Phoenix Rising

Free eBook: RollingThunder, Powering Momentous Market Launches

This eBook shares the transformational thinking behind Rolling Thunder along with practical examples of each step along the way. You'll learn how to create and execute a Rolling Thunder launch of your own.

• The key phases of a Rolling Thunder launch and how to maximize each for your launch.
• The power of a whisper and how to grow that whisper into a roar.
• Tips ‘n tricks for powering new levels of launch success – measured in revenue.

Experience Rolling Thunder & I doubt you'll ever go back to the single Lightning Bolt again!

Get Your FREE eBook here.

    

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Sales & Marketing - How to Kick Butt Together!

Speaking of Rolling Thunder market launches...

Sales involvement will make or break market launches. It doesn’t matter how great our marketing story is. Doesn't matter if our whatchafizzle is the fastest one in the west. If our sales force isn’t on board – revenues won’t flow.

So how can we get sales more involved in our launches?

• Be a team.  Bring sales thought leaders into the launch planning right from the start. Then sit back and listen to them. If we have the right people, they'll give us valuable input that can make our launch roar. They know things we don't. So pay attention and learn. Keep them involved all along the way and value their feedback.Your launch will be more successful for it!

• Test and evolve together.  Involve the  reps that know the early target customers -  use them as the first tests. They'll give us the feedback we need – early in the cycle, before we blow it with the market. Let them help you work with the customers to determine the best sales approach, customer profiles and the key messages that compel action.  Help them close those first deals so you know the winning pattern. Have a new audience or market we want to attack?  Involve the reps who understand that market. They are the experts – let's use them to get it right!

• Make sales buy-in a priority. I've worked with too many companies who thought sales just took whatever marketing and development threw over the wall - that was their job. That's so wrong. How would you like to be treated like a mushroom in a closet? Part of any launch plan should be to get buy in from sales on all facets.  If they don't buy our approach, why would we think our customers will?

• Arm sales. Work with the leaders to create the tools and evidence they need to sell our solution. I know, everyone says that.  But do we do it, really?  Pay attention to what sales says they need and stop pushing the collateral tree down their throats.

The traditional wisdom is to wait to include sales in a launch until closer to the actual event. We don't want to distract them, get them selling the new stuff too soon, lose our current revenue momentum.  Come on, sales folks are adults to be trusted, not children to be controlled. I've always thought those protests were more about turf than about reality.

Make sales a part of the team early, and listen to what they have to say. We all know sales reps are driven to make money.  When we involve them - they get what they need to do just that. And they go do what comes naturally. Sell!

Invite sales early, power into the market and go kick some butt!

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Keep Your Eye on the Revenue

Do you think your market launch is 'final' once you drop the press release announcing your new product or company'? Wrong.

Great launches continue for weeks or months after the press release. I usually have a minimum of a six month post-launch plan for any client, sometimes longer than that.

You're probably thinking, "Once it's public, it's public. What's left to do?"

First, let's reframe the meaning of launches. Launches have one goal - revenue. Getting all those press clippings won't pay your salary.

Launch momentum must power far past the press release. Think about the launch day as a 'first date' with your audience. You wouldn't stop communicating after that first date would you? 

Keep driving market momentum. Otherwise sales will be slow,your sales team will grow disinterested and you'll just plain fail. No matter how cool the press clippings are.

So how do you drive to revenue? Here are some ideas:

• Sales momentum programs. Stay in touch with your sales force. Learn what they need to make them successful. Then deliver it and keep delivering until the revenue flows.

• Focus on your winners. Fast traction is critical to launch success. Identify the common threads of your early customers - segment, size, problem, application etc. Then find ways to create a 'coookie cutter' approach to identify, attract and capture similar prospects.

• Leverage your 3rd parties. Nothing evidences your credibility like what other people say about you. Leverage customer, partner and other quotes and stories in ongoing communications with your audience.  Continue reinforcing your value and why your audience should pay attention.
  

• Keep communicating. Would you stop telling your family about your new baby? So do the same with your audience. Share your successes, your customers' applications, new evidence of value you uncover.  Continue to communicate. Just be careful. Don't sell, Do inform.
  

• Demonstrate your  success. So you told everyone your story. Hopefully you also gave them a roadmap for what to expect from your with regard to additional products, customer uptake, partner growth, revenue expectations and more. Go back and share when you meet those goals - check that box , show that you're successful. It's a great way to build credibility and keep the momentum going. AND you have another valid reason to chat with your audience.

