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

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 ...Read More

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 th ...Read More

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 f ...Read More

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 poin ...Read More

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, ho ...Read More

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:  Ensur ...Read More