Launch Clinic

Webinar today at 2pm EST with Steve Johnson

Steve and Scott Backer from Vovici are delivering a webinar today at 2PM EST titled The Role of Feedback in Product Innovation.

Here’s the webinar description…

Great products are grounded in an understanding of market problems. Exploring the role of market and customer feedback in driving innovative products, Scott Blacker of Vovici and Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing look at how research can support your product decisions. Which research tools are best for which steps of the innovation process? When do you use qualitative and when to use quantitative? And which customers do you listen to?

Click here for more information and to register.

Your Reseller isn’t Your Customer

Your reseller is a method of distribution; a way to reach your customers. But I can see how easy it is to confuse the issue.

If you look at the value chain, the reseller buys product from you and then sells it to a customer. That’s how the the money flows, but the one who ultimately gets value and sings your praises in the market is the customer.

It’s the same problem that occurs when the marketing team says that the sales team is their ‘customer’. No they’re not. They are a method of distribution. Of course it’s necessary to ensure the sales team is adequately equipped to be successful in the market, and you have to influence them. But they are not the customer. That notion can lead to ‘the customer is always right’.

Has anyone beside me experienced a sales team that was regularly complaining that marketing wasn’t doing enough to support sales, yet the sales team were blowing out their numbers? You get my point.

Focus on the people who buy your products, how they buy, and their buying criteria, and the rest will fall in place.

Repeat After Me. The Buyer is in Charge.

The game of buying and selling B2B products has changed dramatically in the last decade. Buyers have access to large amounts of information that puts them in complete control of the buying process. Your selling process needs to align with this and adapt accordingly (or fail miserably).

One wrong move and it’s on Twitter, a blog, or GetSatisfaction.com. Then you’re in damage control. The ability for buyers to vent their anger to a large community of other potential buyers should never be underestimated.

The buyer is in charge.

The buyer is in charge.

The buyer is in charge.

Terminology Tuesday - 'Show Up and Throw Up'

The method where a salesperson (or a sales engineer as a proxy for said salesperson) demonstrates every conceivable feature in his product in the desperate hope that the buyer will miraculously find something, anything, in the product valuable enough that would result in a sale.

‘Show up and throw up’ can often be found in organizations that also subscribe to the ‘build it and they will come’ approach to running a technology business.

 

Is B2B Marketing Dead?

Rick Segal, President at GyroHSR made a statement recently at the B2B Marketing Europe conference in Berlin where he said that B2B Marketing is dead. My first reaction was probably like yours, but then he made his point. Status quo methods of marketing to B2B buyers won’t be as effective in the future. The reason is that the line between when we are working (‘at work’) and when we are home have blurred. Most Americans – especially those who work in technology – would get this immediately.

Take this one step further. Many of the potential buyers we need to influence don’t get in their car and drive to an office to work anymore. They work out of their home offices or while traveling. They alternate between work mode and home mode multiple times per day. As a consequence getting targeted messages to them is difficult.

“People in an at-work state of mind, today, are exposed to a constant, multi-point flow of communications from not just customers, suppliers and coworkers but also from family, friends, would-be friends and network members. They are not only engaged in considering brand messages while at work, they also champion them to their social networks,” Segal said. “They are constantly toggling between working and ‘home-ing’ through longer hours of the day and more days of the week, making decisions professional and personal.”

At the end of the day, we market to people even if they are in a business.

What’s your at-work state of mind?

Agile for Marketing

Your development team may be an Agile Development shop already but have you ever considered how Agile principles could be applied to your marketing team? It’s not that far fetched. I’m running into companies that are doing Agile Marketing today and they are seeing significant benefits in marketing return on in investment, team throughput and respect.

Agile for Marketing? Are you nuts?

Agile Marketing isn’t that difficult to grasp but it takes discipline and management support to sustain. Instead of thinking about marketing as a list of stuff that needs to get done over the period of a year, lets say once a month you get the marketing team together and agree to what you are going to get done over the next month. Your frame of reference is that whatever you work on must be directly connected to the success of the business and it’s achievable. Instead of having a wish list of indeterminable length you would have a finite, highly focused list of activities and deliverables you all agree will get done (and by extension what you will ignore). The team maps it out for the month deciding on who should do what and what resources are needed to be successful.

