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?
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.
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.
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)?
The PDMA New Product Development Glossary supplies the following definition for New Product Introduction:
New Product Introduction (NPI): The launch or commercialization of a new product into the marketplace. Takes place at the end of a successful product development project.
Since this definition uses three more terms (new product, launch and commercialization) we need to dig further.
New Product: A term of many opinions and practices, but most generally defined as a product (either a good or service) new to the firm marketing it. Excludes products that are only changed in promotion.
Launch: The process by which a new product is introduced into the market for initial sale.
Commercialization: The process of taking a new product from development to market. It generally includes production launch and ramp-up, marketing materials and program development, supply chain development, sales channel development, training development, training, and service and support development.
Putting them together we arrive at
New Product Introduction (NPI): The process by which a new product is introduced into the marketplace. Takes place at the end of a successful product development project.
While the guys at PDMA have done a fairly good attempt of defining NPI, it is fundamentally flawed. The flaw lies in the orientation. It’s an inside out definition from a product development perspective.
Product launch is not the end of the development process it’s the beginning of the sales process.
What if there was no development process? Every day organizations introduce new products to market that are sourced from other parties. Every day established products are launched (or relaunched).
I use a business-oriented definition of product launch that is more encompassing and more accurately describes the desired outcome:
Product Launch is the process of introducing a product to a market in such a way it generates momentum.
That’s what we want to do right? Whether the product is new, a new version or sourced from another supplier our goal is to generate momentum.
In the old days when a software product reached a state where it could be sold, we referred to it as General Availability (GA). You might still be using some of these terms in your shop: Beta, Release to Manufacturing (RTM), Release Candidate (RC) and GA. These are states to help us understand where the product is in the development process.
We used the term "launch" to represent something big. It meant more than a press release and a Powerpoint presentation. But over time the marketing guys have hijacked "launch" and have overused it. A new website is "launched". Translation: a new design of our website has been uploaded to our server. The get-rich-quick internet marketers have diluted "launch" to something quick and tactical. Very smart on their part, I have to admit. We still have a psychological connection to "launch" as being something big. We launch ad campaigns, cars, drugs, beverages, airlines, ideas, programs, and all sorts of things. Maybe "launch" should now be added to the gobbledygood of overused terms like scalable, enterprise class, robust, state-of-the-art, extensible, open architecture, cutting edge, and mission critical.
We borrowed the term "launch" from NASA. NASA use "launch" in two ways. One to refer to launching a mission (the big idea) and another to refer to launching a vehicle (the event). When the rocket leaves the launch pad, the mission isn’t over, it’s just starting.
I recently did a presentation at AIPMM’s PMEC West conference in San Diego and had the opportunity to speak with a lot of smart, energetic product managers and product marketing managers about product launch. It struck me that there’s a conventional wisdom that needs to be changed. Radically changed. It has to do with where product launch fits into the grand scheme of things.
It has to do with something I discovered a while back. Product launch IS NOT the end of the development process. It is the BEGINNING of the sales process. Noodle on that a little and then re-read what I just stated.
You probably have been in the situation where you scramble at the last minute to get ready to “launch”. To make matters worse you probably encountered a delay of some sort. It doesn’t really matter what it was. What’s important is that you discover late in the game there are material changes to the product that radically change the original assumptions you had about your product launch plan.
Now you have a serious delay. Marketing materials have to be revamped. In some cases a whole new approach is required. The sales team is up in arms because - yet again - the organization isn’t ready and they’ve already been given their quota. Of course it’s the marketing team’s fault again.
This is “end of the development process” thinking. Now change it to a “beginning of the sales process” thinking. Your goal in a product launch is generate momentum. What would you do differently?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Failure to prepare the Sales team to sell should be a crime. A lot of effort goes into the design and build of the product. Marketing does its best to create demand. Public Relations is working hard to get ink. But is your sales team ready to sell? Do they have the essential tools they will need to start closing business right away, or will they be left to their own devices to figure it out? Your organization could easily lose a quarter or more in lost revenue opportunity while this thrashing about is taking place.
It should be no surprise that the relationship between Sales and Marketing can be tenuous at best. In some organizations it doesn’t matter how hard the Marketing team works to support the Sales team. There always seems to be some complaint about how Marketing isn’t doing enough. That dynamic has existed for years and will continue to exist into the future. So my best advice is to get over it. The objective is to sell more stuff, and everyone has to do whatever it takes to sell more stuff. Period.
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.