launch

Entering a new technology based B2B business – Part X

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, new launch

Is the solution dependent on a specific platform or product to be able to deploy

It has multiple times for me. We thought we had a niche market, where we were the dominant player and anyone who needed the service, had to at least check us out. But then the base product, on which our services were based, suddenly started losing market share. New upstarts started capturing the market, for that product, with their offerings and suddenly within a matter of a couple of years, we had lost a complete line of business.

So as a matter of policy, now, whatever new service we launch, we make it a point to ensure that the services can be deployed across multiple platforms without any significant disruption in our revenue.

If you look at other industries also, you will find a lot of such examples. In the telecom space, with the CDMA technology becoming obsolete, all the companies that only made CDMA phones, suddenly had to rethink their operations.

In case you were making software for the Blackberry phones, with the advent of Apple and Android phones, the demise of Blackberry phones was amazingly sudden. So if you were building software, that required the code or security, of Blackberry, to make it run, you were also suddenly out of business.

So while this post is short, if you have been reading my posts on this subject over the last 8-9 weeks, then you will realise the benefit of this item on the checklist. Ticking this item will ensure that you have sustaining power in the market.

Sometimes it so happens, that we forget this point, because we get success with the first platform on which our solution is based and because the revenue is consistently flowing, no one wants to disturb something which is going on well. And then you get hit from nowhere.

So please ensure that you have multiple platforms available to port your solution.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Launching a new product or service in B2B

B2B, Customers, Product Management

In this post I will only take one part – which is you already have customers for some other products or services and you are launching something new. In case you are getting totally new then you can read a lot of my older posts to help you achieve that objective.

For purposes of simplicity I will use the products, but the same logic would apply even when you’re launching a new set of services.

If you already have customers then whenever you are launching something new, the obvious thing would be to first take the new product to your existing customers. Nothing new here.

However I will put a little caveat. Start with your biggest customers and then go in descending order. The biggest customers are more invested in you and would like to succeed. Since they are big you will also get scale fast.

If you can also involve them at the 80% completion stage to use the product and advise on the glitches, then you will get real life feedback on the challenges that your product has technically as well in terms of customer experience. Large companies like Microsoft actually create Beta sites just with this objective.

Since these customers are invested in building the product with you , they will also own it more and will be more loyal. You may not get major revenue out of this, maybe even nothing. But if you have your large customers using the product then you can use them for reference purposes. That would be of much more value.

In this way you can reach critical mass faster.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!