The Folly of Fail Fast ... We are here to SUCCEED MORE!

Fail Fast is a popular phrase beloved by entrepreneurs and wannabe companies as well as by large serious outfits trying to modify their big corporation DNA.

"Fail fast" or alternatively "fail fast succeed faster" or "fail forward" or even "fail better" is trying to tell us that it is better to get customers to experience your product and to learn from their feedback and from your mistakes. These conclusions drive a rapid review and improve phase where you can make the necessary changes. In many cases a worthy message.

The message is that this is preferable to lengthy planning,  development and refinement cycles in the office that don't involve the customer. Tirelessly looking for the ultimate product or ideal user experience. In many ways the idea is very similar to some of the Agile philosophy.

I am a huge believer in meeting the customer early and often and subscribe to much of the logic about doing, learning and improving, but, I have some issues with the fail fast slogan and even with some of the fail fast concept.

Let's deal with the trivial one first. There are many cases where it just doesn't work, I hope that Boeing and Ford for example don't embrace fail fast! 

However, in a broader sense on any business there are times when you can't afford to fail, because it ruins the positioning and reputation or because of budget. Let's accept that quick customer engagement is not an excuse for bad product design and implementation. Sure work quickly, cut red tape, be passionate about delivery but do the job right.

Now for my bigger issue, failure means getting it wrong and messing up. This is never a healthy, positive message it just sets the wrong tone and is a poisonous attitude to bring to work. It suggests that sloppy poor incompetence is suddenly acceptable. We can do it wrong and fix it in the next development cycle - no problem, nothing happened. 

We should remember that "perfection is the enemy of good" (Voltaire) or "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes" (Watson-Watt on Developing Radar during WWII)" These principles mean that we need to do be quick and achieve "enough" or in Agile terms MVP (Minimal Viable Product) so there is often no practical room for the dogged pursuit of perfection. We need to develop something that is at least fit for purpose. But we are not embracing failure as an option - just limited success.

When I googled the phase fail fast I can across a Wikipedia entry about system resilience. This is a more positive message, we need to build our product and we need to succeed and survive even if things aren't quite right.

Let's embrace efficient working practices, early customer engagement and let our people know that sometimes things do go wrong; so do your best to prevent this, but we understand and accept that it may happen. It is unfortunate and undesirable but failure is not our philosophy nor is it our core competence. There will be no blame game as long as you have tried very hard to succeed. We are a success orientated company.

Let's just Work Fast and Succeed More

Being Customer Passionate

Customer service with passion makes a difference.  You can feel it. You know it when you get it.

An example -  my company recently changed cleaning contractors; you know the people in blue uniforms who sweep and clean and who seem to change with alarming frequency . (A small digression;  they make a huge difference to our lives and you see them every day so be friendly and grateful to them a quick hello is really appreciated.)

The new team are pleasant enough as people and seem to be full of activity doing the regular cleaning stuff. They sweep, their managers buzz around and they all fill in the standard inspection forms. So seemingly all is well. However, actually things are just almost OK, but are certainly not to the right standard. The floors don't quite sparkle, often there are shortages of paper and unexpected messes seem to take a long time to be cleared.

On our floor the old contractors had a super team. As far as I could understand (they were immigrants and we didn't really have a common language) they were actually a husband & wife team.  

What is for certain is that the worked very hard and cared for our office just like it was their own home. They did extra inspections and made sure that everything was just right or even better. I am sure that our toilets and kitchen were as clean as in their home. They cared- actually they really cared and they had pride when you showed appreciation. Some other company now has their services and is very lucky - Anna & Anatoly come back we miss you!

They were true cleaning professionals and worked from the heart and it really showed. The new team just do their job and that also really shows. We all appreciate people who are customer passionate.

We need that professional passion in all our products - that is a difference that the customer notices. It is true differentiation.

The Economic Value of Social Media

Regular readers of the JET blog will be aware that we are great believers in the power of Social Media. We recommend that Product Managers and Marketers get involved in Social Media even (or especially) for industrial products and not just photos of you kids, kitten or favorite film. See for example Social Media Revolutions

A couple of items caught my eye this month - The Daily Telegraph reported that Facebook contributes over 1Bn GBP to the UK economy and supports over 18K jobs, in the EU the estimated contribution is almost 13Bn GBP. The major beneficiaries are in the small and medium business. The study was performed by Deloittes and I guess their estimates are far from being a precise science, however, it does give some indication of the staggering reach and contribution that social media is making to business.

