Launch Clinic

Blogs and magazines I’m reading

About.com:Marketing

Ad Age

InfoWorld

B to B Online

Drew’s Marketing Minute

Read a good blog post lately? Pass it along and I’ll add it to the Friday Follow list.

Challenge: You have a lot to offer and share. Show it by commenting on blog posts you like. It only takes a second and it gets you where you need to be – in the conversation not on the sidelines!

Who does the CEO trust for market information?

When CEOs want a briefing on the market they often turn to the VP of Sales to get the information they’re looking for. Why don’t they turn to the VP of Marketing? Afterall it is the marketing department, right?

Your marketing team is too internally focused

It’s not because the VP of Sales is smarter, or has more experience, or is better at politics. It’s because the VP of Marketing doesn’t have a pulse on the market and is too consumed with the day-to-day tactics of marketing stuff. She may be a brilliant manager and her team may execute with stunning precision on marketing tactics, but her team is so internally focused they have become disconnected with what’s really going on in the market.

The CEO knows this and therefore realizes the fastest way to get an answer is to consult with the VP of Sales. The rationale is that since the sales team is regularly engaged in the market, they should have a real-time perspective of what’s happening.  And the VP of Sales knows having the CEO’s ear means greater influence and power.

The CEO is getting the wrong picture

Unfortunately the CEO isn’t getting a true picture of the market. Why? Because the picture the sales team paints is a reflection of their most recent interactions with prospects. This isn’t a status of the market, it’s situational awareness based on a snapshot in time and a function of the limited number of eyes and ears engaged in selling.

It’s not that I’m bashing salespeople. Far from it. My livelihood is dependent on my salespeople’s success. However, we shouldn’t expect salespeople to be experts at markets. We expect them to be good a developing relationships that lead to a sale. Their focus is tactical by definition, which is a good thing if we find revenue and profit important.

Change the game

To be an equal player at the table the VP of Marketing needs a new approach. Stop wasting time, resources and energy on tactical activities that aren’t moving the ball down the field and start becoming more strategic in your approach.

1. Don’t rely solely on secondary research to support your most important decisions. Real breakthroughs are made by understanding your market in the first person.
2. Require each of your team members to get out into the market on a regular basis, write up what they learn, and share it with the rest of the team. Make the activity an important part of their compensation.
3. Become the experts on buyers, buying criteria and the buying process. Require each person on your marketing team to own and evolve 1 buyer persona profile.
4. Conduct sales enablement training based on buyers not on product features
5. Do not rely solely on salespeople to give you the pulse of the market. Their last interaction will likely be their perception of the entire market.

On a weekly basis, how much time does your team dedicate to tactical marketing activities (status quo) versus getting an understanding of the market (game changer)?

You can start small and still be effective. What can you do today to free up a few hours a week to get out into the market?

ProductCamp Austin Summer 2009: Register today!

I'm attending my first ProductCamp Austin on Saturday, August 15, 2009. I’m really looking forward to hanging around a lot of smart product managers and product marketing managers, taking in the sessions and contributing anyway I can.

You have a lot to offer so consider leading a roundtable or suggesting a presentation topic you can deliver. Look for me and introduce yourself. Tell me about your launch challenges.

From the ProductCamp Austin site…

Put simply: ProductCamp is a bunch of smart, passionate people coming together to discuss, debate, and collaborate on the issues they face every day.  Everyone is welcome: in the first two ProductCamps, we had product managers, product marketers, marketing managers, developers, project managers, operations leads, lawyers, HR reps, directors and VP's of marketing and product management, and consultants.  Everyone brings different experiences and leveraging that collective knowledge is what makes ProductCamp special - and something you can't get anywhere else. 

Highlights

As of this post there are 300 registered!

When	Saturday, August 15, 2009 @ 9:00am – 3:30pm
Where	University Teaching Center (UTC) @ The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business Paid parking is available at the Brazos Garage:
Sessions	Click here to view the proposed sessions
Cost	FREE!
Register	Click here to register
Hotel	A negotiated rate of $99/night is available at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center which is a short walk to the UTC. Mention the ProductCamp rate to get the discount.  The hotel has a free shuttle that operates within a 2 mile radius of the hotel.

I’ve submitted a topic titled “10 Ways to Identify an Impending Product Launch Disaster”. Look for it on the session board when you arrive and give it one of your stickers (self serving plug). I’d also like to lead a roundtable discussion. What would you like to discuss?

Twitter @PCAustin - hashtag #PCA09

In Part 1 of this series I stated the reason why product launch marketing programs fail is because they fail to influence buyers.  To get an empathetic understanding of buyers is through the use of a tool called a buyer persona profile. I also stated that in complex B2B sales we’re likely to encounter multiple buyers, each with their own set of problems and agendas. This requires us to build a buyer persona profile for each person that will influence a buying decision for your product or service.

(Buyer personas are covered in much more detail in Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing seminar)

In Part 2 I’m going to connect the buyer persona profile to the buying process, which is the missing component of many product launch marketing programs.

Buyer persona profiles are a marketing tool

First a little more about buyer persona profiles:

• They are a tool for marketing
• They are not to be shared with Sales - ever
• They represent a typical buyer in a market segment (but can never be perfect)
• They go deeper than demographic information
• They give us perspective about how the buyer might behave
• They allow us to get inside the head of a buyer

In the end a buyer persona profile is a marketing tool that gives us the buyer insight we’re missing. It allows us to connect marketing programs with buyers in a way that compels them to take the next step in making a purchase.

The buying process

A lot of attention is placed on the selling process, but how much time do you dedicate to understanding the buying process? The selling process is how we want a sale to go down. The buying process is how the buyer will buy – step by step. When the two are out of sync, marketing programs are all over the map and the ability to predict the outcome of any given sale is almost impossible.

What’s the first action?

Stop for a moment and consider how your buyers might go about the process of buying your product. After they acknowledge they have a problem that needs to be solved, what do they do next? If they’re like me they do a Google search using words and phrases that describe the problem in a way that’s familiar to me. I wouldn’t search for an air movement device, but I would search for a fan. Can your buyers find you online or are you invisible?

