How do we get Sales more involved pre-launch to better the odds of our launch success?

Executing a product launch without the full support of sales (pre & post-launch) is akin to going to a gunfight with a switch-blade. Not advisable! 

Much like a new sales play or campaign, if your front-line sales leaders haven't been brought into the pre-launch process and had their voice heard regularly, they don't have skin in the game. Turning your attention to sales during the go-to-market enablement stage is far too late, which often leads to delayed revenue. 

As such, you must: 

• Ensure your launch captain has adequate sales coverage (sales exec ideal) on your launch team. This sales leader(s) will act as the voice of sales and ensure sales don't fall back to what's comfortable – selling what they already know to make quota. Therefore, obtaining support from sales leadership with a sales-specific launch plan and frequent updates is necessary. First, product and product marketing needs to keep things simple for sales – make the product easy to understand and easy to sell. Start with a 30-second elevator pitch that focuses on the new product's unique business outcomes for your sales team's customers. Arm them with brief conversation starters to showcase just how easy it is to get going in layman's language versus technical capabilities. Secondly, your sales leaders need to have a say in your sales enablement program – if they buy-in to the process, tools, and cadence, they will ensure their teams fall in line. (don't forget those essential pre-sales technical resources if you're selling a complex solution – they require nuanced material).
  - If you take the time to incorporate sales early in your launch efforts, allow them to have a say, and provide for the following in your launch plans, they'll join the fight: product information, pricing rationale and analysis, value proposition, competitive differentiation, common uses cases to sell into, launch milestones, custom sales launch playbook. 
• Provide the right carrot! Sales folks like a challenge, only when they get paid. Meet them head-on and ensure their compensation and quotas support the goals of the new product. Nothing worse than a sales rep's perception that they will receive inadequate or lower compensation from selling the new product; they will spread that perception, and now you have a morale issue. Assuming sales will push the new "cloud" offering because it's "better for their customer" to move off on-premise isn't going to get it done! Collaborate early with sales leaders and sales operations to ensure launch compensation and quota are frictionless. Confirm they do not cannibalize from the rep's bread and butter means of making money/ quota. 
• Build a launch content advisory board. It's working wonders in my company as product marketing isn't the be all end all for messaging and content production. Of course, we own it, but we receive input as we develop and validate. Building and testing launch collateral and sales tools with sales ensure they're now confident in the tools as they've been pressure tested by their peers in the trenches. Secondly, seeing their input incorporated reinforces their stake in ensuring the success of the launch. Sales is our customer! We should do likewise with sales the same way we engage our customer advisory boards for their product roadmap input. 
• Run a beta WITH sales teams (by company size, by industry, etc.) before a formal product launch. Typically beta's help product fine-tune the product. For our purposes, the beta also helps with sales readiness as we derive use cases that we didn't initially think through, which impact our value proposition, content, and sales process. The beta pilot will help you test and nuance sales enablement content to align with the actual buying process. Finally, the beta can help build "buzz" amongst sales.

• Depending on where the business is, sales should be either consulted or informed on almost every launch. Unless there is a tight liaison and voice of the sales team (ie Sales Enablement), it will primarily be consulted. In order to best understand the market, industry, personas, and segmentation, your sales team will be the best data point (one caveat is to keep in mind “recency bias”--aka, “if we build this one feature a prospect just asked me for, we could win 10 more deals”...maybe, but let’s validate that)
• In my experience, what has been successful is working closely with the sales enablement team to create a small “trusted tester” group of sales reps across segments and regions who can help sanity check everything as launches are being planned. These groups should be kept small to facilitate meaningful feedback, but the best part about working with sales teams is that they tend to not be shy in sharing their opinions. Having this trusted tester group involved early and often in the process, and having them test drive some of the early assets and messaging can then help both the PMM and Enablement teams when it’s time to officially launch.

Sales should absolutely have a seat at the table. It might take awhile to cultivate this relationship, and it will need to start at the foundational level (ie. not - please review this content we've created). Start setting up time to meet with different leaders and sales folks outside of launch planning time. Understand how they sell, and how product launches impact their selling. From here, once planning starts for a product launch, ask for volunteers to represent the org, to include their points of view and represent the voice of the prospect and customer. Work with them on how they'd like to be involved without taking too much time away from their selling time. Again, that is a relationship that may need to build over time, but once both sides see the value of having sales involved - it will become easier and 100% beneficial. 

I love that you've already identified that sales is one of the most important stakeholders in your launch process. It's true - having sales involvement early in the product development cycle (ideally well before launch) is critical to stress-testing the value of the product, clarifying its benefits, and therefore aligning the GTM strategy. 

The best way to get sales involved is to make it worth their time. How does your launch help them better engage their prospects? How does your launch help them retire quota? How does your launch help them differentiate themselves among their peers and make them valuable to the team? 

Find out what sales needs and work with individual sales reps as a pilot to start and engage them in the launch process. Let them present to their peers and demonstrate expertise. It will be a slow process but a very worthwhile one as your launches will become better. 

It's a great idea to get sales involved pre-launch. A really great idea!

Here are some thoughts on how to do that:

1/ Find the innovative sellers on your team and give them early access to content, messaging, demo, etc. so they can start testing and provide feedback

2/ Start enabling and creating early excitement around a new product months before it officially GA. Sales all-hands, roadmap sessions, demo days, etc. 

3/ Create a forum for sales to share market insights and what they are hearing from customers and prospects in the new product area

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).