I found this post on the Frost and Sullivan website with important information and guidelines to use BEFORE launching a new product.  This is geared to technology companies and unfortunately is a step that is skipped by too many people.  Investing time and money in doing market research first does pay off in the end.

Many new products are launched into the marketplace with little prior planning for targeting the customers, creating a sales strategy, developing a distribution strategy, training the sales force, and integrating the competitive strategy. This mistake significantly reduces or eliminates any potential profit the product may have, and greatly increases the sales development time. These problems must be avoided if a company wants to survive in today’s competitive marketplace.

10 Ways Market Engineering Can Help Make New Product Launches More Successful

1. Identifying the best customer segments for penetration
2. Positioning the product successfully against competition
3. Optimizing impact of sales strategy
4. Creating a system to maximize sales leads while minimizing marketing expense
5. Basing sales strategy on customer benefits rather than features
6. Making the team market-driven rather than technologically-driven
7. Setting sales goals based on market potential, not staff’s guesses
8. Reducing sales development time and maximizing profit
9. Improving market efficiency
10. Identifying optimal mix of marketing tools and distribution channels to maximize sales

Market Engineering Checklist for Product Launch

• Market Engineering cross-functional team training
• Determination of Market Engineering Measurements
• Completion of customer survey
• Focus group performance
• Beta sites on product
• Selection of distribution channels analyzed
• Sales targets based on market size and potential
• Design of lead generation programs
• Design of market-based pricing strategy
• Lead tracking systems
• Design of public relations strategy
• Design of sales strategy
• Design of marketing strategy
• Competitive analysis and benchmarking
• Design of customer database
• Development of customer database
• Design of market monitoring system
• Buying, reading, and implementing Customer Engineering

Challenge Questions

1. Into what market will the product be launched?
2. What customer segments will purchase the product?
3. For what applications will the customer use the product?
4. Into what geographic segments will be sold?
5. What are the benefits for the customers?
6. What is the price/performance ratio relative to the competition?
7. Who are the principle competitors?
8. What will make your product unique in the market?
9. What percentage market share is targeted at end of year 1 and year 3?
10. What percentage of the customer base currently uses this product?
11. From what distribution channels do customers purchase today, by percentage?
12. What influences the customer’s decision to buy?
13. How will competitors position themselves against this product?
14. What is your sales strategy?
15. What is your marketing strategy?
16. What Measurement of Performance will you use to track success?