Are you providing enough information?

Once they’ve found a set of potential suppliers that can solve their problem, they might spend some time educating themselves on your company and your offerings before they make a call or fill out form on your web site. Are you providing enough information on your web site to enable them to self educate or are you forcing them to contact you before they are ready? Is there negative information they might find during their search that would dissuade them from considering your company?

Different buyers, different steps

If every buyer were involved in every step of the buying process our job would be much easier. But this isn’t the case. One buyer gets the whole thing started and the rest get pulled in as the buying process progresses. And the number and type of buyers will change depending on economic conditions. You will discover that in tight economic times more buyers are involved in the buying process.

Once the buying process steps are defined, map which buyers are involved in which steps. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be a representative example which you will use to focus your product launch marketing efforts.

Now supply the missing pieces

With a basic understanding of the buying process and when each buyer gets involved, you can map your marketing programs (and sales tools) to each step in the buying process. It becomes obvious what is in place and which buyers you haven’t fully addressed. So instead of reacting to requests from the Sales team you can proactively develop marketing programs that influence each buyer from one step in the buying process to the next.

Next Step: How to discover the buying process without annoying your Sales team

The final article in the series will explore techniques you can use to discover the buying process without making the Sales team feel like your treading into their territory.

Are you building product launch marketing programs around the selling process or the buying process?

Is your company’s selling process in sync with your buyer’s buying process?

Read Part 3

Mondays for me are what I call “Marketing Mondays”. I search for fresh information and learn about what others are doing. Today I found an article written by Susan Gunelius in Entrepreneur Magazine titled “5 Myths That Can Kill Your Marketing Copy”. Susan is the author of “Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps” and she writes the Keysplash Creative blog.

There are 5 copywriting myths Susan addresses in her article that are every bit as relevant to B2B marketers as they are to B2C marketers. These are 5 rules you should use every time you prepare to write copy.

Consumers care about me and my business

No they don’t. Get rid of the slides that show a picture of your building, the projected revenue and the world graphic showing all of your office locations (most of which are probably your salespeople’s homes) in your sales presentation.

Talk about your buyers and how you’re going to solve their problems.

I can use the same copy everywhere

Admit it. You do this to save time, we all do now and then. Susan makes the point that the copy should be appropriate for the medium.

Rethink your copy as it relates to where it will be used. Don’t use the same copy on your brochure as you would on your website as you would on your tradeshow booth. It’s consistent, but is it effective?

I can use the same copy for everyone

Bad idea. In complex B2B sales there will be different buyer personas involved in the buying process. You need to communicate differently to them when their problems (and agendas) are different.

Identify the different buyer personas that will influence the purchase of your product or service, and craft copy that is specific to their problems or needs.

I need to sound smart in my copy

It’s about your buyers not about you. Sounding smart may feed your ego but it can also turn off your buyers. And you could inadvertently make your product sound harder to use than it really is.

Speak using words your buyers use and in a tone that is familiar to them. If you’re a brainiac and can’t dumb down your writing, get someone else to do it.

It’s easy to write copy

No it’s not. Crafting copy that is effective and sells is very different from what you learned in school. Grammar and punctuation rules are routinely broken in order to persuade and make it easier for the reader to consume quickly. It’s a different game and needs a different skill set.

Product launch and the importance of good copy

When launching a product you may have only one chance to get it right and your copy plays a huge role. Have a clear picture of who your buyers are, how you address their problems and why you’re the best to solve them. Then write copy that is persuasive and appropriate for the medium.

Are you taking the time to craft copy that sells?

Are you writing appropriately for the medium or recycling the same copy?

Are grammar and punctuation rules you learned in school holding you back from writing great copy?

This weekend I decided to download and install Windows 7 RC on the PC in our kitchen. It’s a few years old and with the kids pounding on it (sometimes literally) was time to wipe it clean anyway. Through countless downloads of crap from untold number of game sites it had gotten sluggish. So I decided to surface my inner geek and load Windows 7 on it.

My PC configuration

First a little about the PC. It’s a Compaq Presario SR1910NX with an AMD Sempron 3200+ processor, 1GB ram, a 120GB hard drive, and an upgraded video card (256MB I think).  Attached is a Linksys wireless N adapter and an HP 3900 inkjet printer. By no means is this a screaming configuration. I bought it at BestBuy out of the box for less than $300. If the kids broke it I didn’t care.

As part of running the Windows 7 install it will review your PC to see if it meets the minimum requirements. My PC does so off we go.

The Windows 7 install

I decided to wipe everything clean for the install because there wasn’t anything critical I needed to save.

The first pass got almost to the end and hung. I wasn’t sure why but went online and found a few others reporting that connected USB devices might be the culprit. The HP 3900 was still attached so I disconnected it and rebooted. The install went through flawlessly this time.

It recognized the Linksys wireless adapter without interruption – knew what it was, added it and let me know. I didn’t have to click or choose anything. It recognized the video card and activated the Aero user interface (which is very nice).

The total time to install Windows 7 was about 30 minutes.

Add the printers

I have two printers to add. One locally attached and an HP 7500 attached to our home network. In Windows XP connecting the HP 7500 was always a pain, especially if the router was turned off (or power outage) and got a new IP address. This time I was ready.

First the locally attached HP 3900. I plugged the USB cable. Windows 7 recognized the device, added the driver and told me it was ready – without interruption or asking for information. Next came the network attached HP 7500. I went to the control panel, found the hardware section, chose add a printer and then a network printer. Windows 7 found the printer on the network for me. I chose it and the drivers were installed without out interruption or asking for information. Very, very nice. I’m convinced my eight year olds could do this.

First impressions

Fast, nimble and easy. The user interface is clean and crisp, especially with the Aero interface activated. Booting is much faster as is logging off to change users. I’m confident my help desk duties will diminish significantly. :-)

Parental Controls

I really like this part. My kids are like zombies while on the PC and we are diligent about when they get on and what they do. However, we can’t be hovering 24x7. With parental controls you can define the days of the week and the times of the day they can log on, and which programs they can access. You can also set rules for the level of games they can play based on the ESRB game rating.

