Category Archives: Product Management

The Startup Product Manager’s Dilemma: Getting the Right Product by Ignoring Some of Your Customers

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By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

swiss army knife

Make sure that your product offering has all of the features that it needs to be successful but no more than that.

Figuring out what you first product or service is going to look like, how it will be priced and how you will sell it is at the top of the ‘to-do’ list for the Product Manager of a startup.  As an experienced startup product manager, you have been very careful to balance the enthusiastic advice and suggestions of the founding team with the wealth of feedback that you have gotten from potential customers in the field.  After getting all of this input, you will rarely have an obvious answer to the ‘What is it?, Who wants it? and How much would they be willing to pay for it?’ questions.

Don’t listen (only) to your Sales or Operations colleagues
Everyone on the team wants what is best for the company but you should be wary of your Sales and Operations team members.  From an operations stand point, the fewer the options the better for them.  They are looking to provide the best product at the lowest manufacturing cost with the highest quality.  Every different version of a product or additional set of features introduces complexity into meeting their goals.  On the other hand, your Sales team, as good representatives of your customers and their wants and needs, will want to have as many versions as possible so that they have the ‘perfect’ solution for every one of their customers.  Simply stated, you need to consider both viewpoints as you determine the final feature set or version options of your initial product offering.  The correct answer, of course, is somewhere between 1 and 100 versions or feature sets.

Determining the right number
You may not get this exactly right but you need to be close.  This is why you need to lean toward determining the smallest feature set of your offering that will be compelling to a large enough number of customers.  Another way of looking at this is that you need to determine what product your development team will most easily and quickly be able to produce that is commercially viable.  Running a well-managed alpha evaluation (see ‘Alpha Evaluations: Going from Great Science to Great Products’) will help you to know if you have got the right offering for your launch or if you will need to make changes.  Steve Blank defines this as the High-Fidelity Minimum Viable Product.

“Minimum Viable Product:  (The) simplest minimum viable product (i.e. a website with the core features implemented, a demo version of a physical product)…”   Steve Blank – The Startup Owner’s Manual

Why go small?
Until you have your first sales with paying customers (free or hugely discounted placements don’t count), you will not know if you have got the right product.  The best feedback that you will ever get is from paying customers.  If everybody tells you that you have a great product but nobody will actually buy it, you have the wrong product.  If only a few people will buy your product or after an initial burst of enthusiasm from ‘early adopters’ you find it difficult to grow your sales, you do not have the right product for the customers that you are targeting.  Going small at the beginning will allow you to get valuable feedback from paying customers as early as possible and limits the amount of effort and resources that could be wasted if your first product to market is not quite right.  This allows you and the team to make changes and/or additional features that will allow you to start winning the sales that your great product deserves.  By keeping the initial offering limited, you will still have the resources to make the changes you need to end up with a winning product.

Selected Tips for Getting the Right Product

  • When talking with potential customers, be sure to determine which of their suggestions for your product or service are ‘needs’ and which are ‘wants’.  Your first product should include the smallest configuration or feature set that will satisfy the majority of the consensus ‘needs’ you learned from this group.
  • Use the ‘wants’ and ‘nice to haves’ from your outside feedback to help you to develop a ‘Product Roadmap’ to guide you with future releases of your offering.
  • Make sure that the issue that your product or service aims to fix is compelling enough for people to want to ‘pay to have it go away’.  A product that is just more convenient may not be seen as worth the additional cost by your future customers.  Your discussions with them should focus as much or more on the problem you aim to fix as you do about your proposed ‘fix’.
  • Have an upgrade strategy worked out in advance of your first product launch.  You need to make sure that your earliest customers will have access to the latest versions of your offering that still makes sense for your Revenue Model.  This will help you to deal with any push back from your first customers who may wish to see your product proven by others first.  Being able to offer the chance to be the first one on the block with a viable path for access to future upgrades and releases will significantly help you to deal with this sales issue.

Highly Suggested Reading:

‘The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company’, By Steve Blank and Bob Dorf, K&S Ranch Publishing Division, 2012.