In a similar article The Times ( link is members only content) discussed why businesses try so hard to get you to LIKE them. The estimate is that each Like costs $1.07 in marketing costs - apparently for no immediate reward. On the other hand  Facebook itself has 586M Likes and Coca Cola as the most liked product has around 36M Likes and needs to have its own internal Facebook management team.

Some marketeers regard a Like as the ultimate word of mouth - influencer recommendation.

Facebook claims research showing that customers who Like also spend more. The machinations of  Facebook (and perhaps impending IPO) are out of scope of this article, but it does show how seriously some of the largest and most successful brands regard Facebook & we haven't even got started on Twitter, Google+, professional social networksand all the rest.....

Your product may not be consumer orientated and it may not be as bubbly as Coke, but, it still needs a home in social networks as way of getting the attention of your customers and influencers.

Social Media Comes of Age as an Advertising Platform

Social Media is a theme here at JET and we are great believers in the power of Social Media and think that Social Media is an important or rather a critical tool for businesses of all sizes.  


Even in large organisations we think that product managers and marketeers should be out there engaging with the customers - talking to them but also listening and learning. It is an easy and significant way to be relevant to our customers and customer centric. It is no longer a secret that social media can drive revolutions and depose dictators and in this recent post on Social Revolution we looked at some fascinating work by Shirky - Here Comes Everyone about how we all play a part and engage and how  Social Media gives us an accessible low cost platform to share information. We also looked at how Social Media allows us to recommend and find information to and from our social circle - a knowledge enabler perhaps on par to the invention of the printing press - See Social Media - Changing Society Forever 


The next stage of Social Media is to use it as a direct advertising channel - and many companies do use the social media platforms in their ad mix. The platforms also provide some great on board tools that are useful, accessible and affordable even for very small businesses. In this fascinating article it seems that Social Media has now come of age and for the first time a mega company - British Airways will be launching their new campaign on Social Media rather than on the more traditional media and advertising channels.Yet at the same time Sir Martin Sorrell the advertising legend, questions the value of large brand social media advertising. He also makes the very valid point that social media is now the new letter - its the way that we talk to each other and so advertising in this context makes it the wrong channel. Sir Martin also believes that their should be a subsidy for quality journalism (Sir Martin's speech) - surely a sign that opinion, blogs and personal news sources are having an ever increasing impact.  


Sir Martin is not a person to be taken lightly and many have commented on how difficult it is to get advertising right in a social media context. However, successful ads have always had the ability to engage our imagination and provoke discussion outside the delivery channel. There are a handful of ads that were popular on British TV 20 years ago where many of us still remember the slogan and joke about them today - ultimate success in brand recognition. Social media just makes it easier and more engaging to share and provoke the discussion. Many ads on social media will flop, but the clever ones will do exceedingly well - ultimately Social Media will be a channel that succeeds. I am sure that the BA ad in question cost a small fortune to produce - but the entry threshold for producing slick, clever and successful ads on social media platforms driving brand recognition and customer engagement is so low that even moderate success will make it compelling for many businesses.  At a small business level we have found that relatively cheap and unsophisticated text based ads from Google are very effective at driving quality traffic to our Israel travel website.  

Social Media - Changing Society Forever

I have recently discussed the power of Social Media where I argued that these are key tools that are generally off limits to most product market managers – which was a mistake because social media tools provide you with the ability to communicate with a large group of people, for the group to share information and to coordinate and organise very quickly all at almost zero cost – a marketer’s dream. I also discussed the fact that social media has the proved ability to provide the tools needed to organize a revolution – of citizens and consumers (See Social Media Strategies & Social Media Revolutions)

In this post I will reflect on the far reaching nature of social media and explain why it is therefore critical to the way that we converse with our customers.

One of the most far reaching changes in civilization was made by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439 when he invented the moveable type printing press – essentially enabling the economic mass production of books. This destroyed the market for manuscript copiers and more importantly allowed knowledge to be acquired by the masses and not just the privileged elite. This (the ultimate disruptive technology) invention changed the balance of power in civilizations forever.

I think that many of us would regard the Internet in general as being of similar importance as it provides almost everybody with access to limitless information. However, I think that the Internet is not the complete information revolution.