Suggestion: I would like for Microsoft to allow for daily time limits in the parental controls. You can set the hours – e.g. 9am to 12pm but not limit it to 1 hour per day.

What do the kids think?

They love it. It’s intuitive and easy to use compared to Windows XP. My twins really like the Internet TV option and the gadgets you can drag to your desktop.

So we did a little accessorizing

We were so happy with Windows 7 we went to Sam’s Club and bought a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse to complete the ensemble.

Definitely worth the upgrade effort

I wanted to share this experience, particularly for those of you who haven’t made the leap to Vista (or did and retreated to XP). I’m sure we’ll learn more along the way and as we do, I’ll update this post with the details.

The Marketing Technology Blog	Web Design: It’s Not About You
WebInkNow	Ad agency vs. PR agency turf wars! Pass the beer and peanuts!
Small Business CEO	Twitter Users Contribute 137 Valuable Small Business Tips
B2B Lead Generation Blog	Five steps to help create your universal lead definition
Sales Blogcast	Building Relationships: What Does That Mean?

Read a good blog post lately? Pass it along and I’ll add it to the Friday Follow list.

Challenge: You have a lot to offer and share. Show it by commenting on blog posts you like. It only takes a second and it gets you where you need to be – in the conversation not on the sidelines!

You can probably provide a guess of when you think a launch starts, but when does it end? Product launching is about gaining momentum through sales velocity. Does a news release create momentum? Sometimes. Does a tweet create momentum? Possibly.

Are you ending your launch too soon?

Planning a successful launch starts much sooner than the completion of the product. It will include a launch date – the date at which a public announcement is made that you are officially selling the product. If you think you’re done at that point you would be mistaken. You’ve only just begun.

Considerations after the launch date

What are some of the things you should be thinking about after the launch date? Below are a few of the important ones presuming you’ve done your market research and are introducing a product that solves a problem that is pervasive, urgent and buyers are willing to pay to solve.

Competitive response

Your product launch plan should include a summary of competitors and how you expect them to respond to the threat of your new product launch. In addition to the competitors you know will be the competitors you don’t know. Put a system in place to identify new threats, evaluate them and provide a response to the sales channel.

Sales enablement effectiveness

Sales readiness must be a cornerstone of your product launch plan if you are selling a product where humans are involved in the transaction. The most important goal of this training isn’t about the product, it’s getting salespeople to believe they can make quota with your product and is conducted before the launch date. Monitor the effectiveness of your sales enablement training after the launch date.

Pipeline growth

There should be a direct relationship between the launch and growth in the pipeline – otherwise what’s the point? If you have a new product launch, the data to know how many qualified leads are needed to result in a sale may not yet be known. Now is the time to monitor and adjust, not when sales is complaining.

How long is long enough?

The duration of your product launch window is a reflection of the market you’re selling into and the nature of the buying process. A product with a very short buying cycle will reveal the state of your post launch sales velocity much quicker than a complex product with an 18 months buying cycle.

Are you establishing a long enough launch window to know what’s working and what’s not?

Have you been cutting your launch results short?

A big product launch is coming soon. You’re the one tasked with developing the promotional marketing plan. You’re agonizing over an array of marketing tactics. Some you’ve come up with and some others in the company are recommending.

Imagine a scenario where every time you approached the creation of a marketing plan for a launch, you had the confidence to know which tactics were most likely to attract the right kind of buyers.

Attendees of the product launch class I teach often ask my opinion about marketing tactic ‘A’ or tactic ‘B’. While I don’t specifically address marketing tactics in the class, in this three-part series I’ll share with you 3 success tips that will help you choose the most effective product launch marketing tactics.

Why do product launch marketing programs fail?

Marketing programs fail when they don’t connect with the buyers they’re intended to influence. The reason they don’t connect is because not enough is known about the buyers in the first place. Without a solid understanding of your buyers, you will be guessing and in the process wasting valuable time and money.

Know your buyers

Engineering teams use a tool called a user persona to help guide them in the creation of a useful product. A user persona is a typical example of a user. For more complex products there may be multiple user personas to represent different kinds of users. User personas remove individual bias about who a user is and create a common vision of the user, resulting in better products.

This model can be extended to buyers that are referred to as buyer personas. Just like user personas, buyer personas are archetypes – representative examples – of the people who would buy or influence the purchase of your product. Buyer personas represent typical buyers, not edge-cases or one-offs. They are the people you want your product launch marketing programs to connect with.

Build buyer personas

Start by brainstorming with your colleagues to develop a list of potential buyer personas. Then shorten the list until it represents the typical set of buyers who would be involved in a buying decision. Remember we’re building a tool to help with product launch marketing, not an exhaustive list of every permutation of buyer that could be encountered.

For each buyer persona create a profile that contains details about them – the companies they work in, the titles they might have, who they report to, what they do, the problems they encounter, where they go for information, etc. Start with what you know and identify what you don’t know. Over time make it a point to evolve each buyer persona as more is learned about them.

Through the process of building buyer personas you will develop a deeper understanding of your buyers and what motivates them. As each buyer persona becomes more rich and complex, your ability to find them and connect with them will become more intuitive.

Next Step: Know how buyers buy

The next article in the series expands on the practice of using buyer personas as a tool for marketing by aligning buyer personas with the steps in the buying process. By doing so you create a better understanding of howmarketing programs can influence buyers through their buying process.

Are you using buyer personas now?

How are they helping your marketing efforts?

Read Part 2

I ran a poll recently on LinkedIn and posed the question

“The goals for a product launch in my company are…”

The choices were “Clearly defined & communicated”, “Vague and fuzzy”, “Not shared with us”, and “Not defined or used”.

This isn’t a poll worthy of Rasmussen (forgive me Scott) but does give us a snapshot we can explore in more detail. 62% of you said you have clearly defined and communicated launch goals. The remaining 37% of you indicated they were either vague, not shared or not defined (note the numbers don’t add up to 100% due to rounding).