Picture Credit:  © IbanMontero | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

The Life Science Innovators Dilemma: Converting Skeptics to Evangelists

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By: Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Model holding a light bulb

Investing in the tools and resources that will be required for an effective missionary selling campaign will help your customers see the light!

Having a truly innovative, disruptive technology or service is both a blessing and a burden.  A blessing in that you can ‘own the market’ for a period of time if you successfully launch and grow your business.   (This is the good side of being first to market).  The burden is that achieving a successful launch and growing sales effort will often face entrenched skeptical attitudes and outright hostility from the very people you hope to reach with your new offering (The downside of being first to market).

Why does customer resistance exist with innovative and disruptive offerings?
If you have a truly new offering, much of the resistance can come from a lack of understanding of the positive impact that your products and services will have for them. Some may even feel threatened by the new offering if it would seem to decrease their own power or influence particularly when it allows lower skilled workers to produce equivalent or better results once restricted to this individual by their having a ‘hard won’ skill or talent.  This means that your company will need to expend some time and resources to develop an education component to its Sales & Marketing efforts.  This will help transform skeptical leads into satisfied customers.  This is often referred to as missionary selling (and marketing).

“A missionary type of sales job involves convincing someone who has never used a product to buy it. Selling financial planning or life insurance and other financial products typifies the missionary sales job. The metaphor of a missionary involves educating someone about an idea or concept and convincing them to have faith in that concept.” (Answers.com)

What’s an innovator to do?
The rewards of being first to market with a disruptive technology can be significant in financial terms to say the least.  Being aware of some of the resistance that you might face even early in the game will allow you to craft a launch and Sales & Marketing strategy that will be able to handle the additional education burdens that this opportunity presents.  Eventually the burdens of missionary selling will decrease as your customer base grows and evangelizes your innovation.

Tips for Successful Commercialization of Disruptive Life Science Offerings:

  • Use beta evaluation to refine customer segmentation and value proposition. This is where you will learn who you will initially target and get a heads up on what will be the most compelling value proposition for them. (See ‘Beta Testing Checklist Your Competition Doesn’t Want You to Have’)
  • Prepare a Scientific Road Show to connect with scientists through their research.  You have some great science.  Why not leverage that to connect with other scientists through their research.  The questions and conversations that will come from this effort are invaluable for tweaking your ‘go to market’ strategy (See ‘Taking Your Show on the Road: Using Your Science to Boost Sales’)
  • Create demos that highlight impact rather than features.  Nothing is more powerful than a compelling demo to confront skepticism. (See ‘The Technical Demonstration: 3 Tips to Insure Success’)
  • Use a Key Opinion Leader (KOL) plan to help smooth your launch.  Key Opinion Leaders can be a strong force for reinforcing the value of your innovation to the field.  (See ‘The Key to Key Opinion Leaders’)
  • Invest time and resources to creating scientific content that will be compelling to your future customers.  Consider starting an application focused blog, write white papers and present at industry conferences in the scientific forums. (See ‘Where Does the Science Belong in the Life Science Startup?’)

Picture Credit:  © Grafvision | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Where Does the Science Belong in the Life Science Startup?

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Old microscope

Give your customers a chance to ask you about your science.

By: Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

One of the best things you can do for your new Life Science Company is to engage with potential customers through your innovative new technology.  However, there is a time and place for this.  The following simple Do’s and Don’ts will help you to get right what most companies (even some of the big ones) get wrong.

Although science is at the heart of your company, it is the products that you have created that are based on this science that are most meaningful to your customers.  Think of it this way, you likely selected your cell phone or car based on what these things can do for you and how they impact your life.  This is the same thing that happens when a Life Scientist is looking to purchase new products that will help their research program.

This means that it is vitally important to clearly communicate how your product (not your science) will impact a customer.  Once a potential customer is intrigued by your product, some of them (not all) will further be interested in your science and/or technology (often to validate the claims you made earlier).

Do:

Blog:
Start a blog (linked or part of your website) where you discuss your science.  Don’t make this an ad but share applications and ask happy customers to guest blog for you to connect with others in your field.  In time, this can help you and your company become considered subject matter experts which will ultimately drive new prospects to contact you.

