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?

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.

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.

Sarah Palin GOP VP Acceptance Speech (part 1)

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:

http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/request

After entering you will see a listing of webinars and stuff related to the webinar.  You’ll need to enter your name and email address to get through.

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.

Register here

Like many other people, I have given the Chief Marketing Officer Council permission to send me their newsletter and typically enjoy getting emails from them.  Usually I find the information relevant and useful in my line of business.  However, I recently received a promotional email for a new report from the CMO Council and based on the copy I thought it was a free report (I skim mostly).  In fairness to the CMO Council the copy didn’t say “free” anywhere but it didn’t say there was a cost associated with the report either (see for yourself).

Dear David,
Companies, on a global level, are struggling to integrate critical demand generation functions, often fueling a harmful rift between sales and marketing groups. This is one of the revelations in Closing the Gap: The Sales and Marketing Alignment Imperative, a new global survey of more than 500 sales and marketing professionals from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMOC) Council. The report goes on to emphasize that  companies still lag in their ability to integrate and align sales goals with marketing activities, thus reducing the overall business performance of their organizations.
The Sales and Marketing Integration Audit reached out to a wide cross-section of marketing, sales and channel management professions worldwide. Key findings showed that: 

• Less than 20 percent of respondents see their sales and marketing organizations as extremely collaborative; most felt the two groups had intermittent relations and interactions.
  
• In looking at ways sales could add value to marketing messaging and communications, survey participants felt engaging strategically with customers to better understand issues and needs was the most valuable contribution.
  
• In contrast, two of the most important roles marketing could play in optimizing sales performance were fielding campaigns that generated and nurtured leads and opportunities, as well as providing customized value-selling content and presentation materials.
  
• Among those who have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications, only 13 percent view the application as highly valued and widely deployed, while 42 percent see growing acceptance and adoption.
  
• While 50 percent of those surveyed said they had pretty good or extensive visibility in to customer accounts and business activity, the other 50 percent said they had trouble finding customer account data, did not have enough information, or none at all.

The 50-page report delivers detailed findings with accompanying graphs, pictograms and charts, along with insight into what value each of these critical functions is looking to reap from their partners. As more executives are being held accountable for process and sales optimization, bridging the gap and aligning sales with marketing is a critical imperative versus a luxury of company culture.

To download the full report, please click here.

Best,

Donovan Neale-May
Executive Director
CMO Council

So I clicked on the link and was sent to a CMO Council Promotional Landing Page where I was asked for too much information (for a first date).  If I provided my contact information (which required a telephone number), I could get a summary of the report for free or I could pay to get the full report.  The form even asked for my email.  Didn’t they already have it?

I don’t begrudge the CMO Council for trying to make money, but this approach is shameful, particularly coming from a group calling itself the CMO Council.  I might have expected this from the “Selling Council” but from the CMO Council I expect a more innovative approach.  This in the old school category.  It takes longer for some to catch on.

Here are my thoughts…

1. The copy should have been absolutely clear about what was free and what would require a fee (and much shorter copy)

2. The landing page should have provided a teaser excerpt of the report summary

3. If the teaser caught my interest, there should have been a way to download the report summary with minimal registration information (ideally an email address only - since they already have that).

4. If I found the report summary to be compelling, give me a link to buy the full report.

Since the registration form required a telephone number you know what was going to happen next - a sales call.  There is no other reason why it was required.  And if I downloaded the free report summary, the call would have been to sell me on the full report.  I wasn’t ready for all that yet.  It’s too much like speed dating.

So how many people are clicking through from the email and then bailing when they see what’s required in the registration form?  Only the CMO Council webmaster knows for sure (assuming she reads the site analytics).

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?

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.

If you’ve done your homework, surveyed the market and have the data to prove your position, skip this post. If you believe you understand the market and don’t need to talk to the market to validate your opinions read on. Maybe it’s your ego or your arrogance that prevents you from talking to the market. Maybe it’s fear. Either way, statistically, you’re a train wreck waiting to happen.

Let me walk you through it. You worked in an industry for a number of years. That experience gives you a sense of intuitive understanding of the industry and what makes it tick. More than likely you were in a mid-level position where you had the benefit of seeing life in the trenches. During this time you saw a set of recurring problems and maybe even formulated some technical solutions to address them. You presented your ideas to management, who didn’t embrace your enthusiasm for the problem. You’re frustrated, hurt and maybe angry. You develop an “I’ll show them” attitude and strike off on your own.

In your spare time you develop a prototype and begin to show it to your peers. Your peers give you glowing feedback and reinforce your sense of importance. You are on your way to being rich.

You get introduced to angel investors who are struck by your enthusiasm and command of the problem. They give you the seed capital you need to take your idea to the next level. You hire a few developers with the goal of moving from prototype to commercial ready.

You spend the next 6 months heads-down developing the solution. You know what features need to go into the product. After all, you lived the problem and know how to fix it. There’s no time to survey the market and talk to decision makers. You know the problem and you have the answer.

Three months into the project you begin to get feedback from the team about specific features that might be missing. They’re smart guys so they’ve started poking around to identify competitive alternatives and what they’re offering. You’re annoyed by the distraction. The competitors don’t get it. You have the answer.

Your team delivers the product in 6 months on budget as planned. Investors are happy with your project management skills and assure you they can help raise more money when needed. It’s now reckoning time. The product is ready and you’re ready to launch.

You start your product launch carefully. Since you don’t have a big budget you prefer to do a soft launch and to get the product into the hands of a few customers. You reach out to the peers in your network, get a few meetings and demos. You are encouraged by the glowing feedback.

Then nothing happens. No sales. No interest. Nothing.

You panic. It must be the price. We must have the wrong sales guys. Marketing is a waste of money. The prospects don’t “get it”.

Money is running out and your team is demoralized by the lack of sales. They doubt your expertise in the problem and the market. Did they just spend 6 months of their lives building a product that no one wants to buy? How could this happen? They feel betrayed.

It’s happening everyday to startups and big companies. And it can be easily addressed by setting aside some of the arrogance and getting out to talk to the market before it’s too late. What is the problem (in their words)? What are they doing to fix it now (in their words)? How important is this problem in the grand scheme (in their words)?

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