I think that the true Gutenberg style Internet revolution will be driven by two factors:

1. The Kindle (& similar devices) as a reading book is of equal or greater significance – allowing people to simply build, access, annotate and store their personal library.
2. Social media as a way of sharing pre-selected information that interests me; and is probably of at least mild interest to some of my friends and an economic way of sharing commenting and discussing this information.

Sharing and discussing information with social media is incredibly powerful. It is without doubt apologetically subjective personal information. However, it is incredibly compelling information – cleverly presented and recommended by a friend. In many cases a discussion emerges among the social circle. We start of with small pieces of information or knowledge and refine and enhance it by sharing. This in my opinion is similar to the invention of the printing press – I have access to all the information and will generally glance (at the very least) at these recommended items – instant access to important or pre-selected information.

This accessibility and relevance explains why we often see small localized businesses investing in Facebook and other social media. They know that they are not going to get thousands of followers – that is not the objective. Their objective is to be significant among their customers – to be part of the conversation and be part of the small instant information exchange. It is pure customer engagement and customer centric communications.

Equally so discussing what the business has done wrong is trivial and stunningly effective (see Social Media Revolutions) over social media. I believe that it is essential that we understand that society has changed with social media and that we need to embrace the new world – for the sake of our product and our customer engagement.

In my final comment (for now) on social media I would like to recommend this post from Jeff Cole discussing Google +.

Jeff makes some excellent points that are directly and indirectly relevant to product managers – in particular, I would like to reflect on the difficulty in being an expert in social media – and the very best never call themselves experts. This is often the case in many fields. My takeaway from Jeff’s article is that this is such a new and dynamic space there are many right and many wrong ways to do it. Think about what you want to achieve and the best way to do so – but most importantly get out there use the social media tools and do something – social media is enabling revolutions and it is changing society forever - your product and your customers can’t afford to be ignored.

Social Media Revolutions

In a recent post I discussed how Social Media has become an important marketing tool that is often missed or off limits to most product marketers in larger companies. Using them correctly, I believe can increase customer engagement and simplify product positioning.

Over recent months we have seen the power of social media to command people's attention and to motivate them to take part and be involved in activities. Many of these activities were previously well out side their normal comfort zone and in many cases caused them to endanger their lives. I am, of course referring to the Arab Spring and to a lesser extent to the on going Israeli Summer.

In the Arab Spring regimes were overthrown, or revolutions brutally suppressed. In the Israeli Summer on the other hand, we have mass demonstrations that are calling for a new social agenda and consumer price reform.

Both of these phenomena illustrate the power of social media – because they are both being organised and facilitated using combinations of Facebook, Twitter and other media.

The power of social media was discussed (and this year's revolutions foretold) by Clay Shirky in his book “Here Comes Everybody” (Penguin – 2008). To quote the back of the book “The next revolution will not be televised – it will be emailed, texted, blogged, wikied...”

Shirky discusses different case studies - from arrests for mass ice-cream eating in Minsk, to previous unrest in Cairo, to social stunts in Macy's store in New York, to protests against the attempt to hide abuse cases, and to commercial demonstrations against banks and airlines forcing them to reverse unfair commercial decisions. Shirky makes the point that social conversation and interaction follow a power law distribution from small groups with tight conversation, larger groups with loose conversation and then much larger groups that broadcast.

Shirky's message is that groups can organise themselves to collaborate on issues that they believe in or find sufficiently engaging. The critical element is the ability to share information and to coordinate and self organise at very low (negligible) cost – the enablers are social media tools. Speed is also of importance, it is hard to organise a large group of people using meetings, letters in the post etc. – sure it has been done but immediacy makes it so much easier.

The book discusses two almost identical protests a decade apart – the second of which achieved its aims, whilst the first did not. The conclusion reached is that (to a large extent) the availability of social media in the second was the key factor.

So the key advantages of social media are the ability to communicate with a large group of people, for the group to share information and to coordinate and organise very quickly all at almost zero cost. I would add that social media is still considered engaging and cool; and that in itself prompts people to take notice of a message that would be ignored if it were to be delivered by conventional means.

I am not arguing that on any given Wednesday afternoon product marketers or managers can start a worldwide revolution! I am, however, arguing that social media is extremely valuable to us. Consider the characteristics – immediate, low cost, information sharing, collaboration, engagement – these are the holy grails of product communication.

