BrainKraft

We had a great product which was validated in the market, and we had a great marketing team. The failure was insufficient organizational readiness. Everyone was excited about the launch but we weren't ready in important areas. I learned that giving a sales presentation to the enterprise sales team doesn't mean they know how to sell (no matter how spectacular the slides). I underestimated the effort by my back office teams (finance, customer success, sales ops, legal, etc.). Now, I always start with the basics: * Will we be able to promote the product to the right ICP? * Will the sales team be able to identify good sales opportunities and walk away from the bad ones? * Will the sales team be able to guide a prospect to a close? * Will we be able to accept payment from customers who purchased? * Will we be able to deliver the product in a timely fashion? * Will we be able to onboard customers quickly? * Will we be able to provide competent help to customers when they need it? Start there and work your way backwards. Engage cross-functionally to ensure readiness is defined and each team is verifiably ready based on the definition. --Dave

I assume you mean KPIs that objectively demonstrate progress. I have a simple approach that anyone can follow. It starts with clearly defined objectives. I use Win, Keep, Grow, and Steal. Win new customers. Keep the customers you Win. Grow the customers you Keep. And Steal customers from competitors. Each objective has KPIs that are meaningful to your business. If I have a Win objective, a KPI can be the rate of pipeline growth, because a growing pipeline is an indicator of future wins. If I have a Keep objective, a KPI can be the renewal rate. If I have a Grow objective, a KPI can be ARPU. Start with objectives, then pick 2 or 3 KPIs that objectively demonstrate progress for the objective. My blog has an article on Win, Keep, and Grow - https://www.brainkraft.com/post/launch-objectives-win-keep-grow

A successful product launch requires collaboration, coordination, and communication. A launch is easily the most cross-functional initiative a company takes on. It's a coordinated dance of different functional areas with distinct workflows working toward a common outcome. Smaller companies are less complex and have fewer products. The 3Cs are easier. Bigger companies have more products and are more complex. The 3Cs are harder. There is a need for much greater process rigor as a company grows. The swimlanes get narrower, and the number of stakeholders increases. Processes, frameworks, methods, and tools really make a difference. Heroics no longer win the day because heroics don't scale.

Tier 1 has the most impact on the business. Tier 2 is gaining competitive advantage. Tier 3 is gaining competitive parity. And Tier 4 is simply bug fixes and minor improvements. A Tier 1 launch is the most disruptive to an organization. It involves competition in new product categories and unfamiliar markets. Buyers and buying criteria change, which impacts what we say and how we sell. There is a higher degree of unknowns and, therefore, risk. A Tier 2 launch is about one-upping the competition. It's typically a major new feature or capability that separates your product from the competitive pack. You're in familiar territory, and there are fewer unknowns. A Tier 3 launch is about catching up to the competition. It's about filling big holes in the product and hoping to become more competitive. You're in very familiar territory, with virtually zero unknowns. A Tier 4 launch is a catch-all for anything that doesn't fit 1 through 3. Since we often interchange "launch" with "release", I've used it to avoid clogging up the other launch tiers. It seems to keep everyone happy. This is the launch tier for bug fixes, performance improvements, and very minor enhancements. You can do this one in your sleep. When you frame the launch tiers around impact (I agree with Jodi xyz), it's easier to guide the discussion. You also need the rigor to put a product launch in the right tier and the flexibility to move up or down, depending on the situation. Here's an article I wrote with more detail - https://www.brainkraft.com/post/how-to-use-launch-tiers. Look for the boilerplate guide on my worksheets page to get you started - https://brainkraft.com/product-launch-tools. Cheers, --Dave

Answer four fundamental questions: 1. Who are my buyers? (focus) 2. Where do they get or seek information? (watering holes) 3. What are the government regulatory hurdles? (barriers to entry) 4. How do buyers in the new geography make a buying decision, and what information do they need to make that decision in our favor? (business practices and norms)

When a launch objective includes revenue, start there and work backwards. For a revenue example of $10M, I'd estimate the close rate of an average deal and the average deal size, and do the math. If I expect the close rate to be 20% I will need a pipeline of $50M. If the average deal is $50K I know I will need 200 deals. If the math tells you the launch objective is unreasonable, change the launch objective. The next step is to collaborate with colleagues in demand gen to develop the strategies and tactics to build $50m in pipeline with the resources available. There is no silver bullet. Start with a reasoned marketing mix and put in place the measurement to track progress. Do more of the things that work and less of the things that don't. If you don't define launch objectives now would be a good time to start. Here's an article I wrote on launch objectives that might help.

