How do you measure the success of a B2B product launch? or what is the best way to measure?

You shouldn't be working on a product launch without a launch goal already set in place. 

Launches should be either:

1) focused on helping hit a strategic company goal

2) focused on helping grow a new product

Your launch goal should be a short term focus: book 50 sales demos, get 200 customers to enable this integration, etc. The launch goal relates to the strategic company goal or growing the product SKU. But the launch goal is a short term focus on the launch, to build momentum. 

Ah, you are starting with the end in mind! I love it. Your launch plan should include a description of your metrics and a dashboard that you can use to gauge your launch progress and success. Rather than showcase a list of product launch metrics within your plan, allow your dashboard to "tell the story" of your product's performance. 

First, get focused and ensure your priorities align with your corporate or business unit objectives. Focus and prioritization ensure you don't build a dashboard with a plethora of activity-based metrics versus a few outcome-oriented metrics that showcase the impact of your launch team's efforts. 

Primary metrics you should focus on depending on your objectives: 

1. Growth – revenue and new deals, units sold, response rates, upgrade rate, migration/ legacy ratio, product feedback
2. Adoption – attach rate, sales and support readiness, training completed, certification levels met, sales content usage, customer adoption 
3. Retention – retention rate trend, churn rate/ revenue, 
4. Position –the share of the market, win/ loss ratio, average account growth, feature trial, feature utilization, analyst mentions/ inclusions 
5. Efficiency – program cost per rep, campaign ROI, cost per SQL 

You will want to track supporting metrics at a functional level, such as: 

• pipeline conversion rates, 
• pipeline velocity, 
• trial response rates, 
• pipeline volume, 
• average deal size, 
• influencer share of voice, 
• registered deals for partners, 
• sales generated leads, 
• accepted lead to close ratio, 
• trial response rate, etc. 

Tracking your product launch across the revenue engine (sales, marketing, product) enables learning and improvement, but there's no universal set of best measures for all circumstances. 

I must stress, the perception of launch success can be subjective if not defined cross-functionally and with your revenue engine leaders (CPO, CMO, CRO) from the get-go.

• First, I always tie it back to a company OKR. The launch should be in service of at least one of them.

• Second, I typically work cross-functionally to determine the goals.

  • Work with the Product team to define the product usage goal: most PMs’ performance is measured by product or feature usage/engagement/adoption, so the launch should aim to drive this. 

  • Work with the Finance and Revenue (Sales & CS) teams to define the business goal: Is a certain amount of revenue expected from the launch? Work with Finance to determine the number and with Revenue to back into what it will take to get to that number (e.g., X leads drive $Y pipeline with Z% probability of closing). (Side note: once you know these goals, then you can start to estimate your launch budget ask.)

  • Work with your Marketing partners to define the marketing goals: Is your PR team aiming for a story placement in Forbes? Is your Brand team leveraging this launch to increase the brand awareness metrics. Is the social team counting on this to boost social engagement?

Get very tight on what you want to measure—I like to not only set the goal, but also to establish the baseline (if possible) and measure progress to that goal at multiple milestones (daily at first, then weekly, then at a regular business cadence). 

Build the dashboards and tracking tools BEFORE launch so you are ready to start answering the “how’s the launch going” questions within the first few hours of launch. Because someone—probably your CEO—will ask you, and you should have a very informed answer :)

After launch, you want to immediately start gauging the success of your product launch. An easy way to track success is by funnel stage:

1. Awareness & engagement (metrics like people reached)

2. Pipeline & bookings (how many people are interested in your new product and actually buy it

3. Product Adoption (how many customers start using your products after purchasing)

In my experience, it's important to align on success metrics way before launch (in fact, this should be during your launch planning) and set up the dashboards/data required to track this data (which I know can be tricky - do what you can). Typically for a major product launch (like a Tier 1), you report out on your success metrics at the end of day 1 (more focused on the awareness/engagement metrics), at the end of week 1, at the end of month 1. After that, it's good to track these metrics regularly, and every company has a difference cadence.

One final thing to keep in mind: please, set up a way to get regular customer feedback post-launch. It's important to listen to your customers and reiterate (on the product, your messaging, and more!)