Using social media to interact with our customers we keep them involved, we can communicate messages when we want to without special effort, we engage them and allow them to share information with us that in turn help us to be more responsive to their needs and to better meet their expectations. This applies whether we have a business offering or a consumer offering. In a B2B situation we can help our customers succeed better at their job by sharing information about our product and our industry and it is easy to see how consumer products benefit from this interaction.

One of the apparent risks is that the competition will also join our group. This is true, but, then we have to share information prudently. We accept that every time we update the website, publish a white paper or interact with a customer then we have shared a secret with the public. In the meantime we have built the group chemistry around our product. Customers may share criticism of our product, but, surely they will do so anyway and it is better to hear about it and respond to it quickly (add an update to the next release and tell the world when it will be available.) Feedback is to our advantage, conversation drives our prestige.

The other idea that comes out of Shirky's work is that Social Media provides an easy tool for dissatisfied customers to organise and apply immense pressure on the organisation – it is much better that we also use the tools for our advantage.

Social Media is a low cost (mainly our time) way to regularly engage with our customers, to gain feedback, to help to shape our industry and to share information immediately.

It is hard to build a successful Social Media community – you need to choose the media (Facebook, Twitter, blog, wiki, special community etc.), to get people signed up and to start talking with the customers. Different businesses will use different tactics. By definition when we have a group we have conversation – conversation about our industry but mainly about our product. The conversation makes our entire approach, customer centric and drives our product decisions.

Whatever tactic we employ I believe we can all start our own small product revolutions and engage with our customers in a more meaningful way.

Social Media Strategies

Social Media is clearly one of the essential tools for Product Managers and Product Marketers.

Actually I say "clearly" and then I reflect upon my time in a medium sized high tech telecom company and all of a sudden it isn't clearly or even a bit obvious.

We had an excellent marcom department, that did some amazing things with web technology and customer engagement - but the average PM had no interaction with customers via social media. To be honest many of us had no idea what Social Media was or what was involved and we probably couldn't have defined it beyond "That's Facebook right?"

A few months on I am convinced that the product and the product positioning would be in a different league if we had done some basic social media work. Our understanding of the customer and customer engagement would have been substantially improved.

I am pretty sure that my experiences are reflected in many global companies - the Product Team are kept well away from Social Media - either through lack of awareness or because they are deemed dangerous without the corporate review and rubber stamp process.

This is a topic that the JET team will be dealing with in the near future - meanwhile we recommend this Techcrunch post - that talks about the different media and how the Internet is evolving and changing Social Media. Recommended.

Promoting a Brand - Some thoughts from Richard Branson

I have recently discussed the product aspects of the Nike 10K Night Run. One of the issues that I raised was the value of a brand and how the race was designed to enhance and promote Nike as a sports brand. I also mentioned that Adidas managed to get in on the act by taking advertising space along the route.

I am reading “Screw it – Let's Do It” by Richard Branson the founder of the Virgin group. It is a fascinating book describing how he started out as a school boy entrepreneur and how he developed Virgin. The book itself will be the subject of a future blog.

However, in this blog I want to discuss Branson's insights into branding. The chapter is called Sex Appeal and true to the title he discusses how to make the brand irresistibly attractive. His concept of sex appeal is “A good brand has sex appeal .... the customer falls in love with it, desires it, wants it and buys into it. Sexy is youthful, fun, trendy, cool whatever your age.”

Now at the outset I will concede that I don't think that Branson is just a regular guy doing a regular marketing job – he is a real visionary (there are over 330 Virgin companies) and now that he has success he commands marketing budgets that are, well how shall we say it? – Enough to completely fund the development and launch of 5 or 10 of our best ideas, and a certain fame that brings attention (if not success) to almost whatever he attempts.

Branson also admits that he has enjoyed the stunts he has pulled – from record breaking hot air ballooning to being suspended above Time Square in nude bodysuits. He recounts how one of the pioneers of alternative air travel Sir Freddie Laker encouraged him to be the face of his product, and make the personal commitment.

So I accept that for all of these reasons Branson is not just a regular guy. He is frequently promoting consumer brands rather than the next new killer widget; and so there are many many differences between what he does and what many of us do day in and day out. None the less there are some clear lessons in his messages.

Branson says that he advises all entrepreneurs

“whatever your field, you must be passionate about it and create excitement in everything that you do. Beat your drum, and look beyond the obvious. .... I fully believe that the presentation and image of one's business should reflect the fun as well as all the hard work behind it. In my opinion there are no limitations on what is possible or what should be attempted.”

