New product development includes selecting a sales readiness strategy. One of the goals of sales readiness is that customers will not abandon purchases because something is missing or unfinished.
This episode is a companion to my December 2008 Visions magazine article titled “Proactive sales readiness strategies can help companies sell new products more efficiently.” You can link to this sales readiness article from the OpLaunch web site.
A common belief about sales readiness
You may have heard the phrase “build it and they will come.” The wishful implication is that once a new product is built, an abundance of sales will follow. A more comprehensive statement was made by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Decatur, Illinois and recorded by Daily Republican on 19 May 1882.
“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”
Just building a new product doesn’t guarantee abundant sales. Achieving abundant sales requires more effort. An appropriate sales readiness strategy is a critical part of any new product development effort.
Common perceptions about sales readiness
What are the common beliefs associated with the phrase ‘sales readiness’ that address activities that are most visible after the core product is built and introduced?
From the buyer’s perspective, sales readiness implies that the product is available for purchase. It implies that the product can be found on the shelf or online and that it is ready for the intended use. When a product is sales ready, customers expect to find pricing information, online product reviews, and support.
From the producer’s perspective, sales readiness may imply that sales of the new product are beginning to contribute to quarterly revenues. Internally, this signals that the development team can be re-assigned to the next project or other new responsibilities.
Perhaps the most common marketing reference for the phrase ‘sales readiness’ is from Pragmatic Marketing. The copyrighted Pragmatic Marketing Framework specifies sales readiness as a tactical activity that includes “channel training, collateral and sales tools, white papers, and competitive write-up.”
It is common for the sales organization to complain about tactical sales readiness activities. One way to improve the tactics is to refine the strategy.
Without an appropriate strategy, the sales readiness information will be unorganized, duplicated, or obsolete. The sales organization will complain that it takes too much time to find the best resources.
Contributors to sales readiness
In new product development, preparation for sales readiness includes contributions from developers, domain experts, market experts, and managers. Sales and distribution organizations provide another group of potential contributors. In addition, customers can contribute to sales readiness.
With so many potential contributors, how do organizations coherently improve the sales readiness of new products? With so many options, coherence is the key to selecting appropriate strategies. One approach builds on historic patterns. Another approach attempts to manage emergence.
A rigid approach to sales readiness
Some organizations demand strict adherence to documented processes, established practices, and templates. Components are collected from previous projects and they are combined with items imported from popular literature. Sometimes new types of components are assimilated from new team members.
Typically, sales readiness items related to channel training, collateral and sales tools, white papers, and competitive assessments are produced as a result of a formally budgeted process and a perception of what seemed to work in previous projects.
Unfortunately, there is a problem. Components that may have been successful on previous projects are not guaranteed to be successful in different contexts. Hopefully, capable team members can make the appropriate adjustments to these components to produce acceptable results.
A strategy to manage emergence
A strategy to manage emergence is appropriate when there is more than one way to obtain a solution. The solutions that will provide the best results are not known in advance. An emergent approach embraces distributed cognition. Web 2.0 capabilities, such as feedback and user generated content, are required to support emergent approaches. This strategy is based on a complex adaptive system model. My favorite author on this subject is Dave Snowden at Cognitive-Edge.
An emergent approach is characterized by lighter constraints and it seeks to manage emergence. This coordinates efforts and minimizes lost opportunities.
As described in the Visions article, the SAVO Group product supports this capability. Representative from the sales, marketing, development, and management collaborate to improve the development process and the sales process.
Recommended sales readiness strategies
Maximizing sales readiness requires more than following documented processes, established practices, and templates. You can not guarantee the best strategy by polling the sales representatives and ranking the results. The preferred strategy must have the capacity to handle actual variability and unknowns.
To maximize the robustness of a sales readiness strategy, consider a program that produces a comprehensive set of resources that are available near product introduction. This requires qualified leadership to select and implement the appropriate strategy elements and the appropriate budgets for implementation. Rigid choices are made to meet prerequisites. There are preconceptions about the results that will be produced.
After product introduction, consider a strategy that evolves. A strategy that manages emergence within boundaries benefits from distributed cognition because it leverages the cooperation of individuals, formulation of a community, and feedback. An emergent approach has the greatest impact when leadership actively includes this strategy as part of new product development by supporting tool sets required and rewarding those that contribute.
Over time, the sales readiness implementation selected for your new product can evolve into the strategy for your current and legacy products. Then it can become vital to new sales representatives and new customers. Ultimately, your sales readiness strategy impacts the sustainability and growth or your company.
Listen to Sales Readiness Strategies and New Product Development [9:16 minutes, 4.7 MBytes, (m4a)] Apple QuickTime / iTunes is required]
