Product language is what we have traditionally used to describe our products to the market. It includes broad claims, comprehensive features and benefits and detailed product and technical specifications. In the marketing departments of larger corporations, this information is often organized into what’s termed a “marketing source document”.  The language used is, more often than not, vendor-centric – not buyer-centric.

Unfortunately, too much corporate product language today is also often full of marketing “gobbledygook”, techno-speak and other undecipherable terminology that only the company creating it can make any sense of.

Most potential buyers are immediately confused and turned off when they see and hear product language, quickly figuring out that this must not be what they are looking for (incidentally, this is one of the common causes of friction and the walls of separation between sales and marketing teams in larger corporations).

Finally, product language is often selfish and egotistical. It extols the greatness of its creators. It brags. It exaggerates.

And when customers encounter this kind of marketing language, it instantly creates disbelief, mistrust and sales resistance – making it even harder to make a sale.  If you’re selling online, this can quickly be the kiss of death, as customers who don’t believe you definitely will not buy from you.

Buyer language describes what a buyer wants and desires to get done in their business or personal life.  It has to do with the outcome and results the buyer wants to achieve.  It acknowledges the pain points, sticking points, negative outcomes, barriers and constraints the buyer faces in getting that job done to their satisfaction. It shows how these issues can be resolved – by use of the product in the buyer’s immediate, relevant context.

When using buyer language, we focus on just those product claims, features and benefits which are relevant to addressing this buyer’s problems and preferences.  This language mirrors the problem the buyer already has and recognizes.

Buyer language “resonates”. It matches what the buyer wants and is easy to understand. And unlike product language, it doesn’t require the buyer to go through a series of complex mental gymnastics to figure out whether the product might be capable of performing the job at hand.  Buyer language makes it obvious.

So rather than attempting to communicate in a broad, horizontal manner across every potential market segment using generic product language, try appealing directly to large groups of similar buyers using targeted buyer language – their language.

Launching and selling products in this way can be accomplished in a focused manner, per buyer segment (leaving the horizontal market for later or just continuing to penetrate the most important buyer segments in priority order).

Whether you’re a new company, entrepreneur or small business, this approach may be the only thing that works for you at all, since you must narrow your focus to become competitive and win.

If you are a larger company, I still recommend the buyer-centric strategy for introducing most new products – unless the new product is an exact fit for your existing customers and routes to market, or you’re planning to invest millions of dollars on a broad market assault (e.g., the Apple iPhone launch).

By the way, one of the biggest mistakes made by large enterprises is attempting to enter a new market or reach a new buyer using the existing sales force and channels.  I could probably write an entire book on this topic, as it’s such a common pitfall and the cause for so many new product failures.  Your existing sales people don’t know the new buyer or their language, which makes it tough to have a productive conversation (vs. what the customer hears from tuned in competitors).

I remember one company tried to use a mainframe software sales force to sell a new product line to database administrators.  Mainframe terminology is completely different (and ancient sounding) than database terminology.  It failed miserably. The company invested hundreds of millions into product development, but refused to invest in a dedicated, focused salesforce who could successfully speak the DBA’s specialized language.

The products were blamed by the mainframe sales people, since they didn’t sell well. The products were eventually put on the back burner and many of them discontinued.  Don’t make this colossal blunder at your company.  Make sure both marketing and sales (and development) understand the buyer’s language and use it appropriately.

For now, suffice it to say that launching and selling new products that appeal to a different buyer than you’re sales team currently knows and sells to usually requires a different sales strategy (e.g., an overlay sales force, sales specialists or investing in an entirely new sales team).  Buyer language is one of the key reasons a focused sales team is required.

In larger corporate environments, we need to start smaller, ensure success in targeted segments and then allow organic growth, learning and expansion to take place more naturally (vs. trying to force the new product broadly across too many segments at once).  This enables adapting to the new market segments, buyer language and new competitive environment.

Focusing on targeted buyer conversations is a much easier way to achieve early success than the usual, more watered down broad market assault that management believes will net the best results the fastest.  Using buyer language makes it easier for people to quickly realize they want the product, reducing the effort and time required to sell the product.

And products that are easier to sell get sold, because resellers and sales needs to make more sales to eat and make ends meet, so they sell what’s easiest and most natural for them. So think carefully about buyer personas, the buyer’s language, your marketing messaging and positioning and sales strategy before jumping into new markets.

You must decide whether a buyer-focused, niche-based approach is best for you vs. a more horizontal, broad market assault and optimize your launch appropriately.  Whatever way you decide to go, learn how to speak using your buyer’s language and you’ll make a lot more sales.

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This is my first post in quite some time, on the eve of Windows 7 making its official debut.  Is there a Windows 7 launch happening?  It’s kinda hard to tell sometimes…

Anyway, we’ve been heads down working on a number of innovative new products that will begin to hit the street over the coming weeks and months.  As you may have noticed from other product launch posts this year, I’ve been involved in a number a product launch-related projects.