I think that in 2 or 3 sentences Branson has summarised what Nike were trying to achieve with the night race (notice the similarity between the Nike slogan and the title of Branson's book.)

Of course the brand has to act as a real differentiator the product has to be instantly recognisable - “I will stretch the parameters every time because there is so much competition, you have to stand out from the herd.” However, the promotion and branding must remain faithful to the product - “be true to the product. Don't make it something it's not. Take a good luck at the image you want to promote and go along with it”

Branson also discusses that the products must back up the brand. Having brand alone without the products to match will not work. He describes how he is constantly taking a personal interest in what both the customers and the staff think (“... it is real market research...”) and how the potential for damaging the brand is substantial with poor products. “At Virgin we want to create the most respected brand in the world... but a brand is only as good as your products.”

Part of his philosophy is accountability and engagement – he believes that people need to acknowledge their mistakes, but to engage in the debate and not be debated with no defence or leadership. He comments “it makes me angry to see organisations in crisis that with tens of thousands of employees hiding behind 'no comment.'”

So it is actually pretty clear what the race was all about. It was engaging the customers and making them part of the fun, passion and commitment that they are trying to achieve for their brand and for their image. It was a way of leading the debate, getting their customers involved and trying to stand out from the crowd (ironically, since with 15K runners there was a very strong herd effect!!!)

I think that here are some of the secrets of successful product development and especially product marketing – it needs to be fun, passionate and full of hard work and we need to break down the barriers – so that there are no limitations. Sure there are budget issues and product readiness status, but, we need to work to make sure there are no limits.

Our brand needs to be true to the product and the product needs to be true to the brand. Both the product and the brand need to stand out.

It is critical to listen to our customers to ensure that the brand and the product continually live up to their expectations. A race is one of the rare situations where you can get the customer to offer the commitment and passion in partnership with you, but, you must always get the customer involved.

As product managers and marketeers we must offer a personal commitment to our brand and product, our energy our commitment and our responsibility.

In one sentence - the secret of branding is to offer a personal commitment and work hard to develop and promote a great product that breaks barriers, engages and excites the customers and have a great time in the process.

Finally in Branson & Sir Freddie Laker's words - “If you are starting your own company, a good lesson would be to think very hard about your image and how to brand it. ... get out there and use yourself.”

Screw It – Let's Do It Expanded – Lessons in Life and Business – By Richard Branson 2007 – published by Virgin Books.

The analysis and opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Branson or of Virgin Books.

Be A Better Speaker - Tips from Steve Jobs

As PMM we are all often called upon to make presentations or to speak. We need to enthrall our customers, motivate our team and convince our management (or sometimes we need to enthrall management, convince the team and motivate the customer.) Effective communication is part of our day to day activity.

So we prepare a few slides, work through our basic arguments and stand up. I once went to a customer meeting and whilst we were waiting in the lobby my colleague was still busy making changes to the presentation - let's just say that overall that meeting was not our finest hour!

We have discussed some of the common mistakes that happen; even at a relatively senior level, and I also shared a neat time limited presentation style. In this post I want to share a few insights from one of the world's communication masters - Steve Jobs. Most of the key information can be found at this link from Business Week - watch the video and the slide show - well worth the time.

So a few thoughts from the master -

• Jobs prepares his story thoroughly and apparently unlike most of us a long time before he opens Powerpoint
• He focuses on the benefits and engages the audience by showing them why they should care
• Jobs is brief and succinct and also he breaks his pitch into 10 minute sections to stop boredom
• His slides are elegant and often devoid of all words - he captures you with his visual images
• He sells dreams not products

Some of these concepts are hard to implement in a mundane meeting discussing the finer points of our design which seem far removed from a vision, but with some effort they can make all the difference.

It has just been announced that Steve Jobs has had to take a second period of medical leave. JET wishes him a speedy return to health.

Importance of Social Media in Business

Here is an interesting piece on the importance of social media and the probable disconnect at senior levels in Fortune companies, with almost no CEO's being active in social media. This cuts them off from their customers but also the way their customers are thinking.

It has lessons for all PMM - we need to be engaging with our customers effectively and in many markets this means being active in the social networks. This will drive our brand recognition and our competitive positioning.

A 2009 study found that the CEO’s of top U.S. companies tend to avoid social media, according to UberCEO.com. The study found that most of the Fortune top 100 CEO’s were markedly absent from the social media community, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia.

