Have you ever met an entrepreneur who didn’t have something cool that everyone on the planet would buy the day it goes to market?
I have never talked to an entrepreneur who wasn’t passionate about what they were bringing to market. When the entrepreneur evangelizes, we all get a little excited.
So, why do so few entrepreneurs succeed? It is not for a lack of trying to get people to buy their cool product. Certainly if the offer is cool, we have to assume people or organizations will buy, but often that never happens.
If the offer is cool, do we believe every failed entrepreneur is unable to find the phone number or email for a competent salesperson, or maybe the sales people have decided to make sure all entrepreneurial products fail so they don’t have to work for cool companies that might go public?
The entrepreneurs are selling all the time and do hire good sales people, so there must be something else going on for that many to fail.
Having worked with large companies who launch new stuff, I can tell you the same problem exists for the big guys. Getting new stuff successfully into the market is hard.
If selling were the only problem, the big companies would not have the problem; they got big by selling lots of stuff, but they struggle just like the entrepreneur. The problem of not selling is not lacking the ability to sell.
What is missing is the recognition of the need for, and execution of, a complete go-to-market plan (Revenue Strategy). The reality is that no matter how great a product or the sales person selling it, there is a lot more to launching a successful new offer.
In our 3 decades working with Fortune 500 companies, we developed a way to audit the go-to-market readiness for a new offer based on two things.
The first involves whether or not this is a NEW product or a “same as, but different” product. The second involves a group of Product Launch Variables (PLVs) that determine success or failure.
The difference between a NEW product and a “same as, but different” product is so great that you can master one and fail at the other. If you don’t know which is which and don’t know what makes each successful, you will fail.
NEW products are things you have NEVER seen or visualized before and didn’t consider as an option, such as “nanotechnology speakers in cloth.” With a new product, if someone gave it to us, we would not know how to implement it, manage it, maintain it, or teach others to use it.
A “same as, but different” product is like a 4-door Porsche or a flat screen TV. We have all seen 4-door cars and TVs before and know a lot about each. This is just a new version of something we know pretty well. We would know how to implement it, manage it, maintain it, and teach others to use in a matter of minutes.
The go-to-market variables for these two products have different critical elements. In both cases, if the critical elements are out of control they will KILL even a great product. If the critical variables are well organized and deployed, even a marginal product can be profitable beyond belief.
Over the years working with the “big guys,” our audit variables expanded from 64 to 378 PLVs (Product Launch Variables), which only a Fortune 500 company would care about.
All 378 PLVs can be nestled under 6 headings, and if entrepreneurs just focus on these 6, the sales success rate for start-ups will soar.
The 6 PLVs are Investigate, Early Qualify, Late Qualify, Solidify, Contract / Close, and Deliver (IQSCD). This is what that looks like:
Here are the definitions for each of the 6:
I = Investigate (locate and move forward the best prospects within a niche targeted for domination and eliminate all suspects that appear to fail one or more criteria)
Q = Qualify Early (move forward all suspects where you have an unfair advantage and they have a favorable engagement model)
Qualify Late (determine if they have the problem you uniquely solve, are compelled to solve it in the short-term and will invest resources in you to see if you are the partner to solve the problem)
S = Solidify (identifying the staff in the buyer organization who are involved in the acquisition or the installation and jointly develop the SOW)
C = Close (the point where the buying team makes the emotional decision to buy and commits that to contract)
D = Deliver (the process of implementing the Statement of Work (SOW) to satisfy the language of the contract and solve the problem)
The end-to-end Revenue RoadMap process and these 6 PLVs are so critical because the selling happens in the Blue Revenue RoadMap section, but no matter how great the selling process is, it will FAIL if the Gold process doesn’t produce leads for the selling process to close and the Red process fails to deliver. EARNED revenue is the result of selling something and delivering what was sold; until what was sold is delivered, there is NO REVENUE.
So, the TOTAL go-to-market (IQSCD) MUST be effectively executed or there is NO revenue. The entrepreneur needs to do more than sell. The whole IQSCD process is a science-based process full of variables that need to be intentionally executed.
Success requires something to sell and something great is best, but that alone is not enough. There needs to be a complete go-to-market plan where the variables are intentionally executed assuring the Revenue RoadMap does not break down. To the extent any part fails, all parts of the go-to-market fail.
Entrepreneurs need to take that great product and build a great go-to-market around it.