Gelbart Kahana Global Marketing» Frost and Sullivan

Getting the New Product Launch Right

Nancy Shapira — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:27:51 +0000

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

Identifying the best customer segments for penetration
Positioning the product successfully against competition
Optimizing impact of sales strategy
Creating a system to maximize sales leads while minimizing marketing expense
Basing sales strategy on customer benefits rather than features
Making the team market-driven rather than technologically-driven
Setting sales goals based on market potential, not staff’s guesses
Reducing sales development time and maximizing profit
Improving market efficiency
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

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

Globalization of AR

Nancy Shapira — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:10:00 +0000

I just got back from the Gartner IT Expo in Orlando. The day before I attended the KCG AR Forum with AR professionals from Microsoft, Siemens, HP, CA, EMC and others. I spoke as one of KCG’s Global Partners on the Globalization of AR together with partners from India and Australia. The message was that some things are the same but some markets are very different. The rankings and influence of different analyst groups are very different from the U.S. market; for instance, Frost and Sullivan is highly regarded in some EMEA and APAC markets as is IDC whose on the ground precense is very strong.
Gartner still rules in many parts of the world but we all got in a little Gartner bashing and let out our frustrations about some of the bureaucray and out of touch policies at Gartner. Emily Green, the CEO of Yankee Group gave us a presentation on her vision of the Anywhere world of Yankee and also tried to convince us that firing a significant number of analysts was just an efficiency move.
I was a bit jealous and in awe of my AR counterparts in the U.S. who talked about their AR budgets and teams while in EMEA and Israel we usually have to make do with 10-20% of the Marketing or Marcom Managers time. There are no real AR positions in Israel and even the marketing positions will probably be in danger because of the current financial crisis. I have already heard news of one NASDAQ traded Israeli company who is downsizing their Marketing Team. In the U.S. companies fire R&D in bad times; in Israel they let the Marketing people go because some companies still dont know that it is all about perception (marketing) and not the great technology.
Will blog later this week my thoughts on the Gartner conference…
Highly recommend the KCG AR Forum for any AR professionals that want to network with the best in the profession, learn, and whine a bit about our frustrations with both the analyst companies and our own management….

Are Industry Analysts Objective?

Nancy Shapira — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:35:00 +0000

Many vendors think that Industry Analysts can be bought.
According to Bill Hopkins from KCG-the Knowledge Capital Group who are an Analyst Relations Consultancy Firm, “While there is truth to the view that you can buy the opinions of many sell-side analysts (and maybe some Point Players on the buy-side), it’s absolutely not true when it comes to Deal Makers and Breakers (Forrester and Gartner).”

What do you think?