NOTE: The following is a guest post by Jennifer Doctor. If you want to submit your own guest post, click here for more information.
In baseball, everything you’re first taught about pitching has to do with speed and location…You want to get the ball into the strike zone, you want to throw it fast and get it by the batter. i.e go for the heat!
The same is true when we plan our product launches. There is always a deadline; if we miss the “strike zone” we may miss our sales targets; and, we all know how to hit the ball when it comes fast and hard down the middle. That is what we are taught.
And it works, for a while.
But at some point in everyone’s development as a ball player, those “high heat” fastballs become “readable” by the batter. Sometimes the hit turns into a great home run, but more often it simply flies into a fielder’s glove for an out.
Take this to our product world. A fastball launch means our internal teams already know what to expect – what marketing campaign schedule/calendar will be delivered, what the training session will encompass, and the requisite number of data sheets and sales presentations that will be available regarding the new product and/or release.
If we expect our internal teams to behave differently, to hit the pitch and not be caught, we need to learn how to throw a different pitch.
A new pitch
In baseball the changeup, sometimes called an off-speed, is a pitch thrown with the same arm action as a fastball, but at a lower velocity due to the pitcher holding the ball in a special grip.
The challenge is in not learning how to throw the pitch, but in having the courage to throw it – the courage to “change it up.” And, it’s time we did the same with our launch plans and programs.
Have courage
Start with your launch plan. Instead of the fastball style of following the same list of activities that you did last time, the project checklist, rewrite your launch plan from scratch. Have the courage to throw out your template and start anew. In the new plan, include as much of the basics as is needed:
- Product information
- Competitive information
- Pitch/messaging
- Target buyers
- Budget
- Project summary
- Risks
But, be sure to include the important and critical elements:
- Launch – not just product – goals
- Personas, not just the buyer roles
- Alignment of a launch strategy for each of the personas
The key to the launch plan is to make it usable; to deliver an effective pitch. It’s not intended to highlight the repertoire of pitches in your arsenal, only show the ones that are going to help you win this game, at this time.
Learn to grip the ball differently
A changeup can be learned. It’s not that hard since it is really only a change of how you grip the ball when you prepare the delivery. Change the grip and deliver a new “package” of information to the sales team.
Review your product data sheet. No, don’t rewrite it with the latest updates – start over. Does the sheet spend 2 sides of a page talking about your product, your company and your qualifications? You. You. You. When a product is being launched, it’s pretty much a guarantee that You are not the one buying.
Try talking in the language of the persona(s) that you included in the rewritten launch plan. Make the data sheet address their problems. Not what you think they want to hear, but what you learned they want to hear.
More importantly, shift how you train your sales teams. Change your grip. Instead of spending hours presenting information on function-benefit…function-benefit….function-benefit, focus your sales training on persona problem-product solution.
Listen to your coaches
A key ingredient to success in making the change of your “pitching grip” is to trust your coaches. In a product launch, the coach may be someone outside your organization. There are great resources in the peer networks that you build. There are resources in talking with blog authors. A good professional baseball pitcher has learned from the coaches that started with him years ago, maybe even Little League. It is the confluence of these lessons learned that brings about the ability to change when the call to the bullpen comes now.
Throw it with confidence and faith
It’s not easy to change it up. You will be met with resistance. Your catcher may not have the experience with that pitch. But, don’t doubt yourself. Don’t support the old fastball behaviors. Reinforce the changeup pitch. The key to the pitch being successful is to throw it with confidence, and faith that it will work. It might take facing an extra batter or two to find comfort and see results. But, they will come.
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Jennifer Doctor, a strong advocate of ProductCamps, is an independent product marketing and management consultant, working with companies to help them understand their markets, buyers and how to better enable sales teams to deliver results. She maintains her own blog – The OutsideIn View – and can be reached at Jennifer dot doctor at gmail dot com.