Write White Papers
Pick key applications using your product and share them as white papers.  These should be accessible from your website.  Consider posting downloadable versions in a PDF format for convenience.

Produce YouTube video:
Creating quick 2 – 3 minute how-to videos and/or application notes in video format is a good way to take advantage of this medium.  When people are searching for solutions on the web, having some videos can help improve your rankings and your chances of showing up high on the first page of the search results.

Create Tradeshow Booth Graphics:
Have compelling graphics that catch the eye and perhaps some copy that emphasizes the impact of your product (e.g. allows you to measure something new for the first time, is higher throughput than the competition, produces data with tighter CV’s etc.)  You will have plenty of time to discuss science should visitors wish.

Don’t

Explain your science or technology on your Website homepage:
This is where you clearly indicate what you are offering.  This is what you offer not who you are.  (A quick survey by the author of over 500 Life Science company websites showed that nearly 80% of them got this wrong)

Load Brochures and other Sales Collateral with lots of content about the science:
Make sure that the number one message here is how your product will positively impact your customer.  On longer format pieces like tri-fold brochures, a brief very high level summary of the technology behind the product can be appropriate but his should clearly take second place to helping prospective customers see how your product or service will affect their research program.

In Summary:

  • Put the impact of your product on your customer’s research first in your marketing communications
  • Back up your claims with the science in a succinct  way
  • Create a separate page on your website where all of the detailed description and other resource material can be easily found

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Customer Engagement: A Startup Secret Weapon

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man with coffee, customer engagement

Never underestimate the power of sharing a cup of coffee!

By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Why now
Although this may seem counterintuitive, it is vital to begin customer engagement activities long before you have a product to sell to them.  This is especially true when you have an innovative new concept and will potentially be first to market.  Failure to engage with your customers early will more often than not lead to, at best, wasting a lot of time and effort working on features that are unimportant to your customers and at worst, launching the wrong product.

The value of a good relationship with your future customers
Customer engagement is not marketing.  It is any activity that fosters two-way communication with your customers.  This is where you will find out exactly what features of your product will be most important and also who most values them (customer segmentation).   The reason that it is critical to begin doing this early is that the insights you gain from your future customers will allow you to more accurately determine the critical product specifications that will delight your customers when you launch.

Some Customer Engagement Tactics:

    • Face-to-face meetings
      This is the best way to confirm that your product and its feature set is right for your customer.  You get the most information this way and non-verbal reactions to your product or feature set proposals are worth the time and effort that this method requires
    • Phone feedback
      Follow-up phone conversations with customers that you have already met face-to-face.  This can be a good way to validate any changes to your product concept that you made based on the feedback you received from your prior prototype
  • Social media
    Start and maintain a blog to get additional and ongoing feedback.  (Be sure that you allow commenting and respond to those comments – remember this is a conversation).

    Share your concepts on a short YouTube video (2 – 3 minutes max.) and end with a question, your website and e-mail contact info.

    Consider setting up a Facebook page for the business and initially use it to drive traffic to your website and blog.

    Use Twitter to stay ‘in-the- know’ of late breaking changes in your industry by following Key Opinion Leaders.  Don’t just lurk, ask questions.

    Use LinkedIn to find new people to connect with that could become customers for you.  Once you think you know who your customer is, use LinkedIn to help you connect with them and then schedule a time for a face-to-face or phone conversation.

Get started now
Ideally, you will begin engaging with your customers prior to any alpha testing.  Start now because the earlier you start the better you will limit the costs and delays of rework.    The company leadership should be conducting these and ideally the Founder/President is part of this effort as well.

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Beta Testing Checklist Your Competition Doesn’t Want You to Have

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Laboratory glassware, symbolic graphic for beta testing

Beta testing insights will smooth product launches

By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Beta testing done right can significantly improve the chances that your product launch will be a success.  When done wrong, this can be a terrible waste of time.  With this in mind the following checklist should keep your team on track for a successful launch.

