2009 Health Care Reform Initiative Lesson #4: Your Previous New Product Launch success (or Failures) Affect Current and Future Launches
At the Austin Pcamp last weekend I was speaking with a young product manager and he shared sales and marketing do not seem to be embracing his current new product launch. The first thing I asked him was;
“Have you launched other products or solutions recently expecting to sell 60,000 (and that was the sales goal) and you only sold 6…”
His answer was “Yes, how did you know that?”
I explained the one thing about having grey hair is I earned each one,and I went on to explain
“… you have a trust and credibility issue within your team and probably market you must fix first.”
As a salesperson and someone who has lead sales teams it is hard not to become a bit skeptical when marketing and product management “throws another new product over the wall for my team to sell”.
It is particularly difficult to get excited about a new product opportunity when marketing and product management have throw two previous solutions over the wall and my team was given a goal for 60,000 and we only sold 6.
So I explained to this ( now wide eyed) young product manager that once you break trust with your sales and marketing team, once you no longer have credibility among your team members you have a much bigger problem you need to solve first. (And you need to solve it quickly)
I asked him a number of questions and the one that seemed to make him most uncomfortable was;