Regardless of how you choose to create your go-to-market strategy, how you execute your launch, how you drive momentum - there's one key to a great launch.

Keep your eye on the revenue. That's your true measure of success.

Powering Momentous Launches

Launches are viewed as the Lighting Bolt of our corporate world, the big Ta Da! We get all our materials together in hush, hush secrecy. A week or two before the big date, we go share our news with the leading analysts in our community, the top customers and partners.  Then, on the big day our Press Release  hits the wire and  we start selling our hearts out, having trained the sales force the day or week before.

The problem is that those approaches don't work anymore.The Lightning Bolt has given way to Rolling Thunder.

Rolling Thunder launches focus on announcing success - not availability.

I've been using Rolling Thunder launches for over a decade. We use a Rolling Thunder approach to build momentum, create buzz and excitement, leaving our audience wondering what's coming.  We gather supporting evidence before we 'launch', strengthening our sales and marketing efforts.  We also work the 'kinks' out before we step into the limelight.  I wouldn't launch any other way.

Case in Point

A client had a game-changing innovation in the storage marketplace. They were ready to announce their new solution when I was brought in by the board of directors. Here are some of the issues I saw:

• They had three beta sites  but the customers weren't ready to talk about anything yet.
• They had two partners but they weren't working with the product yet.
• Their sales force had only seen early demos of the product. Only the VP of sales had been involved in creating the go-to-market strategy.
• No analysts or experts had been briefed or questioned around the strategy.The Thinking was to keep it secret and not share with anyone who might tell the competition.
• There had been no 'softening' of the market, no momentum built.

The plan was to put out the lightning bolt press release, brief everyone on that day and then start selling.

We didn't follow that plan. Nope, not even. Here's what we DID do:

• Brief sales. The first thing we did was to get the top 5 reps in the top markets, focusing on the strongest current and future opportunities - not just the current few big customers.  We showed them the product, asked what they wanted for demos. We got their feedback, their concerns -and over the next month, their buy in.  Which, by the way, they shared with the rest of the field sales force.

• Target early customers. We ran like the wind with those reps to target the top ten customers who would get the most immediate results from this new solution. We briefed them, collected their feedback and got the storage system running in five sites within 60 days.

• Target top partners. We worked with one of the channel reps to target two partners as early channel players. We briefed them, took their feedback and let them have product - with our tech support guys standing by to answer any and all questions. The only agreement was that they would each deliver one beta site in the first 60 days with our help - and they did.

• We whispered: At a large industry event, we whispered our news to the most exclusive group you  could imagine. We invited the top four analysts,two long lead press, five well known customers and a few other folks to a private Whisper Suite.  We asked them to sign NDAs and begged them not to tell anyone they'd been to our suite, seen our product.  They did exactly what we wanted. They went out and told the world they'd seen something cool that others hadn't.  And the Buzz began.

• The secret lab. We set aside a 'private' space in the corporate office for the final testing. We brought in outside parties to 'test' the product in that lab, swearing them to secrecy until the day of the press release. The Buzz grew.

• We were the Expert. We put together a set of themes around the market and customer need for our solution - and began to talk about those needs publicly.  Not our solution, not chest thumping. We educated the market as an expert - discussed the challenges AND the optimal ways to resolve them. At tradeshows and conferences and in a few contributed articles - we set the stage for our solution, without ever mentioning anything specific about it.

Four months after I met the client we finally wired that press release -and the world was waiting. It was the best coverage the company ever had. The company was touted as an innovator and leader, the product won awards for product and technology innovation in a number of reviews. 

So what was different about Rolling Thunder than the traditional Thor's Lightning Bolt?

• We had customers using the product before we announced it. They gave us the evidence of the value that solution provided. That brought immediate credibility.

• We had partners selling the solution with hands-on experiences. They shared their stories - and yes, our credibility rose even higher.

• Thought leaders agreed with our approach. Why wouldn't they. We'd been sharing our expert ideas in the market, people had latched onto them as valuable, embraced them as their own.  Add more credibility.

• We had revenues. Imagine that, revenues before you drop the PR. What a great idea. That's the ultimate proof that your offering has value - people have already paid money for it. Talk about credibility!

Rolling Thunder creates buzz in the market ahead of anything formal announcement. It lets you leverage that buzz to create momentum for your launch.

Most importantly, you get to announce success.  Who can argue with that?

