Almost two months ago I wrote a blog about the Playoffs approaching, and getting ready to get in the game. In that post, I mentioned how you had to have the team ready to compete when the time was right. The baseball playoffs have now started and your favorite team, like mine, stumbled on the first game. This is common not only in baseball but in our product launches.
Maybe the collateral didn’t come back from the translator in time and you were sending mixed signals to the sales team who had no reference to go back and look. Maybe the product didn’t get out of QA testing with the thresholds you expected and planned. Maybe you just didn’t expect the competition to bring in all those extra features and you didn’t prepare your strategy well enough.
Does this mean the series is lost? Absolutely not! Products often stumble when they come out of the gate. With everything product management and marketing professionals are expected to do, something will not be perfect. (I know I’m speaking the evil truth here now, but it is the truth. We make mistakes.)
It’s okay. The series goes on. You are fighting a long battle with your product. You are looking for a great start to the launch, but the battle is won in market adoption and revenue, not solely by the first game of momentum. Some baseball teams have been down 3-1 in series only to win the final three games and take the series from their competitors. It can happen. (Yes, this is the subtle refernce to the amazing comeback that a team performed in 2004.)
If you stumble in the first game, go back. Look at your strategy; look at your plans. See what worked and didn’t. Look at what shifted in the market from the time you began to prepare to the time you launched. Adjust what you might need to – like messaging, collateral, training – and move on. Go back and look at your personas. Go back and talk to more personas in your market if needed. Do what it takes to learn and adjust.
Looking in from the outside, while it may be frustrating – and even a bit heartbreaking to give up a run now and then, it doesn’t mean you lose the game. You will make more mistakes (I guarantee that,) but if you take a lesson from the best baseball managers and adjust your strategy to respond, the mistakes don’t have to cost you the series.
Filed under: Buyers, Communication, Management, Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, Sales | Tagged: Buyers, Communication, Launch, Market, Marketing, Product Management, Product Marketing, Sales, Value
One of PM Hut’s contributors is a big fan of the following (which is very close to what you’re saying): “We didn’t lose the game, we just ran out of time” (Vince Lombardi).
He wrote this excellent article: do you speak project, you might enjoy it even if you’re not a Project Manager.