Archive for March 13th, 2009
One Big Reason New Product Launches Do Not Gain Traction
Over the years I’ve been through several reshufflings of product, service or target market. Some of these changes have been revolutionary following industry changes, some evolutionary, and some have been flat out ground up rebuilds when management transitions or other fundamental changes to the business were at hand.I have watched these changes occur from the perspective of an Account Manager, Sales Manager, Director and finally, VP. One thing that seems to get missed in the discussions of deepening the offerings, broadening the offerings, positive average margin impact, vendor training, leads, and promised revenues is the grey matter between the account managers ears.
There is only so much space in anyone’s head. You can only keep so much information at the forefront of your peanut head at anyone time. If you thought about it like an old school newspaper or your favorite new site, there is only so much premium space above the fold (or before you start scrolling down.)
If you have anything north of 10 offerings for your rep to drive out in the field, you really only have 1-5 that he is going to be actively working and watching for and maybe 10 offerings in total that he has sufficient depth to discuss in some detail.
The “Closet Offerings” as I call them, or everything beyond 10, do not get mentioned unless prospect comments or questions happen to push the conversation in that general direction.
When you get a call to broaden your offerings or to go after an increasingly wide and diverse market (typically when sales are slumping and revenues tighten up,) resist the urge to simply pile on more products and new markets to your existing team.
If it is not on the billboard in your reps head, it is not going to get said.
You would be better served reevaluating and reshuffling the offerings occupying the prime space, page 1 above the fold, in your Account Managers head. From my experience a better quality and quantity of sale will result.
As an added bonus, develop clear concise messages for you defined offerings to keep the sales team “on message” and ad libs to a minimum. Develop policies and procedures on the backend to clarify how your operations and services units will execute and deliver on the products and promises your Account Managers are pushing out the door.
Final thought. The next time a vendor talks to you about adding product remember to consider your sales teams mental product line up. To give mindshare to a new product you have to be comfortable with the fact that an existing offering will lose some traction or be eliminated.
Fill those minds wisely.
A man trying to go more than two directions at once is not moving at all.
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