The Importance of Documentation

As PM&M we spend a huge part of our working day communicating both internally and externally. Despite this, we often get far into a product process and discover that somehow we don't have documentation or that we have very poor documentation. It may not, therefore, come as a complete surprise that we have a poor product definition and a weak customer engagement.

Sure, our creative skills and leadership mission don't leave much time for hacking away producing long word documents, but, as we will discuss in this post good functional documentation is an essential part of our mission and the craft, that can help or hinder the overall business success.

We welcome a guest blogger - Larry Lester - A Sales & Marketing Documentation Guru to discuss

There’s a host of reasons why small, emerging companies (aka start ups) should take documentation seriously. The problem is that most of those that I have worked with – don’t.

First and foremost they should take it seriously for all the reasons that larger companies take it seriously – it is a way of keeping your marketing, development, operations, and sales efforts – and the also the customer – in alignment.

However, for a start up the lack of good technical and marketing documentation – with the emphasis on good, or not having something basic at least – makes survival more perilous than usual. My phone usually starts ringing when these guys are about to crash land. If they have had the good fortune to make a sale, the customer is being nasty and delaying a milestone payment because a full set of technical documentation was supposed to be delivered and has not even been written. Or, if they have only got their foot in the door, discussions are about to collapse as the only marketing material they have to give to potential customers are a few pages of incomprehensible gibberish and a dreadful PowerPoint presentation! “We thought we could pull it off”.

The situation is, in fact, more serious than that. A company that does not maintain product requirement documentation is openly toying with suicide. There are two aspects to this assertion.

1. Poorly documented development is bound to result in a bug-ridden product. If you don’t write about it (requirements) then you don’t talk about it, and if you don’t talk about it, you brush aside the problems. Lack of a standard process and workflow causes product decisions to be made in an ad hoc way. At best, it is inefficient. At worst, it will kill your efforts to make a sale.
2. A good product requirement or a spec can serve as the basis for installation, operation and maintenance documentation. The saving in time, energy and money can be substantial. Somewhere down the road, you will need a technical writer, whether you like it or not. The more solid information you have to provide, the easier your lives will be.

The bottom line: give both technical and marketing documentation the same priority you give to development and sales. All of these processes are fully entwined - together the product should succeed; without any one of them it will be a struggle and potentially a product failure.

A New Way to Present

In a recent post I discussed some of the common mistakes that we all make from time to time when presenting. I described the experiences of Jim who spoke at a recent meeting. I recommended that when preparing and delivering presentations we need to focus on some core techniques - clarity of messages, good graphics, effective time management and speaking to your audience.

In this post I want to introduce you to a presentation concept known as Pecha Kucha - here you limit yourself to 20 slides - each slide can only be shown for 20 seconds - & here is the key - you are not in charge of the slides - either you put it on auto pilot or hand the control to somebody else.

I am grateful to my good friend Larry Lester for drawing my attention to this concept. Larry writes in his blog

"I discovered an interesting method for the delivery of presentations, totally different from anything that I have previously encountered. It is called Pecha Kucha - within 400 seconds you must make your point. This is very intriguing stuff. Just think how different it is from the prevailing norms of presentations. And Pecha Kucha has real added value – it is an excellent way to start discussions and business relationships."

I am personally fascinated by this technique & plan to try it out. I think that there is a real challenge here - remember that one of the hardest things to do when speaking is to PAUSE - people need time to absorb what you have to say - so in just over 6 minutes you have to get the audience's attention, develop your ideas and communicate your message and allow the listeners to understand your message.

Write in with your comments on the idea and if you try it out for yourself let us know how you get on.

Larry Lester is a highly-experienced marketing writer who has been involved in the sales support process in Israeli high-tech companies for many years, participating in the development of customer-directed documents and responses to RFPs. You can read the full blog article here

Be A Good Speaker

Recently, I attended a sales conference trying to promote interest in a relatively new technology trend. This was a large production – I am guessing over 1000 technologists enjoying the hospitality of 3 of the very largest international technology companies (together their market cap is just short of $200B.) –The companies flew in some of their best sales stars from abroad, so we assumed that we were in for a real treat. Unfortunately one of my main take away messages was that the skills of being an effective presenter are in short supply.

