In part one we defined the difference between the vision
(emotional) and roadmap (logical). In
part 2 we’ll discuss the connection between the two.
Marketing is tasked with creating a long term vision for the
product and/or for the company. This is
a valuable function of the marketing department. This vision is often referred to as the
10,000 foot view. In some cases,
marketing visionaries take this to 100,000 feet. Here, we refer to this as the “airplane”.
Down on the ground, sales people with quotas “sell what’s on
the truck”. For this discussion all
products will be referred to as “a box”.
The box is on the truck for the sales teams to sell today. Traditional, or tactical, marketing, engages
in activity (demand generation, collateral development, et al) to assist the
sales teams effort in selling “off the truck”.
Engineering develops the next products to put on the
truck. They base their development
roadmap on numerous factors such as customer demands, competitive pressures,
market windows and available technologies to name a few.
A major disconnect between marketing and sales, and
therefore engineering, is the lack of connection between the vision and the
roadmap; the airplane and the truck. The
consequence is all the effort to market the airplane does nothing for the sales
person on the street selling boxes off the truck.
The VISION
It’s important to push the envelope when developing your
vision. Remember a vision is emotional and emotions
are ethereal not concrete. As the
vision moves out in time it’s acceptable that it gets blurry or fuzzy in the
later years. A good metaphor is the hurricane
map.
Meteorologists know where the eye of the hurricane is at a
given moment. They have an idea of where
it will be at points in the future. The
further out in time the less certain they are where it will be. The same is true for your vision.
However, if the vision is too far-fetched or worse
technically infeasible, your credibility vanishes never to be recaptured. To
prevent against this we’ll use the word “plausible”. From Webster.com “plausible” means;
Definition of PLAUSIBLE: superficially fair, reasonable, or valuable but often specious <a plausible pretext>
To ensure the vision is plausible ask the engineers
if they could develop feature X if
they had the resources (time, money and people) and the prioritization to
develop it. Or, in other words, could it
be in a future release at some date in the future. If the honest answer is "yes" then it’s
plausible and belongs in the vision.
By ensuring plausibility and by including engineering in the
vision development you will have the credibility with the customer and the
collaboration and buy-in with the technical teams.
In keeping with my previous post of the global phenomena of
Attention Deficit Disorder, I’ll end this with some pointers of what to
consider when developing your vision..
1.
Focus on how your customer, and their customers, business and lives will benefit.
2.
Focus on how the world will look with the
benefits of your solution.
3.
Create a compelling view of the future
4.
Illustrate how well you understand their
business, their customers business and the concerns, challenges and issues of
both.
5.
Addresses CxO level care-abouts
6.
Ensure it’s in a time frame of interest and
reasonableness (3-5 years)
In Part III we’ll discuss the different buying decisions of
the vision and the roadmap and how to link them together to sell products today
and tomorrow.
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