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How to Ensure A World-Class Company Launch

A new high-tech startup had just received VC funding, completed their product and wanted to launch their company. They needed to develop awareness about the new company and create professional and effective sales tools. Also, their newly acquired channel was not trained yet on the new products and the channel partners were widely varied in their ability to generate leads, indentify new business and close sales.

Approach Taken & Lessons Learned

  1. An internal positioning workshop was help to determine the best positioning and key messaging to use in launching the new company
  2. A PR program was put in place to create a monthly stream of customer win, new product and partnership stories
  3. Sales collateral was written and branded with heavy involvement from the sales force
  4. A channel offsite was held to train the channel and develop sales targets by region and by VAR
  5. To help the VARs with lead generation, off the shelf marketing programs were developed in the areas of email, road tours, vertical events and webinars
  6. Finally, to measure the success of the channel marketing programs, metrics were put in place, leads were tracked, sales were statistically sampled and estimates were calculated

Results

  • The company’s launch was done at a major tradeshow as was wildly successful
  • The press loved the message and strategy and responded favorably to releases
  • A new website was launched that was professional and well stocked with educational information
  • The channel marketing program adoption grew each month as the channel was interacted with and began to see results from educating their customers
  • Leads generated from the channel marketing programs were collected, distributed, tracked and reported upon.
  • Estimate of sales based on leads required targeted follow up with the channel and a strong working relationship (100% tracking was not possible but enough tracking was done to make statistical estimates)
  • The new company’s business grew 25% in 2008 in an economy where many companies were shrinking
  • It has more deals in the funnel in the first year than it could adequately respond to

Filed Under: Marketing Blog

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