“Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.”

Marketing must drive this process. Product Management and Sales must be involved of course. But only Marketing has all the required market data and can take an objective and holistic view across all potential and existing customers and customer segments, and all products and product lines.

It is also important to develop criteria on what should become a standard, supported product, versus what should be done as a custom “one of” solution for one or a few customers. Too often I have heard one customer swear that an enhancement they want is industry-standard and must be added to the product at no charge, only to be told by another customer that the named feature is detrimental to their business and must be ripped out, again at no charge.

And unless the company is still in start-up mode, the same rule applied to overstuffed closets should apply to the product offering – when you add a new product you should expect to retire an old one or maybe two.

Frequently companies find themselves faced with the potential for an “easy” addition to the product line but have limited resources to handle the additional product marketing and market validation tasks.

If a quick business case shows that the product should be brought to market, smart companies bring in an interim marketing manager to handle the product marketing and go-to-market responsibilities so that the existing team can stay focused on generating revenue from the company’s primary products.

A good source of information about the use of interim executives in marketing and sales can be found at the One Riot – One Ranger blog, http://cbesondy.wordpress.com, or at http://www.leadership-on-demand.com.

-Charles Besondy, Principal
OneAccord LLC, Austin