Daily Stand-ups

Every day the marketing team meets to review status in a brief stand up meeting. Fifteen minutes should be enough time. Bottlenecks are identified, escalated and addressed long before they become embarrassing problems. Progress is noted and everyone gets back to work.

The month ends (our ‘sprint’ in Agile parlance) and there is tangible evidence of the marketing team’s contribution to the business.

Handling ‘Urgent’ Requests

When the marketing team gets an urgent request for something not on the list, the discussion quickly turns to what we choose to give up in order to get the urgent request done (and even if the urgent request is really that important to the business).

For activities that take a longer horizon like planning for a big industry trade show it works the same way, except broken down into multiple month-long sprints.

Can’t be Done Here

Before you scoff and say that marketing is too creative a process for Agile Marketing to be a reality, think again. Developing innovative software is every bit as creative a process as anything in marketing and Agile is working wonders for developers (been there done both).

Is your marketing team Agile today? What surprises have you seen? What suggestions do you have for others considering the transition?

Terminology Tuesday - 'Spray and Pray'

A method used by B2B marketers applying interrupt marketing tactics with a broad, untargeted (and usually inexpensive) list and hoping it will generate vast volumes of qualified leads. This approach makes the marketer feel good by believing that activity is more important than progress.

This method is often rebuked by the sales team with the often repeated phrase, “Those leads suck; we need more leads.”

Take the Pragmatic Marketing Annual Product Management Survey

The annual Pragmatic Marketing Product Management Survey is open and awaiting your participation. Got something you’d like to tell your CEO without fear of reprisal? Hmmm. Now is your chance!

Pragmatic Marketing’s John Milburn to Speak at Pipeline 2010

Our very own John Milburn is speaking at Pipeline 2010. What is Pipeline you say?

“A virtual meeting ground for experts and colleagues to promote the knowledge and practices of innovation, product development, and product portfolio management. This free, one-day online conference on innovative product development features 13 top industry speakers presenting real-life lessons that you can put to use immediately.”

I guess that means John is a top industry speaker! Shhh. Don’t tell John. His ego is big enough as it is.

Just kidding. John is an entertaining and engaging instructor for Pragmatic Marketing and a great guy to boot.

John’s Topic

John is going to present “Market Problems: The Cornerstone of Strategic Product Management”

How to participate

Pipeline is a virtual conference so you can participate from the comfort of your home office in your jammies if you prefer.

Date: November 10, 2010 (Wednesday)

Time: 8:00am Central Standard Time (USA)

Click here to register for free.

SWAT Team Approach: Introducing New Products to Established Sales Teams

You are responsible for launching a new product and you have an established (perhaps large) global sales team. The board of directors has high expectations the new product and if you nail it, you have a shot at a big promotion.

The risks are high. You have two reasonable options. Option A is to roll it out to the entire sales force at one time. Seems logical. Get it into the hands of as many sales people as possible and magic will happen. Option B is to do a controlled introduction by using a small but highly focused sales team.

With Option A a significant risk is that the new product will get lost in the portfolio. Your sales guys may already have more products they can sell than they can keep track of. Couple that with the fact the new product requires a different sales approach, calling on a different buyer. It’s critical to get a beachhead early on to build sales velocity.

The SWAT team approach is more conservative. Take two salespeople and a sales engineer (technical presales) and have them dedicated to the new product for a limited period of time. Consider the expected length of the sales cycle and start there. Conduct sales enablement and then provide very close sales support. As deals close, the other salespeople will take notice.

By containing the risk within the SWAT team you have the flexibility to make adjustments as you get market feedback. Once the patterns of a successful sale are revealed you can roll out the new product to the rest of the sales force, hopefully with a few success stories. You’ll have refined the sales tools and understand which buyers get involved in a buying decision.

A bonus is that you’ll have two salespeople and a sales engineer who are the ‘go to’ guys for the rest of the sales team.