Image copyright: David Smith

Bringing a new product to market is an act of will. Just getting to the start line takes a heap of effort, sacrifice, and dedication to the cause. Maybe it should be an Olympic sport. An endurance challenge that requires entrants to master three disciplines:

1. Get the product ready for the market

2. Get the company ready for the product

3. Get the market ready for the product

Less new product development, more new product triathlon.

This site isn’t concerned with number three (that’s more the domain of the marketing communications industry and specialists in launch codes) so let’s look at the first two.

1. Get the product ready for the market.

This is most often filed under new product development, strategic marketing, or sometimes business development. Whatever the job title, sorting out market and product is a pretty good use of time – most of which is spent answering questions and making choices.

Some market questions
What market is the product for?
What problems do they have?
How big is that market?
What do they need our product or service to do for them?
How much pain are they in at the moment?
What would their life be like with our product?
How much is that worth to them?
What are their alternatives?

Which all helps when thinking about product questions
What is our proposition?
What features are in, and which are out?
What services must be part of the package?
What else do they need to get the value out of this product?
Who can help?
What colour should it be?
What about the name, the design, the price, the launch?
What about the price?
Did I mention the price?

Whether you’re a product or service business, questions like these fall into the “what’s in the box and who is it for” category and they form the foundation to the day-to-day work that follows, including actually building the product itself. With good reason too, a miss here can damage the product, restrict the market, or push your new baby to early retirement.

Now build the thing
If it’s a version change, a new edition, or any other kind of thing that’s almost exactly like all the other things you sell then it’s possible that this is enough. Just drop the new product into one of the product shaped holes that are normal for your company and, after a short recovery, you’re ready for the next event.

But, and just for emphasis, it’s a big BUT, some products are game changers. Not just in the market (which is nice), but in the company too (which you should expect and plan for), which brings us to the second discipline of the new product triathlon.

2. Get the company ready for the product

If you’re entering a new market, have a completely new new product, or have been missing a few targets recently, it’s worth looking at stage two. Questions here tend to range from significant to fundamental and some of them are likely to throw “the way we do things around here” into the air.

Some questions about what we do around here
Does this fit with our existing business model?
How can each department contribute to the success of this product?
Do we have the manpower to fully support this thing?
Do we have the expertise?

Some questions about how we do things around here
How does this change the way we sell and how we incentivise our sales team?
Where is the best place, or most convenient place for them to buy this stuff?
Is our “usual” channel the right channel?
Can our internal support functions cope?
How does this impact the rest of our business?
Can we deal with the demand that we’re expecting?
Where can we find the right kind of staff to pull this thing off?

Dealing with the answers helps to make the back end bomb proof and can be the difference between skippiness and misery for customers, shareholders and staff.

How to get ready for market

Getting ready to market a product means making sure you have a product the market wants and the company to deliver it. Put the time in, deal with reality and then put all your effort and creativity into stage three, get the market ready for the product.

Neatly filed under Foundations,Keeping Promises,Skippiness on May 22, 2009

Of course, there are times when you need someone for a job that has to be done right, or in a very particular way – if I’m in the market for a surgeon or an auditor I don’t want someone learning on the job – but most of the time experience is a poor relation.

So why do most recruiters hire on experience? Because they think it’s safe and cheap.

And they’re right, in the short run.

Safe and cheap? If someone’s made a living as a salesman, .NET programmer or marketing manager, if they’ve managed projects, PA’d or PR’d before, chances are they know the territory and can hit the ground at a trot, not stumble along, learning as they go.

Short run? If you’re hiring today and you need something done next week, contract it out. Hiring is a long term bet. Experience may make getting up to speed a little quicker, but the wrong kind of person is the wrong kind of person at any speed. Getting rid of problems costs time, recruitment fees, and the goodwill, productivity and attention of colleagues.

Hiring on experience is neither safe nor cheap. It won’t make the person fit the culture, pull their weight, perform to expectations, work as a team … it just means they walk in the door with some wear on their shoes.

Hiring good people is tough, there are no short cuts. If not experience, what?

Dee Hock, who founded VISA, wrote in Birth of the Chaordic Age,

Hire and promote first on integrity, then motivation, third capacity, fourth understanding, fifth knowledge and last experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.

Jack Welch, of GE fame, wrote about Hiring in Winning which I’ll paraphrase,   

1. Integrity – “people who tell the truth and keep their word. They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes, and fix them.”
2. Intelligence – “a strong dose of intellectual curiosity, with a breadth of knowledge to work with or lead other smart people. … Don’t confuse intelligence with education”
3. Maturity – a “grown up. … withstand the heat, handle stress and setbacks, … enjoy success with equal parts joy and humility.”

Hiring is a huge step – for you and the newbie. Mistakes happen – beating 50% can be a challenge.

What do you look for?