Enablement is the act of getting people ready for something. In this case preparing for launching a product. Your executive team’s expectation is that the organization will be able to market, sell, deliver, and support the product being launched. Too often launch readiness activities are plagued by not having enough time for proper preparation, poor planning, and a misunderstanding of what ‘ready’ means. Define Launch Objectives and Launch Strategy The guardrails around launch readiness are launch objectives and launch strategy: what we are we trying to accomplish and how we expect to make it happen. Getting that right from the beginning helps shape the next step. Define What Readiness Looks Like Define what readiness looks like, so everyone knows what being ready means. It sounds obvious as you read it but the problem is rampant. Readiness is often defined by the outputs not by the outcomes. You want to focus on outcomes. Sales is a good example… * Can my sales team identify a good prospect? * Can my sales team qualify out a bad prospect? * Can my sales team communicate the unique value proposition of our company and our product? * Can my sales team close a prospect and turn them into a paying customer? Let’s say the above questions represent readiness for a sales team. If you get to a ‘yes’ for each question, you know the sales team is ready. Next, you have to fill in the blanks for each question. * What are the attributes of a good prospect? * What are the attributes of a bad prospect? * What is the unique value proposition of our product? Our company? * What are the steps buyers will take to make a purchase? * What information will buyers need and when will they need it? Now that you have the answers to those questions you can move on to the next part: identifying readiness gaps. Identify Launch Readiness Gaps There is only a need for readiness activities when there is a gap between the current readiness state and the readiness state needed for a successful product launch. I call this readiness gaps. Here’s why this is important. Launching a new product into an unfamiliar market is very different than launching an existing product into a familiar market. The level of effort needed for readiness is vastly different. Work with people on your launch team who are functional area representatives. These are the people you rely on to be experts in their functional area (like the sales team). Using the sales team again as an example, understand the state of the sales team if they were told to start selling the product today (before enablement). It helps to surface readiness gaps because it focuses on outcomes rather than deliverables. Develop Plans to Close Readiness Gaps When you understand readiness gaps you can develop plans to close those gaps. And you have a way to measure if the gaps are really closed. You can track progress and report the status to stakeholders. You can also stand firm when someone wants a deliverable that isn’t necessary. There will always be requests for more stuff. Keep your focus on the outcomes and ignore the rest.

Assuming you have a good product-market fit, the challenges vary by the size and scope of an organization. Small companies have fewer moving parts than big companies, but the challenges are amazingly similar. Challenge #1 - Communication Getting everyone on the same page, using a standard set of communication tools can be a huge challenge in some organizations. It still amazes me how many companies have multiple tools that don't integrate. Your team uses Slack. My team uses MS Teams. Another team uses Confluence. If you are spinning your wheels chasing down information across multiple platforms, you know what I mean. Challenge #2 - Commitment It would be best to have commitments from launch team members, your leadership team, and functional areas. Product launch is a team sport, and it requires a committed team. Get new launch team members if they see their commitment as a part-time effort and believe they have no accountability. Challenge #3 - No One is Driving the Bus A product launch is a strategic, cross-functional activity, and someone has to be in the lead. A single person is accountable for the results of every strategic initiative in your company. A product launch is no different. Challenge #4 - No Launch Objectives What is the why behind your product launch? I prefer to use OKRs to ensure that every launch team member knows what we're trying to do and that a purpose drives every effort. Without a launch objective, you have no North Star. Any decision is a good decision. Scope creep is inevitable.

I start with the objectives of the launch and work from there. I look for advantages that can be leveraged and obstacles that need to be removed. I assign functional areas (e.g. Sales, Finance, Legal) to each launch member of my launch team. One of their primary responsibilities is to identify readiness gaps that can prevent us from achieving our launch objectives (OKRs). A Launch Readiness Plan is created for each functional area to document the readiness gaps, prioritize the gaps based on severity, and have a plan of action to close each readiness gap. Granted there is some degree of subjectivity here but the big readiness gaps always rise to the surface (we've never sold this type of product, we've never sold into this market, etc.) My goal is to plan with my eyes wide open. I encourage launch team members not to take what they hear from functional area leads at face value. How many times have you heard a sales VP tell you that can sell anything to anyone? How did that turn out? Be annoyingly curious and use critical thinking to find the truth. The point is to identify readiness gaps across the organization, understand how each readiness gap impacts launch performance, develop plans to close the gaps, and verify the gaps are closed. Here's a link to an article with more detail - https://www.brainkraft.com/post/product-launch-beginners-guide-prepare. 

Look at it through the lens of a salesperson. How much do they believe they need to be involved? While it's a lofty goal to have 100% support from your sales team, it's rarely possible. Unless, of course, you only have one product. Imagine if you were a salesperson in a company with dozens or hundreds of products? You will focus on the products that get you to your quota. Anything else is a distraction. Start with a definition of launch success. Define your launch objectives. Quantitatively, how is success measured? Then work backward. You may find the scope of involvement from your sales team is much smaller than you imagined. If success is defined by building a pipeline, focus on demand gen. If your success is defined by revenue, find the shortest possible path to the revenue number and recruit people from your sales team to participate in helping them hit their numbers. With salespeople always use WIFM (what's in it for me).