Needs-Focused Product Development Process
MarketSoft’s product development process for its first product was very methodical and strongly focused on uncovering the real needs of sales and marketing professionals. MarketSoft spent three months on the market research for its first product, eLeads. Specifically, a six-member team (Erman and his first five hires) interviewed 60 companies for 1.5 hours each over a two-month period. The interviews were conducted onsite at companies in the Boston area (20 companies) and by phone for the 40 companies outside Boston. Interviewees were primarily marketing vice presidents and marketing reps from blue-chip companies in the high-tech industry. The companies had to have over $300 million in annual revenues and sales force equipped with laptops and Internet access. MarketSoft added the laptop stipulation for two reasons. First, tech-savvy marketing departments would provide the greatest insight into how such companies might want to use computers to support marketing processes. Second, such companies would be an easy sell for marketing software.
The interviews followed a detailed protocol designed to elicit the customer’s needs articulated in the customer’s own words (in contrast to asking leading questions that might bias the interview toward validating preexisting assumptions or building a product based on engineering language) MarketSoft wanted to start with a blank page and create product specs based on actual customer needs, All the interviews ware recorded, transcribed, and put in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) Following each interview, the interview team conducted a half-hour internal debrief discussion in which they indentified 5 to 10 quotes that best captured the major points of the interview.
After completing all the interviews, the team compiled the previously selected 5 to 10 quotes per interview into one big list of about 400 quotes. Then they discussed each quote one by one. After the discussions, each team member voted on which to quotes were most significant in each category.
This rigorous market research process created a clear vision for the product, one that the entire team understood because they had been involved in the process. In particular, the team identified three “pain points” that customers experienced with their existing lead management procedures:
• Poor Lead Assignment: Leads were not getting to the right salespeople
• Poor Lead Qualification: Salespeople were not satisfied with the leads they were getting.
• Poor Effectiveness Tracking: There was no method for tracking the effectiveness of leads that had been pursued
Moreover, other industry data supported these three pain points:
• Lead assignment: Less than 40 percent of all marketing leads get to a sales rep.
• Lead Qualification: Less than 10 percent of sales reps are satisfied with the quality of leads they receive.
• Lead Tracking: Less than 5 percent of channel leads are tracked.
Solving these three customer pain points became the mission of MarketSoft’s product development effort. Armed with this customer and industry data, MarketSoft began the seven-month process of developing the eLeads product
Sales Strategy: Accelerating the Sales Process for Software
Specialty software applications, such as MarketSoft’s applications for marketing, can face a complex, time-consuming customer decision process, Both the department that will use the application (marketing and sales in the case of MarketSoft products) and the information technology (IT) department have a say in the purchase decision. Moreover, software purchase is a capital expenditure, which typically requires approvals from the finance department. MarketSoft found that it is harder for marketing vice presidents to directly purchase software because buying and implementing the software eequies the skills of the
Needs-Focused Product Development Process
MarketSoft’s product development process for its first product was very methodical and strongly focused on uncovering the real needs of sales and marketing professionals. MarketSoft spent three months on the market research for its first product, eLeads. Specifically, a six-member team (Erman and his first five hires) interviewed 60 companies for 1.5 hours each over a two-month period. The interviews were conducted onsite at companies in the Boston area (20 companies) and by phone for the 40 companies outside Boston. Interviewees were primarily marketing vice presidents and marketing reps from blue-chip companies in the high-tech industry. The companies had to have over $300 million in annual revenues and sales force equipped with laptops and Internet access. MarketSoft added the laptop stipulation for two reasons. First, tech-savvy marketing departments would provide the greatest insight into how such companies might want to use computers to support marketing processes. Second, such companies would be an easy sell for marketing software.
The interviews followed a detailed protocol designed to elicit the customer’s needs articulated in the customer’s own words (in contrast to asking leading questions that might bias the interview toward validating preexisting assumptions or building a product based on engineering language) MarketSoft wanted to start with a blank page and create product specs based on actual customer needs, All the interviews ware recorded, transcribed, and put in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) Following each interview, the interview team conducted a half-hour internal debrief discussion in which they indentified 5 to 10 quotes that best captured the major points of the interview.
After completing all the interviews, the team compiled the previously selected 5 to 10 quotes per interview into one big list of about 400 quotes. Then they discussed each quote one by one. After the discussions, each team member voted on which to quotes were most significant in each category.
This rigorous market research process created a clear vision for the product, one that the entire team understood because they had been involved in the process. In particular, the team identified three “pain points” that customers experienced with their existing lead management procedures:
• Poor Lead Assignment: Leads were not getting to the right salespeople
• Poor Lead Qualification: Salespeople were not satisfied with the leads they were getting.
• Poor Effectiveness Tracking: There was no method for tracking the effectiveness of leads that had been pursued
Moreover, other industry data supported these three pain points:
• Lead assignment: Less than 40 percent of all marketing leads get to a sales rep.
• Lead Qualification: Less than 10 percent of sales reps are satisfied with the quality of leads they receive.
• Lead Tracking: Less than 5 percent of channel leads are tracked.
Solving these three customer pain points became the mission of MarketSoft’s product development effort. Armed with this customer and industry data, MarketSoft began the seven-month process of developing the eLeads product
Sales Strategy: Accelerating the Sales Process for Software
Specialty software applications, such as MarketSoft’s applications for marketing, can face a complex, time-consuming customer decision process, Both the department that will use the application (marketing and sales in the case of MarketSoft products) and the information technology (IT) department have a say in the purchase decision. Moreover, software purchase is a capital expenditure, which typically requires approvals from the finance department. MarketSoft found that it is harder for marketing vice presidents to directly purchase software because buying and implementing the software eequies the skills of the
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