        1. Select a technically savvy Product Manager or BD guy to lead the Beta Testing, not someone from the R&D team.
           The purpose of the beta is to confirm that you have created the best product to meet the needs of the customers you plan to target.  The intent here is not to modify the product, but to adjust the type of customer that you will target at the product launch. Technical feedback will be shared with the R&D team but this should be viewed as a commercialization effort.
        2. Identify a number of prospective Beta Evaluators that closely match the demographics of the customers you hope to win.
          You want to select those evaluators you believe will typify the customers that will purchase your product.  Keep the number as small as possible but large enough so that you get at least one or two evaluators who do not like your product (it is just a vital to know who your customer isn’t as who they are).
        3. Prepare Launch focused survey instrument.
          It is important to find out what each tester likes about your product as well as what they don’t.  This should not be a complicated or long survey but it should probe deep enough to give you insight on how to modify your positioning, marketing, technical support and their view of the competition.  This can be completed informally in a discussion or by asking to have the evaluator fill this out directly.
        4. Contact prospective beta evaluators and get commitments from them on what you expect them to do for you including timelines.
          Select the fewest number of beta testers that will give you the information that you need to insure a strong launch.  Managing this effort can be very labor intensive and can include travel and other expenses.  Keeping the number smaller will allow for a more manageable effort.
        5. Collect feedback testimonials to support your launch.
          Online surveys are OK.  However, the best way to do this is by meeting with the beta tester face to face.  You will get much more information and it is easier to get a testimonial or two from happy testers when you are meeting with them.
        6. Convert as many beta testers to paying customers as possible.
          One of the best measures of a successful beta evaluation is when the tester wants to continue using your product and is willing to pay for it.  It is easy to tell someone that they have a great product but there is no better validation than someone that is willing to back that up by purchasing your product.  Offer to sell them a unit at cost (if an instrument or piece of software) or at a deep discount on their first order if this is a consumable.

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5 Easy Steps to Effective Brainstorming

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By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Brainstorming is a little like crowdsourcing today, getting as many opinions and inputs from a group of people to solve an issue. When done poorly this turns into a creative waste if time.  But if done correctly, this can be a transformative force for change resulting in not only new ideas but actionable steps toward achieving your goal.

Step 1:
Create and send an agenda that clearly states what you expect to achieve and how the meeting will be conducted to participants.  The following is an example of what you should include:

Example Agenda for First Meeting:

  • This meeting will be to discuss how we will … (e.g. boost sales by 20%, solve technical problem A, identify the next killer application, etc.)
  • Introduction of issue – 5 min (You)
  • Brainstorming session – 40 min (All)
  • Identifying next steps and meeting wrap up – 15 min (You)

Note:  By sending out the goal of the brainstorming session prior to the meeting, the participants will have a chance to think about this on their own prior to the meeting which improves the quality of the ideas.

Step 2:
Start the meeting by writing the identified goal on a large piece of paper or in the center of a large whiteboard or PowerPoint slide and circle it. Be sure to let everyone know that the meeting minutes will be used to begin formulating an action plan and to set priorities for any follow-up brainstorming meetings (there should be at least one more) and that the final fifteen minutes of the meeting will be used to identify actions to be taken.

Step 3:
Lead the brainstorming session by asking for major areas that need to be considered. Write these topics around the central circled goal and circle them as well.  Then ask for what should be done at each of these focus areas by asking for 3 or more and for each of the sub-categories.  This should be linked to each of the subcategories.

Note:  Make sure that you ask someone else to take minutes for the meeting including the names of all attendees.  The meeting leader should be moderating the session, updating the figure on the board/screen and keeping the team on track and on time.

Network diagram after first brainstorming meeting showing concept relationships

Sample brainstorm meeting graphic after first meeting. Identified goal in center white circle, first level major areas in blue and second level details in yellow.

Step 4:
Take a picture of the diagrammed feedback from the brainstorming session and send this along with the meeting minutes to all participants.  Ask each of them to select the top 3 subcategories that they think would have the best chance of achieving the circled goal in the center of the figure.

Note:  This is a critical step since not everyone is comfortable speaking out in a group setting and this will allow you to get unbiased feedback from the quieter participants.