I want to focus on one unfortunate presenter let’s call him Jim (not his real name) who had flown through 10 time zones to be given the middle slot in a 3 person breakout session – just before a late lunch. So Jim has my every sympathy – he got a really rotten deal – I just hope that he was really in country for some excellent one on one meetings, to at least justify the time it took him to get here and return home.

However, Jim made pretty much every possible presentation error known to the PMM world – no small feat in only around 15-20 minutes. Let me state at the outset that I and at least several others only managed to figure out what the presentation was about in the last slide or so. It was very informative seeing Jim up there - here are a few of his mistakes – I hope it gets you cringing with shared embarrassment, find some sympathy for Jim who sacrificed himself for the greater good, and please firmly resolve not to make these mistakes next time you are up there.

Know your Audience & Speak to Them – Jim assumed that everybody in the room knew about his company, its product and the reasons why it had just been acquired by one of these huge companies hosting our lunch. WRONG – most of us had never heard of them; and were either passively learning or intrigued by title on the agenda. This is a really common problem that happens in webinars, at sales meetings and at internal briefings. Unless the session is very clearly understood to be at an advanced level you probably need to assume a much less savvy audience than you would like or intuitively expect – you need to find a way of getting them interested without insulting the people who have the background.

Never, never start a presentation with the Competition – Its negative, very negative and completely pointless until I understand who you are – tell me what you do, why you are good and why you are what I need – at the end maybe tell me about the other guys – but generally why give them free advertising?

Get me Interested at the Beginning– Jim’s last slide was a case study & it was wow! If only that had been the first slide he would have captured our attention & to be honest he would have got 90% of his message over whilst people were still in the room and still listening.

Timings – So we all do it – we need to share our knowledge and passion and give a complete picture. We need to share everything right now. I don’t know what Jim expected and what he really got in terms of timings, but he was literally panting from slide one, in a desperate rush to get through the slides. He wanted to get through the slides – what he should have been doing is focusing on his message. In any meeting like this you need to be ruthless in trimming the presentation and ideally you should have an emergency plan in mind about how to cut it even further if you are left racing the clock. Less is really more in these situations.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – So we all know this one too – but for most of us it is so much easier to throw down 1000’s of words. The problem that Jim had was that it was a large room, a huge projection and he had a small font so for most of the room it was like trying to read the newspaper of the guy 20 rows in front of you on the plane – it was just not happening. We all like having the info on the slides – it reminds us and lets the audience read and learn for themselves. WRONG – you need to know your message and the audience should be listening to you – that’s why you travelled half way around the world! For further information on this I recommend http://www.presentationzen.com that has many interesting tips and refreshing ideas on skills and approaches to presentation. Explore the ideas of the naked presenter. Guy Kawaski (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html#axzz1637iAUyr) who has a rule that the smallest font should be no smaller than half the age of oldest person in the room (and ideally 30 points).

Bob spoke after Jim – he was the session that should have been lunch and he was a techie and clearly also not a gifted public speaker, but, he was really engaging – he had some pictures, in the first couple of slides we understood the main messages and he used humour – not the stand-up variety, not vulgar, but just basically dumb engineer jokes. But most of the audience were there in their capacity as engineers and so he vey successfully connected with the audience, he got their attention and made an impact.

So Jim – thanks for being such a good sport (if it is any consolation you were not the only lousy presenter) and for giving us this opportunity to remember the principles of good presentations – it’s all about clarity of messages, good graphics, effective time management and speaking to your audience.

Product Management - The Longest Race - Part 2

In a recent blog (here) I discussed the product management and marketing lessons that could be learnt from the recent Nike 10K night race in Tel Aviv. I discussed the event planning (impressive and complex) and the event objectives (which were probably significantly more than just a fun run).

In this blog I will discuss some of the results of the event.

As a runner I can say I had an amazing time, and that on the whole this was an impressively run event.

However, the main question is what did Nike think? What KPI's did they set in advance for the event (number of runners? low number of problems? set up/clean up time? News minutes? Facebook group members?) Were their targets met? More importantly were the targets the correct ones or were they chasing the wrong things - were they were focused on their own issues and not on being customer centric?

During the course of the race itself there were other aspects of product management in action. Every once in a while there were music and water stations, we can consider them to be product features, helping the customers to enjoy the experience more, to engage with them - what will make them happy customers that will come back next year and recommend to their friends?

On the assumption that they plan to run a similar event next year, how, are they acquiring data and how are they planning to review and improve?

