Launching a New Business or Product

The standard of work was high, focused, exhaustive and thought-provoking, whilst the methodology was transparent and intuitive…a great outcome as well.

Launching a new business or product implies someone has a strategy: to serve new or existing customers in new of existing markets, in the same or different ways. Few companies are afforded the luxury of limitless resources or time to achieve the company’s growth and performance aspirations. Many are turning away from the traditional launch methodology of committing large scale resources to build what they believe is perfect, then committing more resources to market and sell before realising a repeatable, scalable and profitable model, is different. The new approach?

Crystallising customer dissatisfaction with the status quo – understanding the problem to be solved, its relative importance and the ways it could be solved by the company.

Defining the three most important hypothesises – how value is created and accessed, how customers’ discover, interact and engage, and the relationship between value, price and operating cost at a defined transaction volume.

Creating a Minimum viable solution – creating a version of the product or business model that tests the company’s key underpinning hypothesises with enough flexibility to change as the company discovers more.

Validating the customer – selling the product or business-model to early-adopters and making necessary adjustments to the value proposition, positioning, sales process, channel to market, etc. during the process of initial sales.

Creating customers – finalising the key messages, choosing the demand creation approach and finalising the launch plan.

Creating scale – transitioning from early-adopters to mainstream customers, creating realistic growth and performance aspirations, increasing investment in demand creation and service delivery in-line with a defined branded customer experience

Throughout the process the company should be prepared to abort, persevere with or change the solution and underpinning hypothesises that ultimately determine success. The chances of knowing and getting everything right before launch is slim. Few business plans survive first contact with the customer and so learning as much as possible by getting out the building and engaging with real customers, and continually testing and validating alternatives, is key to success, and how we help our clients.