Launching
Solutions with Impact - Part #2
Ready, Aim, Fire
by Mary Sullivan
The old joke,
“Ready, fire, aim”, isn’t really a joke when it happens. With
sales lagging because somebody blew the launch, nobody is laughing.
Lack of a launch
strategy can result in delays in getting your product to market, or worse yet,
diluted impact of your public launch, affecting sales. Without a strategy, one
or both of these will occur:
•
Different functional groups on the launch team have different views of the goals
and objectives of the launch, and produce conflicting or inconsistent messages
and deliverables.
• Beginning to execute before a launch strategy is agreed upon wastes everyone’s
time and kills momentum from starting, stopping and changing directions.
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Certain elements
of the launch, the strategic part, can – and should – be in progress
long before the General Availability date.
1) Establish
your launch strategy. Is there advantage in preparing the market prior
to product availability (a “soft” launch)? How much impact do you
need to make, and on whom? (Prospective customers, of course, but who else?) Will
it be a “stealth” launch, purposely “leaked”, or “open”?
Launch strategy discussions must include VP of Marketing and Director of Product
Marketing.
2) Gain committed budget and resources to fund all aspects of the
plan. You can’t count on funds or resources that have not been
approved by the Marketing VP or Director. Ideally your plan would come first and
the budget would follow, but we all know it doesn’t work that way. So develop
the plan and prioritize each item, allowing for pruning of the plan to meet the
available funds and available time.
3) Finetune your positioning and messaging. This is where you
need to spend serious time because a good positioning and messaging framework
will make development of all your launch deliverables much faster and easier.
It’s clear where you’re going if you have a plan. If there’s
no plan you’ll likely end up going in a wrong direction, or no direction
at all! Besides the Marketing executives, make sure Sales is involved in the process.
If you don’t have buy-in on positioning and messaging, don’t move
forward!
4) Establish a date to begin launch team meetings. The issue
here is best use of people’s time. Consider several scenarios – best
and worst case, and perhaps something in between. Determine which deliverable
will take the most time and back up your launch team kickoff to a date that comfortably
accommodates that item.
5) Identify launch team members and request their commitment of time to
the project. If they can’t commit, ask for recommended alternates.
Be clear about which members’ presence will be critical to effective launch
meetings. Name a dedicated launch manager to lead the cross-functional launch
team.
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Don’t call
your launch strategy final until you have approval from each function’s
decision-maker.
Once you’ve completed these five steps, you’re ready to develop your
Launch Action Plan (see 10 Practical Launch
Planning Tips)
and kick off your Launch Team. Your team should include members from the following
functional groups, or consultants to fill the roles where you’re short-staffed.
The Launch Manager can either be from one of these groups, an in-house Program
Manager, or an external resource.
- Product Management
- Product Marketing
- Channel Marketing
- Marketing Communications
- PR
- Sales Planning
- Marketing Programs
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Not everything
will go according to plan, but if you have a good strategy and the backing of
all involved, you can be confident of the impact of your launch.
About the Author:
Mary Sullivan is principal and co-founder of KickStart Alliance. For more information,
contact Mary at marysullivan@kickstartall.com.
Read Part 1 of
the series "Launching
Solutions with Impact -
KickStart Your Sales Momentum"
Copyright
2004 KickStart Alliance www.kickstartall.com |