Top of my list comes attitude. In the kind of roles I’ve hired for, there’s no routine. I look for the kind of person who crawls around under the desk to fix the wiring or borrows a screwdriver to fix the chair, and “that’s not my job” never lights up the Broca’s area of their brain.

After attitude, I’ll go with Hock and Welch.

Whatever you call it – integrity, do the right thing, the golden rule – this is the value with the most impact on skippiness.

Neatly filed under Managing,Skippiness on May 1, 2009

Innovation, independence, curiosity, collaboration, character, integrity, tradition, style all its own, authentic, risk takers, hardworking. All words used to describe craft brewing and craft brewers in this wonderful video by Greg Koch of the Stone Brewing Company.

The line I find most telling is,

We don’t put corn in our beer.

When I got over the obvious irony, I got to thinking – the difference between good and great, between ordinary and skippy, may well be the willingness to settle, to compromise, to cut corners, to take out the joy. Crafting the business you want, is a craft business. As they say in the video,

We are all craft brewers.

I love this kind of hokeyness, chapeau to David Meerman Scott for pointing out the video and giving me a little-morning-lift.

Neatly filed under Focus,Skippiness on April 29, 2009

I had two conversations in pretty quick succession that pointed towards the extremes of service we face every day.

Both talking about (different) new products. The first, a “name” advertising guy, said,

“It’s possible to cover up a bad product with good advertising.”

The second, a middle manager at one of the world’s biggest computer companies, said,

“We need to make sure the back end is bomb proof before we get the sales force excited.”

Which product would you rather buy?

I’m not suggesting that the advertising guy was recommending what he was saying, or even liking it. He wasn’t. But the fact that he had this answer down pat shows that too few companies take the approach of the computer guy.

Faced with an opportunity to make money, which option do you take? The quick don’t-ask-difficult-questions-how-many-can-we-shift approach or the slower hold-on,-let’s-make-sure-we-do-this-right approach.

Where’s the money?

A certain big computer company might say, “go slow, add a few steps, make sure the back end is bomb proof.”

I’d say, “skip.”

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises,Making Promises,Skippiness on April 22, 2009

It’s Easter weekend and I know I’ll spend at least some of it caught up in the beautiful torture of the Masters at Augusta. Which got me thinking, is golf skippy?

Just for a second though, consider football. Surly and recalcitrant players, managers who refuse to talk to the press, habitual swearing at match officials, cheat-if-you-think-you-can-get-away-with-it, blame-the-referee, I didn’t see it.

Now golf. Steeped in tradition and history and always played under strong values – honesty, integrity, and respect for the rules and other players – golf is about winning the right way, or not at all. The rule book is non-negotiable. Golfers honour rituals and conduct that were nurtured in a different age.

To an outsider like me, golf embodies the spirit of sportsmanship. To a skippy-ist like me, has all that slow had a positive effect on the quick?

Skippiness of a game is a tricky question. It is a game after all, you’re supposed to enjoy it.

It’s also a business. The rules are run by the R&A at St Andrews but the commercial interests are run by the two most powerful professional players’ bodies, the PGA Tour and the European Tour, and outside of playing, there’s an industry of equipment manufacturers and a network of shops, clubs, sponsors, communities and volunteers.

For the sake of argument though, let’s concentrate on the professional game as represented by the PGA and European Tours. Now, is golf skippy?

Skippy customers?

Ever spent less than five minutes talking to a golf nut who gets into his favourite subject? Golfers seem able to recall every shot of every game – played or watched – and to re-experience the thrill and frustration as they do it. Practically everybody who plays golf was first brought to the game by somebody else who already played; the evangelist effect in action.

Skippy staff?

It’s easy to believe, especially during Masters week, that professional players hug their golf bags with excitement every morning. Maybe not, but as a job it has some benefits; it’s a meritocracy, played in beautiful surroundings, and well paid if you’re good enough. Joining the professional tour isn’t easy and the life can be hard – living out of a suit case, no income guarantees – yet every year over 700 players attempt to qualify for the 30 places that come up for grabs on the European Tour. Do they skip to the office every morning? Playing a game they love for a living, most probably do.

Skippy owners?

The PGA and European Tour are players organisations – established for the benefit of the players. The PGA Tour in particular says it’s mission is to:

“expand domestically and internationally [and] to substantially increase player financial benefits while maintaining its commitment to the integrity of the game.”

If that’s their intention, if that is what it means to get whatever they want, in abundance – they’re skippy. Sure, the recession is biting. According to the Telegraph, private membership clubs have begun to find themselves in the rough. Everyone can see sponsorship is fading in every sport, golf included. Player financial benefits are bound to suffer this year too. But grading over the long term – the owners must be skipping. Tiger is back, viewing figures are up again, and players at all levels regularly “call a penalty” on themselves showing the commitment to the integrity of the game is as strong as ever.

So why the difference between golf and other sports?

Photo Credit – pocketwiley via Flickr

Neatly filed under Purpose,Skippiness on April 10, 2009