AMA: Salesforce Senior Director, Product Marketing, Jodi Innerfield on Product Launches

The channels you use depend upon the audience you're reaching. Where does your audience spend time? What channels have historically worked best for your organization or similar products? You can usually get a good sense of channels to activate based on persona research. Even if you're launching a first-of-its-kind product, your audience has preferred publications, sites, and places where they spend time. Prioritize those channels based on budget and funnel stage (and work with your demand gen team to hone in on the plan!)

The goal of most B2B launches is revenue--but there are many other KPIs you can track besides how much revenue you've generated! Customer KPIs: These KPIs all tell me how much my launch resonates with my target customer. Pipe generation; lead generation/form fills on any key launch assets like demos and datasheets; registrations/attendance to events and webinars; website views; time on-page. Sales team KPIs: This is how I make sure my sales teams are excited about my launch and are properly informed to have customer conversations. # attendees for enablement; # views/engagement for key enablement assets; # sales support requests; AR/PR: This is how I know I'm getting the right coverage. # AR briefings/inquiries; # AR reports/mentions; # PR interviews pre-launch; # press mentions

First--well done for having a post-mortem! It's really easy to just get caught up in the next thing that comes along, but post-mortems are super important! This is your time to reflect on the launch planning, the launch itself, and whatever happens next. Launch Planning Reflection - Get feedback from stakeholders involved in the planning. Did everyone have what they need to do their jobs? Was there adequate time to get everything done? Were the right people involved from the beginning or at the right time? This information should inform changes in your bill of materials or launch planning steps for the next launch. Launch Results - Since you want a post-mortem to happen relatively soon after the launch, you probably don't have too many KPIs to measure. But you can reflect on how launch day went--did everything go as planned? What happened that was unexpected you could better plan for next time? Were your launch-day KPIs hit? Next Steps - Post-mortems may help you identify what needs to happen next. For example, are you getting a specific question from sales or customers that you weren't prepared for? Maybe update your resources and FAQs to address questions that you didn't anticipate. What post-launch activities come next that are either on track or need to be adapted based on launch day? Sending out an anonymous survey ahead of the post-mortem ensures everyone gets their thoughts heard. Ask two questions: 1. What went well? 2. What should we do differently? Then, group answers by theme and by stage listed above. Use the actual post-mortem meeting to share the results and have people elaborate

Honestly, the sales team is going to do/say whatever they want. It's nearly impossible to enforce that a sales team says the exact messaging you want them to, or that they use the exact slides and resources you want them to. When we do further message testing and make refinements, I try and make sure the truly imperative messaging elements are communicated, and WHY they are being changed. If something, in particular, wasn't resonating with customers, we make sure to communicate the reasoning behind the change, in the hopes that sales teams will be motivated to use the messaging we know resonates with customers. Change the messaging where you can, but don't count on people saying exactly the message you want. It'll save you a lot of headaches!

For your launch to be a success, ideally you have completed a customer pilot so you have success stories for press; you've built a robust demo org for your sales teams so they can show customers the product; and you've spent time conducting internal and external research to make sure your message resonates. But we don't live in an ideal world :) Other factors that may impact the timing of your launch for a big impact: * What's happening in the market that you can take advantage of? I.e. are there industry events, global trends, etc. that you can use as momentum for your launch? * What events or opportunities are happening internally that make a specific launch timing ideal? Do you have an annual conference? A new campaign launching?

Demoing is SO important, yet unfortunately, we don't often have the product ready for sales teams to demo too far ahead of a launch. What we do in this situation is have PMs do enablement where they walk through the new features and functionality and answer questions. That way the field can see what the features and products are in action. Another option when demo orgs aren't quite ready but customers need to show the product--a holodeck. We have the product team take screenshots of the product in a way that mimics a demo flow, and put those high-res slides in a deck. That way sales people can "walk" a customer through the "product" as best as possible. The sales team should get a demo org as soon as possible--but sometimes that's not possible until GA week, so those are a few options to help prepare them ahead of time. 

Tiering and t-shirt sizing a launch should be based on "how impactful is this to my customer and the company?" If it's a brand new product suite, a new offering in the market either for the company or the space, or a material investment/improvement from what exists today--that's a Tier 1, full-court press (whatever that means for your company!) Moderate improvements, new SKUs, bigger features that are exciting but not totally new and different for the company are the market are more medium-Tier launches. Smaller features and incremental updates can be covered in release marketing only, maybe in-app notifications, or documentation because they're more for end-users vs buyers are Tier 3.

Launching too soon is a major red flag--I wrote all about it in a recent post ! What distinguishes a "meh" product launch from a great product launch? 1 - Showing the product in your assets and launch material 2 - Having customer testimonials that your product is as good as you say it is 3 - Having a product that meets the needs of your customers If your product isn't ready enough to meet one or more of those criteria, it's not going to be a successful product launch. Both product management and product marketing teams all have the same goal--a successful product launch! I would articulate to your PMs what's currently missing from the launch plan to make it a successful launch if you launch too early. Highlight what a difference you'll be able to make with the extra time, and make sure they understand the risks of launching ASAP before you're ready. You won't always successfully negotiate the timeline you're looking for, but you can at least manage expectations this way.

Each geography is different, so don't treat geos as "one size fits all." Make sure you understand the nuances of the region you're launching in--what language resonates best in messaging? What channels might be different? How does the perception of your organization or product change based on geography? What legal requirements are different? Lean on your regional counterparts and colleagues to make sure you're really tailoring the launch for the region