The biggest barrier to success for a new product launch is lack of preparation (HBR).
Regardless of how prolific companies are in ideation, design and new product development, up to 40% of new products still fail (New Product Success). Whether you’re introducing a product to an existing line or breaking into a new market, you’re only as successful as the resonance of your message. Without an effective sales enablement plan in place to ensure sellers can communicate value to customers and prospects, sales reps and partners risk losing credibility, and worse, closed deals.
It takes a lot more than an email announcement for your sales team to understand your new offerings. How do you ensure your next product campaign isn’t stamped Failure to Launch?
Give sellers the sales enablement tools and technology they need to be successful
On average, 18 to 24 months are spent getting ready for a new product launch (SBI). New product campaigns are essential to your success, but what good are they if your sales teams and channel partners can’t actually find and use the information and content they need to articulate the value of that product to buyers?
Deploying a sales application that incorporates learning management (LMS) ensures your sellers have everything they need to access and knowledgeably present the right content at the right time, both ahead of sales meetings and in real-time with buyers. Instead of overwhelming sellers with a heap of new product information all at once and hoping it sticks, sales readiness tools offer sellers modularized sales training whereby pitch content is unlocked only as it’s mastered.
Utilizing value-selling tools within your sales application empowers sellers to effectively quantify things like return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) for prospective buyers. This is particularly useful when entering a new market, which often requires a steep learning curve. Your sellers simply input real-time data collected from the buyer and use the output to guide more personalized, prescriptive sales interactions.
Leverage sales enablement to help reps better prepare for live sales engagements
The right sales enablement platform allows sellers to spend less time worrying about what might happen, or what discussion might arise and just focus on the customer. Leaning on sales enablement technology to help sellers navigate even the most unexpected paths, you can:
- Package new campaign and product launch materials into a collection, providing everything your sales reps and partners need to effectively understand and communicate the value of the new offering to customers and prospects
- Provide a content dashboard to bring new campaign, product launch and other timely content front and center for sellers
- Automate launch scheduling and manage calendars, assuring timely launch and usage of time-sensitive content
- Provide new interactive tools, enabling sales to better differentiate the value and advantages of the new product over legacy solutions and the competition
- Track launch success to quickly determine the scope of awareness and adoption
- Understand what new campaign and product launch content is being consumed and performing best with sales and customers/prospects
Use sales enablement technology to drive sales of new products or product lines
Getting the new campaign/product launch right can yield up to 15% higher revenue success, on average.
If your sellers don’t “get” your new product campaigns, neither will the market. On the flip side, giving your sellers the ability to articulate value and actionable insights can directly impact your bottom line. If you’re planning to launch a new product or product line, deploying a sales enablement platform that incorporates sales readiness and value selling components is your best bet to make it a success.
Even the most innovative companies can design and manufacture products that can transform the way we work and live. But can they convince customers?
Pssst…’Sales Readiness’ is more than a buzzword. Interested in learning more about how a continuous learning approach can seriously uplevel your sales organization? Join our webinar “Sales Readiness: Making the Case for Just-in-Time Learning” featuring Peter Ostrow, Senior Research Director at Sirius Decisions.
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