Secret 1 – Act with the understanding of entering the unknown
This is a necessary fundamental shift. Without this shift, your launch plan will predictably lead you down a wrong and dangerous path — the path of overspend and underperform. Many companies make this critical mistake of EXECUTING the preconceived launch plan. Before executing any sales plan, every sales team requires a repeatable sales process, which cannot be known prior to launch. Without it, the sales team has NOTHING TO EXECUTE. This shift is hypercritical for innovative and disruptive technologies and much less for incremental or “me-too” products.
Secret 2 – Utilize a complex versus a complicated decision framework
When launching incremental or “me-to” products, a complicated decision framework is appropriate. Complicated decision-making requires specific knowledge, but with it, a complete launch plan can be developed by an experienced and skilled launch team.
By contrast, launching a disruptive product or service requires a complex decision framework and cannot be planned out from beginning to end in advance. Complex decision-making is a sequential-step process where certain steps can only be planned with the knowledge and understanding learned from the previous step.
For example, a successful marketing campaign can only be designed once an initial target customer persona is identified and validated. And the sales cycle can only be distilled once the lead generation has led to sufficient sales within the target market.
As you can imagine, planning and execution in these two different decision frameworks — complicated versus complex — require different sales models, tools and skill sets.
Secret 3 – Employ the mindset of discovery versus execution
A complicated decision framework utilizes a process of analyze, plan and execute; a complex decision framework employs a process of design, test, analyze and discover. This shift from the execution to the discovery mindset, while on first glance appears to be commonsense, is in practice both elusive and challenging. The elusive obvious!
It has been the downfall of many product launches and startups. It is too easy to be trapped in executing the launch plan which too often leads down the dangerous path of overspend and underdeliver. But this need not be the case.
Secret 4 – Measure success in time, not revenue
This is a little known secret. Sales organizations, from the one-person founder to the large professional sales team, use revenue as the primary sales metric for a new product launch. This one misstep is the best leading indicator of product launch struggle, frustration and failure. It directly points to a launch team focused on executing the plan and not understanding that discovery is the key to success.
All that is needed is to shift the focus from the y-axis to the x-axis of the revenue curve — from revenue to TIME. It is time – the time to advance through the learning process and discover the repeatable sales process – that is the key to success. In order to operate, every professional sales team requires a proven repeatable sales process. With a proven RSP comes scale and with scale comes profitability.
Secret 5 – Build a professional market entry team, not a sales organization
Finally you need to have the right team to navigate from launch to scale. It is not your typical high-performance salesperson or your experienced sales leader. In HBR’s “The Sales Learning Curve,” Mark Leslie and Charles A. Holloway describe these special types of salespersons as renaissance reps. They are often the cowboys, rebels and troublemakers in a sales team. Think of the launch or market entry sales team as special forces (able to operate in any situation and any environment), while the sales organization is the trained infantry (executing a well-conceived plan).
Without the right launch team, you will struggle and often fail. But if you don’t follow Secrets 1-4, your launch team will conversely struggle and fail.
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