Launching New Products

Why New Product salespeople should change their own tires.

I recently met with two CEOs who shared that one of their worst mistakes was hiring a senior sales executive to help them launch their new products. 

Seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? New product, new market – hire a really good salesperson to lead the way. Unfortunately, it never works out well. 

You see, the experienced, successful sales executive is coming from an environment where they had a full support team – good market intelligence, tested and validated market segmentation, reference and testimonial accounts, case studies, lead generation and a team to qualify them (MQL) – all of this happens before the salesperson makes their first call. In a new product / new market situation – almost none of this exists.  It’s a bit like asking a Formula One driver to change their own tires. (I’ll bet it would take them a bit more than the standard two seconds.) 

So what is the best way to get sales moving in a new product / new market situation? 

Simply put, you need to ensure you have your product well positioned. You can do this with your own team if, which is rare, they have the experience and capacity. To position a product (or service) properly you must be able to answer these questions:

• What does your product (or service) actually do?
• What needs does it address and why is that important?
• Who is the best type of customer to focus on for early wins?
• What alternatives do those target customers have to address their needs?
• And why would they choose your solution?

This process is iterative - each area needs to be adjusted until you have a model that works. This work is the foundation of your future success. You can invest in staff with the experience to do this, however, using an outside resource with the skills and experience is usually a better approach as you will only need these skills for a limited period of time. 

Once you have a position statement in place – you still shouldn’t go out and hire an expensive sales professional - you’ll want someone who is able to ‘change their own tires’. Someone who can use the market position as a base to start exploring the market – learn more about buyer behaviour, validate the various pricing models, invest a stupid amount of time closing the first customers, understanding the whole process from A to Z. 

When you have your lead customers, testimonials and references you can start to think about scaling up a sales team.  To do so earlier will be very expensive, result in high turnover which causes all that expensive market intelligence to walk out the door. Kingsford has helped hundreds of companies develop very effective market position statements using a combination of primary and secondary research. If you like to know more, let’s talk. 

Some client feedback:

The Kingsford team did an amazing job analyzing the market and pinpointing locations that we could target. Russel Swaim 

Our team now has a solid understanding of the North American market and the dynamics that drive it. Kingsford's recommended strategy is innovative and will be highly effective. Nelson Lambertini 

Have a truly awesome day,

Andrew