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Rebel's Note: My associates asked me to write a series of posts on Company and Product Market Launches - subjects that are near and dear to my heart. So, over the next few weeks, check back for posts related to Rolling Thunder Launch methodologies.

Next Week: Beyond the Lightning Strike, or Why the Press Release Isn't the End of the Launch.

Stop Blaming Sales!

I had to remind a client of that fact as we were discussing their last product launch - a launch that was less successful than they'd hoped.

The executive was complaining to me that the revenues just hadn't ramped as expected. The field was discounting, selling point products versus the complete solution, so margins were disappointing as well.

The company had to finally assign quotas against the newly launched product to get the field to pay attention to this revolutionary whatchamadoodle. The field hadn't even found early reference customers - the company had only targeted the ones nominated by engineering.

Does anyone else smell a rat? I surely did.

I hear this story too often. All about how sales is the reason that product launches and marketing efforts fail - why our marvels of innovation never achieve the recognition (or revenue) they deserve. What a bunch of baloney.

Sales is marketing's customer.

Marketing's role is to give sales the tools and training they need to sell the company's solutions. It's also marketing's role to get them excited about the newest offerings.  And FYI  -  marketing and engineering are supposed to deliver solutions that are differentiated and that customers want to buy. But you know that already, right?

If sales isn't responding - then marketing is responsible.  I know, you don't want to hear that.  And of course there are exceptions to every rule.  But in general, if a sales rep isn't eating the dog food it means they don't think their customers will either.  If that's the case, marketing  has missed something - it's the wrong product, story, pricing or target audience.

Take the above example.  As I probed a bit deeper, here's what I learned:

• The only members of the the sales organization involved in the launch planning were the VP of sales, (who'd been in that position for six years) and their top sales rep (who managed the oldest and largest customer). These two provided all  on the solution; its packaging, targeting, positioning and sales strategy.  Pricing was set in the corporate vacuum, er headquarters, as well.

• Marketing tested messaging with engineering and product management, as well as a couple of customers hand-selected for the technology prowess (the largest customer being one of them). When I asked if these customers represented the primary profile for sales engagement, I learned these were the earliest of early adopters. There were only two of them that the company could identify in their customer base. I was assured that "Others will buy when they see how cool the whatchamadoodle is".

• Sales training included an explanatory email, announcing a variety of selling tools posted to an internal sales portal.  Actual training consisted of a two hour webinar that included engineering presentations and architecture reviews, an overview of the single beta customer's infrastructure (yep, the largest customer), and a demonstration of the technology in action at that site. Also included was a pricing exercise. Note: I learned that fifteen minutes into the webinar attendees were dropping off like flies. Can you blame them?

No wonder this company had trouble generating momentum. At the risk of being obvious, does this feel like the way marketing should treat their customer - meaning the sales force? Let's look at some of the issues:

• Lack of sales buy-in. There was never an attempt to include the 'sweet spot' of the sales force, meaning the reps who were selling to the next generation of customer. There was no chance for sales to  offer feedback during the launch planning. Why would you expect them to act like a part of the team when they weren't treated as such? Trust me when I say, if you get the right few sales leaders involved - the ones most respected by the reps themselves - you will get buy in. And a lot better feedback too!

• Lack of appropriate customer input. OK, so they did get some feedback from a couple of large customers.  But these two customers did not represent a target market large enough for reps to meet their quotas. They represented an infinitesimal segment of first and only adopters - and the status quo of the company. Revenues were doomed from the beginning thanks to a small and narrowly defined customer audience.

• Lack of sales training.  Sales reps don't necessarily want to know about the feeds 'n speeds anymore than your customers do.  Sure, their technical reps want this information for the IT user buyers.  But it should be given to them in a separate, in-depth training exercise.  Sales training is best when its focused on how to win business from the economic buyer - you know, the guy who signs the checks and doesn't really care about that whizbang new architecture you developed. That includes customer-centric targeting, messaging and evidence (in the form of real world application stories) - all focused on bottom-line value and the evidence to support those claims. 

• Attitude. Sales reps are driven by the potential to make money.  In the absence of the right information, you won't get their attention.  hey won't see how to make the bucks without a big long fight. If a product is too difficult to sell, too far ahead of its time, too complex and technical, if the training isn't appropriate...sales will continue selling their status quo suite of products - and making money. It's human nature, and it's certainly sales' nature. 

So the next time someone starts to blame sales for lack of product acceptance in your customer base or for discounting deals that don't generate the margin or results you expected - think again.

It's most likely sales is doing the best they can with what they've been given.