Step 5:
Take the top two or three highest priority sub-categories to use for a follow-up meeting to build the plan.  This meeting should only include those team members that will be important to completing the goals of each of the sub-categories identified from the first meeting.
This meeting will start with a slide with a subcategory on the top of each.  Under that will be each of the 3 or more actions that the team identified from the last meeting.

Example Agenda for Second Meeting:

  • This meeting will be to identify everything that needs to be done to achieve the goals in the subcategories we identified at our last meeting. – 5 min (You)
  • Cycle through each of the actions for categories and identify all tasks and actions that will need to be done to insure success. – 40 -45 min. (All)

Use the feedback from the second meeting to create a plan to solve the original problem.  Creating an actionable plan will insure that you and the team will get the most out of this exercise.

This method will allow a team leader to garner the best thinking from their team on a given issue while keeping this from devolving into a useless diversion.  By keeping the agendas clear and with the group and individual inputs to this exercise in place, you will be able to get better, more thorough input and ideas for moving things along.  By breaking this process into two meetings, you will get the widest number of opinions at the first one and end up with a focused and prioritized plan of action from the second one.

Network diagram showing connections between topic, tactics and tasks

Sample brainstorm meeting graphic after second meeting. Feedback from the first meeting indicated that Tech Support was the highest priority and this branch was selected for the second meeting. Identified goal in center white circle, first level major areas in blue and second level details in yellow. Actions needed to achieve the second level details (yellow) are shown in red.

Taking This to the Next Level
There are professional software tools to facilitate brainstorming. (Brainstorming Software Review) These tools make the visual diagramming process fast and easy  and often allow direct conversion of the ‘mind map’ to lists in Excel, Gantt charts and meeting notes.

Picture Credits: © Andrew Johnson | UpStart Life Sciences

Second to None Customer Experience: Beating the Goliaths

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smile face on colored ping-pong balls

Great customer relationships = Powerful competitive advantages

By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

The quality of the interaction your customers (both current and future) have with you in the early days of your company can be a powerful differentiator in the long term.  In fact, establishing a high level of customer care is something that startup companies with small customer bases have a decided advantage over larger competitors.  When you have only a few customers, you are able to actually speak with them on the phone to ease purchasing or handle technical issues.  Doing this in the early days can help to create a group of evangelists for your product(s) that will generate the kind of positive publicity that will help you win new customers and successfully compete.

Hold onto this advantage by growing with your customers
All of this may seem pretty self-evident.  However the key here is to make sure that your customer care efforts are scalable.  In the beginning, you may be able to plan visits, schedule direct meetings with your lead R&D team members and other activities that will delight your first customers.  However, these types of interactions are costly (with regard to time, effort and money) and are likely not sustainable as your customer base grows.

Maximizing your customer relations efforts
Use your early effort-intensive efforts to learn what particular customer relations efforts are most valued by your customers and begin to plan scalable, sustainable and cost effective alternative that can grow along with your increasing customer base.  Doing this early, will allow you to plan for the budgets, human resources and other efforts that will be required to maintain this.

The following list of Customer Relations Tactics is intended to kick-off the thinking that will lead to a winning strategy.

  • Smooth purchasing process
    • Small Customer Base: Every order handled in-person or by phone
    • Larger Customer Base: E-commerce, ‘Click here for quote’ button on online store, hire inside sales dedicated personnel
  • Caring technical support
    • Small Customer Base: Every issue handled in-person or by phone
    • Larger Customer Base: FAQ’s on website, ‘How-to’ videos, hire dedicated tech support personnel
  • Easily contactable
    • Small Customer Base: Encourage customers to call you with any issue anytime
    • Larger Customer Base: Encourage customers to contact via email, hire dedicated tech support and/or inside sales personnel to handle calls
  • Insuring customer satisfaction
    • Small Customer Base: Check in with all customers by phone or in-person
    • Larger Customer Base: Check in with a customers by e-mail (automatically set up at the time of sale), periodically send out satisfaction surveys, randomly select a subset of customers for calls by dedicated inside sales personnel.

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