A slightly different view of the same data is very interesting. If we look at the responses by job title we discover that 100% of C-Level and VP respondents say their launch goals are clear. But those in non-management roles disagree. Only 50% of them believe the launch goals are clearly defined and communicated. So somewhere between the executive management team and the folks who actually have to plan and execute the launch there’s a disconnect.

I don’t find this surprising at all. Ask a CEO, VP of Sales and VP Marketing to state the launch goals, and I’ll bet you’ll get three different answers. But they’ll all agree the launch goals are clearly defined & communicated. Is there any wonder why product launch is such a critical issue?

Technorati Tags: product launch,launch goals,launch plan,product marketing manager,product management

3 tips for product launch marketing success (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series I stated the reason why product launch marketing programs fail is because they fail to influence buyers.  To get an empathetic understanding of buyers is through the use of a tool called a buyer persona profile. I also stated that in complex B2B sales we’re likely to encounter multiple buyers, each with their own set of problems and agendas. This requires us to build a buyer persona profile for each person that will influence a buying decision for your product or service.

(Buyer personas are covered in much more detail in Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing seminar)

In Part 2 I’m going to connect the buyer persona profile to the buying process, which is the missing component of many product launch marketing programs.

Buyer persona profiles are a marketing tool

First a little more about buyer persona profiles:

• They are a tool for marketing
• They are not to be shared with Sales - ever
• They represent a typical buyer in a market segment (but can never be perfect)
• They go deeper than demographic information
• They give us perspective about how the buyer might behave
• They allow us to get inside the head of a buyer

In the end a buyer persona profile is a marketing tool that gives us the buyer insight we’re missing. It allows us to connect marketing programs with buyers in a way that compels them to take the next step in making a purchase.

The buying process

A lot of attention is placed on the selling process, but how much time do you dedicate to understanding the buying process? The selling process is how we want a sale to go down. The buying process is how the buyer will buy – step by step. When the two are out of sync, marketing programs are all over the map and the ability to predict the outcome of any given sale is almost impossible.

What’s the first action?

Stop for a moment and consider how your buyers might go about the process of buying your product. After they acknowledge they have a problem that needs to be solved, what do they do next? If they’re like me they do a Google search using words and phrases that describe the problem in a way that’s familiar to me. I wouldn’t search for an air movement device, but I would search for a fan. Can your buyers find you online or are you invisible?

Are you providing enough information?

Once they’ve found a set of potential suppliers that can solve their problem, they might spend some time educating themselves on your company and your offerings before they make a call or fill out form on your web site. Are you providing enough information on your web site to enable them to self educate or are you forcing them to contact you before they are ready? Is there negative information they might find during their search that would dissuade them from considering your company?

Different buyers, different steps

If every buyer were involved in every step of the buying process our job would be much easier. But this isn’t the case. One buyer gets the whole thing started and the rest get pulled in as the buying process progresses. And the number and type of buyers will change depending on economic conditions. You will discover that in tight economic times more buyers are involved in the buying process.

Once the buying process steps are defined, map which buyers are involved in which steps. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be a representative example which you will use to focus your product launch marketing efforts.

Now supply the missing pieces

With a basic understanding of the buying process and when each buyer gets involved, you can map your marketing programs (and sales tools) to each step in the buying process. It becomes obvious what is in place and which buyers you haven’t fully addressed. So instead of reacting to requests from the Sales team you can proactively develop marketing programs that influence each buyer from one step in the buying process to the next.

Next Step: How to discover the buying process without annoying your Sales team

The final article in the series will explore techniques you can use to discover the buying process without making the Sales team feel like your treading into their territory.

Are you building product launch marketing programs around the selling process or the buying process?

Is your company’s selling process in sync with your buyer’s buying process?

Read Part 3

5 Myths that can kill your marketing copy: Susan Gunelius

Mondays for me are what I call “Marketing Mondays”. I search for fresh information and learn about what others are doing. Today I found an article written by Susan Gunelius in Entrepreneur Magazine titled “5 Myths That Can Kill Your Marketing Copy”. Susan is the author of “Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps” and she writes the Keysplash Creative blog.

There are 5 copywriting myths Susan addresses in her article that are every bit as relevant to B2B marketers as they are to B2C marketers. These are 5 rules you should use every time you prepare to write copy.

Consumers care about me and my business

No they don’t. Get rid of the slides that show a picture of your building, the projected revenue and the world graphic showing all of your office locations (most of which are probably your salespeople’s homes) in your sales presentation.

Talk about your buyers and how you’re going to solve their problems.

I can use the same copy everywhere

Admit it. You do this to save time, we all do now and then. Susan makes the point that the copy should be appropriate for the medium.

Rethink your copy as it relates to where it will be used. Don’t use the same copy on your brochure as you would on your website as you would on your tradeshow booth. It’s consistent, but is it effective?

I can use the same copy for everyone

Bad idea. In complex B2B sales there will be different buyer personas involved in the buying process. You need to communicate differently to them when their problems (and agendas) are different.

Identify the different buyer personas that will influence the purchase of your product or service, and craft copy that is specific to their problems or needs.

I need to sound smart in my copy

It’s about your buyers not about you. Sounding smart may feed your ego but it can also turn off your buyers. And you could inadvertently make your product sound harder to use than it really is.

Speak using words your buyers use and in a tone that is familiar to them. If you’re a brainiac and can’t dumb down your writing, get someone else to do it.

It’s easy to write copy

No it’s not. Crafting copy that is effective and sells is very different from what you learned in school. Grammar and punctuation rules are routinely broken in order to persuade and make it easier for the reader to consume quickly. It’s a different game and needs a different skill set.

Product launch and the importance of good copy

When launching a product you may have only one chance to get it right and your copy plays a huge role. Have a clear picture of who your buyers are, how you address their problems and why you’re the best to solve them. Then write copy that is persuasive and appropriate for the medium.

Are you taking the time to craft copy that sells?

Are you writing appropriately for the medium or recycling the same copy?

Are grammar and punctuation rules you learned in school holding you back from writing great copy?

