Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/701278496

You can register for the event here (it’s free).

You can read the press release here and we added an FAQ here.

We’ve made a recording of our popular “6 Secrets of a Winning Product Launch” webinar and it is now available on-demand. You can access the webinar by registering for the Launch Clinic newsletter. If you’ve already registered you’ll be receiving an email soon with instructions on how to access the webinar.

The Launch Clinic product launch workshop schedule has been updated. We are currently planning our 2008 public product launch workshop. If you have a city you would like to recommend, please email us at training (at) launchclinic.com.