If you’ve been involved in product launches that go well, generate lots of early adoption and revenue, and that lead to successful ongoing product growth after the launch, you probably realize just how much work goes into proper:

• Launch planning, scheduling, funding and resourcing
• Preparation of launch materials of all kinds
• Education – both internally and externally
• Field-readiness and training
• Market validation of the product, pricing, positioning (basically, the 5 P’s of Marketing)
• Briefings of analysts, press, strategic partners and customers
• Marketing collateral development
• Pre-launch campaigns that create awareness and build buzz and excitement about what’s coming
• Ramping up of channel partners, affiliates, website sales processes and sales teams
• Actually getting the product ready for delivery to the market with proper support

It’s no wonder so many companies fall short with their product launches.  It’s a LOT of work and it’s incredibly time-consuming.  Most small businesses don’t have the funding, manpower or even the skills to pull off a major launch.  Many large corporations could muster it up, yet often fail to do so.

One of the biggest reasons new product launches aren’t fully-funded and resourced is it’s simply too expensive and too time-consuming.  And product marketers are often understaffed and underfunded (in larger corporations), and small to medium business suffer from the same lack of resources.

Instead, most of the typical project’s funding goes toward product development, with little left over for the launch.  And marketing often sees a tiny fraction of the funding needed for product marketing, so everyone does the best they can in the limited time available, then it’s on to the next product and next launch.

Sound familiar?  It’s something I’ve seen repeated so many times I’ve lost count.  Yet so much is invested in a product’s development – often many millions to tens of millions in R&D, with so little allocated to actually taking that product to market properly.

Well, I wish I could say that I’ve solved all those problems, but I haven’t.  The funding allocation and resource limitations are probably here to stay; however, product marketers and business owners need and deserve to be able to do their jobs well, support their product teams with respectable launches and to be more productive.  I mean, everyone else seems to have software productivity tools, right?

In a nutshell, it became clear a few years back that this gap represented an opportunity to step up and help out by automating many of the product marketer’s tasks.

WinningWare is preparing to unveil a product line in a new category we’ll be calling “Product Launch Power Tools™”.  These launch power tools will do for product launches what the hand-held power drill has done to old-fashioned screwdrivers – automate and expedite a common, important job at hand – making it far easier, faster and more convenient to get the job done right in record time, and without the hassles and soreness that used to occur.

The product line of launch power tools will be dubbed “WinningWare QuickLaunch™”. The first product is WinningWare QuickLaunch Generator™, the world’s first product launch automation power tool.

WinningWare QuickLaunch Generator does pretty much what the name implies – it enables a marketer to quickly generate just about everything needed to launch a product properly – and to do so in record time, with very little effort.  The product is a Web-based software service (SaaS), accessible from any Web browser securely over the Internet.

Here’s a screenshot of the Launch Control Center™ that’s nearing development completion, where all the generated marketing collaterals are accessed, along with overall status of each phase of the launch project:

The product walks a marketer through a series of wizard question/answer panels, where information about the product launch is gathered, including product information, launch goals and objectives, audience targets, marketing messaging and offers.  The wizard is a simple, step-by-step process that typically takes no more than 30 to 45 minutes to use the first time through (and much less after that).

Then after completing the wizard steps, as the name implies, the software automatically “generates” what’s needed for the product launch project, including:

• Launch Plans
• Launch Schedule
• Launch Strategy and How-To Guide
• Launch Playbook™, a step-by-step instruction guide
• Launch Email Sequence with draft email content
• Launch Blog Sequence with draft blog content for blogs, Facebook and Twitter
• Landing Page for launch subscriber opt-in list creation
• Launch Checklists
• PR Guide and Press Release drafts
• Marketing Source Document
• Product Data Sheet draft

The entire process start to finish typically takes less than an hour the first time – from the time a new customer actually signs up for the service until all of the above launch-related materials are in the customer’s hands.

And anytime something changes (like the product name , messaging, positioning or other aspects of the product or plan during the launch process), it’s a simple matter of updating the project parameters in WinningWare QuickLaunch, and moments later, presto – all the launch materials are automatically re-generated and up-to-date once again.

Clearly this solution doesn’t address every launch-related challenge that product marketers and small business owners face during a launch; however, it automates many of the most tedious and time-consuming tasks facing every launch manager and marketer involved in a product launch; e.g., planning and plan development, launch project scheduling, gaining internal buy-in for the proposed launch plan, schedule, communicating the plan internally and externally, and creating all the launch collaterals listed above.

Of course, there’s still plenty more left for the marketer to do… like having more time to do blogging, meet with partners, affiliates and customers… developing top-quality landing page and HTML email templates to put the final launch emails in, queuing up those emails for release in the auto-responder, and actually managing the launch project. And did I mention, more time to play golf?

Anyway, we’ll be releasing a WinningWare QuickLaunch Generator “spy video” soon, so you can see it in action first hand.  The product is nearing the end of its initial development cycle, so a lot more information will begin to flow as we head into the Holidays.

So, if you’re interested in automating your next product launch, stay tuned.  There’s a lot more good news coming soon on the product launch front.

Meanwhile, best of luck with your Windows 7 upgrades

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