This weekend I decided to download and install Windows 7 RC on the PC in our kitchen. It’s a few years old and with the kids pounding on it (sometimes literally) was time to wipe it clean anyway. Through countless downloads of crap from untold number of game sites it had gotten sluggish. So I decided to surface my inner geek and load Windows 7 on it.

My PC configuration

First a little about the PC. It’s a Compaq Presario SR1910NX with an AMD Sempron 3200+ processor, 1GB ram, a 120GB hard drive, and an upgraded video card (256MB I think).  Attached is a Linksys wireless N adapter and an HP 3900 inkjet printer. By no means is this a screaming configuration. I bought it at BestBuy out of the box for less than $300. If the kids broke it I didn’t care.

As part of running the Windows 7 install it will review your PC to see if it meets the minimum requirements. My PC does so off we go.

The Windows 7 install

I decided to wipe everything clean for the install because there wasn’t anything critical I needed to save.

The first pass got almost to the end and hung. I wasn’t sure why but went online and found a few others reporting that connected USB devices might be the culprit. The HP 3900 was still attached so I disconnected it and rebooted. The install went through flawlessly this time.

It recognized the Linksys wireless adapter without interruption – knew what it was, added it and let me know. I didn’t have to click or choose anything. It recognized the video card and activated the Aero user interface (which is very nice).

The total time to install Windows 7 was about 30 minutes.

Add the printers

I have two printers to add. One locally attached and an HP 7500 attached to our home network. In Windows XP connecting the HP 7500 was always a pain, especially if the router was turned off (or power outage) and got a new IP address. This time I was ready.

First the locally attached HP 3900. I plugged the USB cable. Windows 7 recognized the device, added the driver and told me it was ready – without interruption or asking for information. Next came the network attached HP 7500. I went to the control panel, found the hardware section, chose add a printer and then a network printer. Windows 7 found the printer on the network for me. I chose it and the drivers were installed without out interruption or asking for information. Very, very nice. I’m convinced my eight year olds could do this.

First impressions

Fast, nimble and easy. The user interface is clean and crisp, especially with the Aero interface activated. Booting is much faster as is logging off to change users. I’m confident my help desk duties will diminish significantly. :-)

Parental Controls

I really like this part. My kids are like zombies while on the PC and we are diligent about when they get on and what they do. However, we can’t be hovering 24x7. With parental controls you can define the days of the week and the times of the day they can log on, and which programs they can access. You can also set rules for the level of games they can play based on the ESRB game rating.

Suggestion: I would like for Microsoft to allow for daily time limits in the parental controls. You can set the hours – e.g. 9am to 12pm but not limit it to 1 hour per day.

What do the kids think?

They love it. It’s intuitive and easy to use compared to Windows XP. My twins really like the Internet TV option and the gadgets you can drag to your desktop.

So we did a little accessorizing

We were so happy with Windows 7 we went to Sam’s Club and bought a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse to complete the ensemble.

Definitely worth the upgrade effort

I wanted to share this experience, particularly for those of you who haven’t made the leap to Vista (or did and retreated to XP). I’m sure we’ll learn more along the way and as we do, I’ll update this post with the details.

The Marketing Technology Blog	Web Design: It’s Not About You
WebInkNow	Ad agency vs. PR agency turf wars! Pass the beer and peanuts!
Small Business CEO	Twitter Users Contribute 137 Valuable Small Business Tips
B2B Lead Generation Blog	Five steps to help create your universal lead definition
Sales Blogcast	Building Relationships: What Does That Mean?

Read a good blog post lately? Pass it along and I’ll add it to the Friday Follow list.

Challenge: You have a lot to offer and share. Show it by commenting on blog posts you like. It only takes a second and it gets you where you need to be – in the conversation not on the sidelines!

You can probably provide a guess of when you think a launch starts, but when does it end? Product launching is about gaining momentum through sales velocity. Does a news release create momentum? Sometimes. Does a tweet create momentum? Possibly.

Are you ending your launch too soon?

Planning a successful launch starts much sooner than the completion of the product. It will include a launch date – the date at which a public announcement is made that you are officially selling the product. If you think you’re done at that point you would be mistaken. You’ve only just begun.

Considerations after the launch date

What are some of the things you should be thinking about after the launch date? Below are a few of the important ones presuming you’ve done your market research and are introducing a product that solves a problem that is pervasive, urgent and buyers are willing to pay to solve.

Competitive response

Your product launch plan should include a summary of competitors and how you expect them to respond to the threat of your new product launch. In addition to the competitors you know will be the competitors you don’t know. Put a system in place to identify new threats, evaluate them and provide a response to the sales channel.

Sales enablement effectiveness

Sales readiness must be a cornerstone of your product launch plan if you are selling a product where humans are involved in the transaction. The most important goal of this training isn’t about the product, it’s getting salespeople to believe they can make quota with your product and is conducted before the launch date. Monitor the effectiveness of your sales enablement training after the launch date.

Pipeline growth

There should be a direct relationship between the launch and growth in the pipeline – otherwise what’s the point? If you have a new product launch, the data to know how many qualified leads are needed to result in a sale may not yet be known. Now is the time to monitor and adjust, not when sales is complaining.

How long is long enough?

The duration of your product launch window is a reflection of the market you’re selling into and the nature of the buying process. A product with a very short buying cycle will reveal the state of your post launch sales velocity much quicker than a complex product with an 18 months buying cycle.

Are you establishing a long enough launch window to know what’s working and what’s not?

Have you been cutting your launch results short?

A big product launch is coming soon. You’re the one tasked with developing the promotional marketing plan. You’re agonizing over an array of marketing tactics. Some you’ve come up with and some others in the company are recommending.

Imagine a scenario where every time you approached the creation of a marketing plan for a launch, you had the confidence to know which tactics were most likely to attract the right kind of buyers.

Attendees of the product launch class I teach often ask my opinion about marketing tactic ‘A’ or tactic ‘B’. While I don’t specifically address marketing tactics in the class, in this three-part series I’ll share with you 3 success tips that will help you choose the most effective product launch marketing tactics.

