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

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 in ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 t ...Read More

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 ...Read More

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 be ...Read More

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 ther ...Read More

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 a ...Read More

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 ...Read More