On the subject of next year we can consider product extension; will they feel the need to enhance the offering - perhaps by offering a shorter or longer version or by diversifying into a cycle race or triathlon? Perhaps there is a market for more than one event a year?

There were strict rules, we were all supposed to wear the official race shirt and run the course in an orderly manner. There were a few people who ran but I guess hadn't registered, and so ran in their own shirts and there were a few who wanted to stand-out and so ran in other shirts (last year's race etc) - on the whole this caused no problems to the runners. However, we can certainly view them in the context that the product was excellent, but, that it wasn't perfect - it was fit for purpose. Of course, since we mostly followed the rules, then we were complying with a certain standard, specification or protocol.

The race had a strict delivery schedule - it had to be ready on time and it had to work adequately well on the night. So part of the secret here is in team work and execution. The PM&M can have designed the perfect race, but if his project team didn't get the water in the runner's hands or publish the results then the product experience would have been irrevocably tarnished in the eyes of many of the customers.

So in conclusion I had a good run that evening and I believe that the experience was shared by the vast majority of the runners; I suspect that Nike felt that it was a success, but, that they have some points to improve or change in the next year. Overall this was a fine example of the craft of product management and marketing.

More importantly, I hope that by looking at an event that is outside of our day to day we can see the implications of strong product management leadership on all aspects of product design, management and marketing in general.

The Craft of Product Management & Marketing

The Product Management & Marketing (PM&M) profession presents significant challenges to its practitioners. The main challenge of our profession is: making good product decisions in an environment of uncertainty to drive long term sales, profitability and competitive positioning.

There are many methods and best practices that one can learn and use in the challenging world of PM&M, in order to to help. Occasionally there might be some fortunate PM&Ms facing projects where all the parameters are available, obvious and accurate, for most of us most of the time this is not the case.

Once we are over the decision making challenge, we have to face the organization and manage the “internal marketing” of the decisions within the various functions in the company. The PM&M has to coordinate and collaborate with almost all internal organizations – Sales, Marketing, Operations, Delivery, Support, Legal and R&D. To be able to do all this cooperation the PM&M has to build matrix management skills, but more than this relay on excellent human relationship capabilities.

Finally… after we have managed to make the decision and get buy in within the company, then we reach the critical stage (& our original objective) – going to the market and meeting our customers. In my view, the PM&M must face the customers. This is the way to “feel” and learn the market, find out what the customers are looking for, what are the advantages and disadvantages for our product and how to make it a winner with clear differentiation. Close engagement with the customers is essential to enable the right decision making. However, meeting customers successfully isn’t always an easy task, and the PM&M needs to have the human and technical capabilities to interact with the customers, to present the product and to face the challenges the customers present.

The Customer is King – But are they Always Right?

The customer is the king – they buy our product. We also know that the customer is always right. However, sadly they are not always right or at least not completely right; especially if (fortunately) there are many different customers with different needs. After we have engaged with the customer we will often be left with a conflict – do we meet the customer’s requirements or do we take them into account yet specify other product goals? Generally we are time limited and resource restricted and so our decisions will be (to a large extent) between mutually exclusive options.

As in many situations in life, there is the “easy way out”. When making decisions the PM&M can rely on what the customers demand. It will make everybody happy; internally in the organization no one can argue with the logic of satisfying the requirements coming from customers and the sales people will be delighted to go to the customers and tell them that all their requests are fulfilled. The customers will be delighted to get their exact requirements and to have their views influence the product. But, the “easy way” is not necessarily the “right way”, the popular decision will give the PM&M a friendlier environment in the short run, but will it be justified by the business performance in the long run? Did we sacrifice the future of the product for the comfort of making easy decisions? One of the classic PM&M dilemmas or minefields is letting one or a few key customers dictate the product design. Our responsibility is to make the best product decision in an environment of uncertainty and we need our customers to buy our product, but, we also need to ensure that one or two key accounts do not set the product back in terms of its wider market acceptability.

The PM&M is usually at the eye of the storm. The customers have their requests and crisis, the sales people demand that we satisfy our customers and also give the sales people some new exciting things to sell and to meet their quotas, the operations and support are complaining on the product capabilities and R&D is always short on resources. There are methods and tools that help sort things out in this chaos, but often there are no easy or even obviously right answers. The “craft of PM&M” is to be able to observe the surroundings, analyze the conflicting information, to assess the situation and in the end make the right product decisions that will maximize long term sales, profitability and competitive positioning.