Why do product launch marketing programs fail?

Marketing programs fail when they don’t connect with the buyers they’re intended to influence. The reason they don’t connect is because not enough is known about the buyers in the first place. Without a solid understanding of your buyers, you will be guessing and in the process wasting valuable time and money.

Know your buyers

Engineering teams use a tool called a user persona to help guide them in the creation of a useful product. A user persona is a typical example of a user. For more complex products there may be multiple user personas to represent different kinds of users. User personas remove individual bias about who a user is and create a common vision of the user, resulting in better products.

This model can be extended to buyers that are referred to as buyer personas. Just like user personas, buyer personas are archetypes – representative examples – of the people who would buy or influence the purchase of your product. Buyer personas represent typical buyers, not edge-cases or one-offs. They are the people you want your product launch marketing programs to connect with.

Build buyer personas

Start by brainstorming with your colleagues to develop a list of potential buyer personas. Then shorten the list until it represents the typical set of buyers who would be involved in a buying decision. Remember we’re building a tool to help with product launch marketing, not an exhaustive list of every permutation of buyer that could be encountered.

For each buyer persona create a profile that contains details about them – the companies they work in, the titles they might have, who they report to, what they do, the problems they encounter, where they go for information, etc. Start with what you know and identify what you don’t know. Over time make it a point to evolve each buyer persona as more is learned about them.

Through the process of building buyer personas you will develop a deeper understanding of your buyers and what motivates them. As each buyer persona becomes more rich and complex, your ability to find them and connect with them will become more intuitive.

Next Step: Know how buyers buy

The next article in the series expands on the practice of using buyer personas as a tool for marketing by aligning buyer personas with the steps in the buying process. By doing so you create a better understanding of howmarketing programs can influence buyers through their buying process.

Are you using buyer personas now?

How are they helping your marketing efforts?

Read Part 2

I ran a poll recently on LinkedIn and posed the question

“The goals for a product launch in my company are…”

The choices were “Clearly defined & communicated”, “Vague and fuzzy”, “Not shared with us”, and “Not defined or used”.

This isn’t a poll worthy of Rasmussen (forgive me Scott) but does give us a snapshot we can explore in more detail. 62% of you said you have clearly defined and communicated launch goals. The remaining 37% of you indicated they were either vague, not shared or not defined (note the numbers don’t add up to 100% due to rounding).

A slightly different view of the same data is very interesting. If we look at the responses by job title we discover that 100% of C-Level and VP respondents say their launch goals are clear. But those in non-management roles disagree. Only 50% of them believe the launch goals are clearly defined and communicated. So somewhere between the executive management team and the folks who actually have to plan and execute the launch there’s a disconnect.

I don’t find this surprising at all. Ask a CEO, VP of Sales and VP Marketing to state the launch goals, and I’ll bet you’ll get three different answers. But they’ll all agree the launch goals are clearly defined & communicated. Is there any wonder why product launch is such a critical issue?

Technorati Tags: product launch,launch goals,launch plan,product marketing manager,product management

My excellent Windows 7 adventure

This weekend I decided to download and install Windows 7 RC on the PC in our kitchen. It’s a few years old and with the kids pounding on it (sometimes literally) was time to wipe it clean anyway. Through countless downloads of crap from untold number of game sites it had gotten sluggish. So I decided to surface my inner geek and load Windows 7 on it.

My PC configuration

First a little about the PC. It’s a Compaq Presario SR1910NX with an AMD Sempron 3200+ processor, 1GB ram, a 120GB hard drive, and an upgraded video card (256MB I think).  Attached is a Linksys wireless N adapter and an HP 3900 inkjet printer. By no means is this a screaming configuration. I bought it at BestBuy out of the box for less than $300. If the kids broke it I didn’t care.

As part of running the Windows 7 install it will review your PC to see if it meets the minimum requirements. My PC does so off we go.

The Windows 7 install

I decided to wipe everything clean for the install because there wasn’t anything critical I needed to save.

The first pass got almost to the end and hung. I wasn’t sure why but went online and found a few others reporting that connected USB devices might be the culprit. The HP 3900 was still attached so I disconnected it and rebooted. The install went through flawlessly this time.

It recognized the Linksys wireless adapter without interruption – knew what it was, added it and let me know. I didn’t have to click or choose anything. It recognized the video card and activated the Aero user interface (which is very nice).

The total time to install Windows 7 was about 30 minutes.

Add the printers

I have two printers to add. One locally attached and an HP 7500 attached to our home network. In Windows XP connecting the HP 7500 was always a pain, especially if the router was turned off (or power outage) and got a new IP address. This time I was ready.

First the locally attached HP 3900. I plugged the USB cable. Windows 7 recognized the device, added the driver and told me it was ready – without interruption or asking for information. Next came the network attached HP 7500. I went to the control panel, found the hardware section, chose add a printer and then a network printer. Windows 7 found the printer on the network for me. I chose it and the drivers were installed without out interruption or asking for information. Very, very nice. I’m convinced my eight year olds could do this.

First impressions

Fast, nimble and easy. The user interface is clean and crisp, especially with the Aero interface activated. Booting is much faster as is logging off to change users. I’m confident my help desk duties will diminish significantly. :-)

Parental Controls

I really like this part. My kids are like zombies while on the PC and we are diligent about when they get on and what they do. However, we can’t be hovering 24x7. With parental controls you can define the days of the week and the times of the day they can log on, and which programs they can access. You can also set rules for the level of games they can play based on the ESRB game rating.

Suggestion: I would like for Microsoft to allow for daily time limits in the parental controls. You can set the hours – e.g. 9am to 12pm but not limit it to 1 hour per day.

What do the kids think?

They love it. It’s intuitive and easy to use compared to Windows XP. My twins really like the Internet TV option and the gadgets you can drag to your desktop.

So we did a little accessorizing

We were so happy with Windows 7 we went to Sam’s Club and bought a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse to complete the ensemble.

Definitely worth the upgrade effort

I wanted to share this experience, particularly for those of you who haven’t made the leap to Vista (or did and retreated to XP). I’m sure we’ll learn more along the way and as we do, I’ll update this post with the details.

The Marketing Technology Blog	Web Design: It’s Not About You
WebInkNow	Ad agency vs. PR agency turf wars! Pass the beer and peanuts!
Small Business CEO	Twitter Users Contribute 137 Valuable Small Business Tips
B2B Lead Generation Blog	Five steps to help create your universal lead definition
Sales Blogcast	Building Relationships: What Does That Mean?

Read a good blog post lately? Pass it along and I’ll add it to the Friday Follow list.

Challenge: You have a lot to offer and share. Show it by commenting on blog posts you like. It only takes a second and it gets you where you need to be – in the conversation not on the sidelines!

You can probably provide a guess of when you think a launch starts, but when does it end? Product launching is about gaining momentum through sales velocity. Does a news release create momentum? Sometimes. Does a tweet create momentum? Possibly.

Are you ending your launch too soon?

Planning a successful launch starts much sooner than the completion of the product. It will include a launch date – the date at which a public announcement is made that you are officially selling the product. If you think you’re done at that point you would be mistaken. You’ve only just begun.

Considerations after the launch date

What are some of the things you should be thinking about after the launch date? Below are a few of the important ones presuming you’ve done your market research and are introducing a product that solves a problem that is pervasive, urgent and buyers are willing to pay to solve.

Competitive response

Your product launch plan should include a summary of competitors and how you expect them to respond to the threat of your new product launch. In addition to the competitors you know will be the competitors you don’t know. Put a system in place to identify new threats, evaluate them and provide a response to the sales channel.

Sales enablement effectiveness

Sales readiness must be a cornerstone of your product launch plan if you are selling a product where humans are involved in the transaction. The most important goal of this training isn’t about the product, it’s getting salespeople to believe they can make quota with your product and is conducted before the launch date. Monitor the effectiveness of your sales enablement training after the launch date.

Pipeline growth

There should be a direct relationship between the launch and growth in the pipeline – otherwise what’s the point? If you have a new product launch, the data to know how many qualified leads are needed to result in a sale may not yet be known. Now is the time to monitor and adjust, not when sales is complaining.

How long is long enough?

The duration of your product launch window is a reflection of the market you’re selling into and the nature of the buying process. A product with a very short buying cycle will reveal the state of your post launch sales velocity much quicker than a complex product with an 18 months buying cycle.

Are you establishing a long enough launch window to know what’s working and what’s not?

Have you been cutting your launch results short?

A big product launch is coming soon. You’re the one tasked with developing the promotional marketing plan. You’re agonizing over an array of marketing tactics. Some you’ve come up with and some others in the company are recommending.

Imagine a scenario where every time you approached the creation of a marketing plan for a launch, you had the confidence to know which tactics were most likely to attract the right kind of buyers.

Attendees of the product launch class I teach often ask my opinion about marketing tactic ‘A’ or tactic ‘B’. While I don’t specifically address marketing tactics in the class, in this three-part series I’ll share with you 3 success tips that will help you choose the most effective product launch marketing tactics.

Why do product launch marketing programs fail?

Marketing programs fail when they don’t connect with the buyers they’re intended to influence. The reason they don’t connect is because not enough is known about the buyers in the first place. Without a solid understanding of your buyers, you will be guessing and in the process wasting valuable time and money.

Know your buyers

Engineering teams use a tool called a user persona to help guide them in the creation of a useful product. A user persona is a typical example of a user. For more complex products there may be multiple user personas to represent different kinds of users. User personas remove individual bias about who a user is and create a common vision of the user, resulting in better products.

This model can be extended to buyers that are referred to as buyer personas. Just like user personas, buyer personas are archetypes – representative examples – of the people who would buy or influence the purchase of your product. Buyer personas represent typical buyers, not edge-cases or one-offs. They are the people you want your product launch marketing programs to connect with.

Build buyer personas

Start by brainstorming with your colleagues to develop a list of potential buyer personas. Then shorten the list until it represents the typical set of buyers who would be involved in a buying decision. Remember we’re building a tool to help with product launch marketing, not an exhaustive list of every permutation of buyer that could be encountered.

For each buyer persona create a profile that contains details about them – the companies they work in, the titles they might have, who they report to, what they do, the problems they encounter, where they go for information, etc. Start with what you know and identify what you don’t know. Over time make it a point to evolve each buyer persona as more is learned about them.

Through the process of building buyer personas you will develop a deeper understanding of your buyers and what motivates them. As each buyer persona becomes more rich and complex, your ability to find them and connect with them will become more intuitive.

Next Step: Know how buyers buy

The next article in the series expands on the practice of using buyer personas as a tool for marketing by aligning buyer personas with the steps in the buying process. By doing so you create a better understanding of howmarketing programs can influence buyers through their buying process.

Are you using buyer personas now?

How are they helping your marketing efforts?

Read Part 2

I ran a poll recently on LinkedIn and posed the question

“The goals for a product launch in my company are…”

The choices were “Clearly defined & communicated”, “Vague and fuzzy”, “Not shared with us”, and “Not defined or used”.

This isn’t a poll worthy of Rasmussen (forgive me Scott) but does give us a snapshot we can explore in more detail. 62% of you said you have clearly defined and communicated launch goals. The remaining 37% of you indicated they were either vague, not shared or not defined (note the numbers don’t add up to 100% due to rounding).

A slightly different view of the same data is very interesting. If we look at the responses by job title we discover that 100% of C-Level and VP respondents say their launch goals are clear. But those in non-management roles disagree. Only 50% of them believe the launch goals are clearly defined and communicated. So somewhere between the executive management team and the folks who actually have to plan and execute the launch there’s a disconnect.

I don’t find this surprising at all. Ask a CEO, VP of Sales and VP Marketing to state the launch goals, and I’ll bet you’ll get three different answers. But they’ll all agree the launch goals are clearly defined & communicated. Is there any wonder why product launch is such a critical issue?

Technorati Tags: product launch,launch goals,launch plan,product marketing manager,product management

The Launch Clinic recommended blogs to read

The Marketing Technology Blog	Web Design: It’s Not About You
WebInkNow	Ad agency vs. PR agency turf wars! Pass the beer and peanuts!
Small Business CEO	Twitter Users Contribute 137 Valuable Small Business Tips
B2B Lead Generation Blog	Five steps to help create your universal lead definition
Sales Blogcast	Building Relationships: What Does That Mean?

Read a good blog post lately? Pass it along and I’ll add it to the Friday Follow list.

Challenge: You have a lot to offer and share. Show it by commenting on blog posts you like. It only takes a second and it gets you where you need to be – in the conversation not on the sidelines!

When does a product launch end? Or does it?

You can probably provide a guess of when you think a launch starts, but when does it end? Product launching is about gaining momentum through sales velocity. Does a news release create momentum? Sometimes. Does a tweet create momentum? Possibly.

Are you ending your launch too soon?

Planning a successful launch starts much sooner than the completion of the product. It will include a launch date – the date at which a public announcement is made that you are officially selling the product. If you think you’re done at that point you would be mistaken. You’ve only just begun.

Considerations after the launch date

What are some of the things you should be thinking about after the launch date? Below are a few of the important ones presuming you’ve done your market research and are introducing a product that solves a problem that is pervasive, urgent and buyers are willing to pay to solve.

Competitive response

Your product launch plan should include a summary of competitors and how you expect them to respond to the threat of your new product launch. In addition to the competitors you know will be the competitors you don’t know. Put a system in place to identify new threats, evaluate them and provide a response to the sales channel.

Sales enablement effectiveness

Sales readiness must be a cornerstone of your product launch plan if you are selling a product where humans are involved in the transaction. The most important goal of this training isn’t about the product, it’s getting salespeople to believe they can make quota with your product and is conducted before the launch date. Monitor the effectiveness of your sales enablement training after the launch date.

Pipeline growth

There should be a direct relationship between the launch and growth in the pipeline – otherwise what’s the point? If you have a new product launch, the data to know how many qualified leads are needed to result in a sale may not yet be known. Now is the time to monitor and adjust, not when sales is complaining.

How long is long enough?

The duration of your product launch window is a reflection of the market you’re selling into and the nature of the buying process. A product with a very short buying cycle will reveal the state of your post launch sales velocity much quicker than a complex product with an 18 months buying cycle.

Are you establishing a long enough launch window to know what’s working and what’s not?

Have you been cutting your launch results short?

3 tips for product launch marketing success (Part 1)

A big product launch is coming soon. You’re the one tasked with developing the promotional marketing plan. You’re agonizing over an array of marketing tactics. Some you’ve come up with and some others in the company are recommending.

Imagine a scenario where every time you approached the creation of a marketing plan for a launch, you had the confidence to know which tactics were most likely to attract the right kind of buyers.

Attendees of the product launch class I teach often ask my opinion about marketing tactic ‘A’ or tactic ‘B’. While I don’t specifically address marketing tactics in the class, in this three-part series I’ll share with you 3 success tips that will help you choose the most effective product launch marketing tactics.

Why do product launch marketing programs fail?

Marketing programs fail when they don’t connect with the buyers they’re intended to influence. The reason they don’t connect is because not enough is known about the buyers in the first place. Without a solid understanding of your buyers, you will be guessing and in the process wasting valuable time and money.

Know your buyers

Engineering teams use a tool called a user persona to help guide them in the creation of a useful product. A user persona is a typical example of a user. For more complex products there may be multiple user personas to represent different kinds of users. User personas remove individual bias about who a user is and create a common vision of the user, resulting in better products.

This model can be extended to buyers that are referred to as buyer personas. Just like user personas, buyer personas are archetypes – representative examples – of the people who would buy or influence the purchase of your product. Buyer personas represent typical buyers, not edge-cases or one-offs. They are the people you want your product launch marketing programs to connect with.

Build buyer personas

Start by brainstorming with your colleagues to develop a list of potential buyer personas. Then shorten the list until it represents the typical set of buyers who would be involved in a buying decision. Remember we’re building a tool to help with product launch marketing, not an exhaustive list of every permutation of buyer that could be encountered.

For each buyer persona create a profile that contains details about them – the companies they work in, the titles they might have, who they report to, what they do, the problems they encounter, where they go for information, etc. Start with what you know and identify what you don’t know. Over time make it a point to evolve each buyer persona as more is learned about them.

Through the process of building buyer personas you will develop a deeper understanding of your buyers and what motivates them. As each buyer persona becomes more rich and complex, your ability to find them and connect with them will become more intuitive.

Next Step: Know how buyers buy

The next article in the series expands on the practice of using buyer personas as a tool for marketing by aligning buyer personas with the steps in the buying process. By doing so you create a better understanding of howmarketing programs can influence buyers through their buying process.

Are you using buyer personas now?

How are they helping your marketing efforts?

Read Part 2

37% of you don’t have launch goals

I ran a poll recently on LinkedIn and posed the question

“The goals for a product launch in my company are…”

The choices were “Clearly defined & communicated”, “Vague and fuzzy”, “Not shared with us”, and “Not defined or used”.

This isn’t a poll worthy of Rasmussen (forgive me Scott) but does give us a snapshot we can explore in more detail. 62% of you said you have clearly defined and communicated launch goals. The remaining 37% of you indicated they were either vague, not shared or not defined (note the numbers don’t add up to 100% due to rounding).

A slightly different view of the same data is very interesting. If we look at the responses by job title we discover that 100% of C-Level and VP respondents say their launch goals are clear. But those in non-management roles disagree. Only 50% of them believe the launch goals are clearly defined and communicated. So somewhere between the executive management team and the folks who actually have to plan and execute the launch there’s a disconnect.

I don’t find this surprising at all. Ask a CEO, VP of Sales and VP Marketing to state the launch goals, and I’ll bet you’ll get three different answers. But they’ll all agree the launch goals are clearly defined & communicated. Is there any wonder why product launch is such a critical issue?

Technorati Tags: product launch,launch goals,launch plan,product marketing manager,product management