Why Projects Fail and What You Can Do About It

I recently met with a young start-up company with a terrific idea and as I was listening to their story it reminded me that most companies have failed projects or at least late projects and usually don't know what has happened until it is too late.

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear a company has announced a product release date? How about when one of your competitors releases news that their sales numbers or revenues are off this quarter? If you’ve been around for a while, you might wonder when the real product release date is, and feel pretty confident, maybe even smug, that your own company is on target for its release date(s), sales numbers and revenues.

Or is it? How do you know? While no company gets products to market on time every time and has quarters where sales and revenue don’t meet targets, winning companies track these important project milestones, and continually try to answer the question “why?”:

• Why are we late to market?

• Why are sales not happening?

• Why are revenue projections not being met?

A variety of causes can create these business roadblocks to successful projects. Let’s take a look at some of the issues and questions that, if answered honestly, can help you make your programs be wildly successful.

Getting Products Developed and Launched on Time

Time-to-market is critical for most projects, and rarely will you find a business owner, product manager or product marketing manager that will say otherwise. So why are projects late, and what can you do to help bring them in on time? First, it is important to look at the big picture from an operational perspective.

Program Goals

• Have the goals, there are usually many, of the program been clearly defined and communicated to the team?
  
  
• What are the specific launch objectives? What is the timing?

Processes

• Have you outgrown your product development model?

• How effective are your development processes?

• Who manages your programs – program managers, product managers or engineering? How effective are they?

Once you have program goals and objectives and appropriate processes in place, you have three variables that can be adjusted in product development and launch - time, resources and functionality.

Time Issues

• Is your project scoped and clearly defined based on time to market?

• Can time be added to a program (usually not)?

Resources Issues

• Are appropriate stakeholders participating and adding value to the team?

• Do you have enough development resources?

• What benefit, if any, is gained by adding resources?

• Are marketing resources allocated for a successful product launch?

Functionality

• Are your features and benefits clearly defined?

• Have you prioritized your features by importance?

• Is there too much functionality relative to time and resources?

• If/when you have to cut features, do you know (based on market requirements) which features can go and what must stay?

Achieving Your Sales Numbers

Generally speaking, there is no single reason as to why sales numbers are not achieved. It is usually a combination of sales execution, product and/or company issues and lack of competitive intelligence, assuming that realistic yet aggressive sales numbers have been created based on current market conditions.

Sales execution

• How effective are your direct and indirect sales channels?

• Do you have partners that aren’t contributing?

• Are your direct sales teams focused on the right markets?

• Do you have a sales system that is used by the entire sales team?

• Is there a subsequent sales process that everyone follows?

Product/Company Issues

• Do you have the right product packaging, pricing, and service options available for prospects?

• Have you assessed your product mix and analyzed your product distribution strategy?

• Are the right products and services being sold by the right partners?

• How are your messages resonating?

• How high is the quality of leads generated by your marketing programs? Is your sales collateral useful in the selling process?

• Do you know why you win and lose deals? Do you analyze win/loss factors and evaluate and realign processes and potentially products?

• How are your manufacturing processes working?

Lack of competitive intelligence

• What is your competition saying about you?

• What competitive traps are you setting and what traps are your sales teams walking into?

• Has the competition positioned you as a follower?

Hitting Revenue Targets

Often sales and revenues goals are not achieved due to ineffective attitudes and behaviors exhibited by your sales team.

Outside of your sales team, there are other factors that may result in lost revenues: operational inefficiencies are one of the biggest culprits that can eat into your revenue stream. Review your internal processes – in EVERY organization – and measure your operational effectiveness. Things to look for include

• Quality issues (rework, waste, etc.)

• Inefficient use of resources

• Time – does it take too long to achieve the desired outcome? Why?

• Communications – how effective are your internal and external communications?

We will not go into other revenue impacting items such as travel, expenses, headcount, etc. We leave that for the CFOs.

So why is this really important? Let's face it, times are tough. Successful companies are positioning themselves NOW for the economic recovery. While we aren't expecting a rapid increase anytime soon, the bottom line is that new products and services will help increase your business. New products can get you into new markets or expand existing markets by offering new features and functionality. So take a look at your projects and make sure you set yourself up for success!

We’d love to hear your what you have done in order to make your projects successful. Leave us a comment.

Here’s How to Generate Buzz and Increase your Customer Acquisitions in Five Easy Steps

If you’re like most organizations, the sales team is on your back. Or you are part of the sales team. They—or you—need more customers. You feel like you are being stretched in 10 different directions. On top of everything, your budget just got slashed and your team is dwindling.

Here is a straight forward marketing methodology designed to increase customer acquisition quickly while minimizing the cost. The great thing about this system is that it is a system. It really isn’t voodoo rocket science but sometimes common sense approaches are overlooked in favor of the latest quick fix elixir. Don’t undervalue this system because I know it works.

Here’s the Five Step Process

1. Understanding Your Customer
In this all-important first step your goal is understanding. To persuade someone, to motivate someone, to sell someone something, you really need to understand that person and their point of view. You need to begin to understand the people you are trying to communicate with by creating a profile that will help you gain a “feeling” for them.

2. Defining the Offer
Now, you must communicate the features and benefits of your product or service to the customers. Most people overdo the feature part instead of emphasizing the benefits. Remember, people do not buy things for what they are; they buy things for what they do for them. How the offer is delivered is part of the system. A dedicated area on your website can be created to describe the offer. The offer can be a quick tour of your product/service, a web event or webinar, white paper, special pricing or information. These components are relatively inexpensive to produce and can be leveraged in a variety of ways.

3. Setting Up the Processes
This is the nuts and bolts phase of the system. When a prospect registers to attend an event or receive one of your offers, they are entered into the sales cycle. It is very important that a system be put in place to capture the prospect’s contact information and to understand their level of qualification and buying interest. The more information you can gather, the better targeted a marketer you can be. The system can be a complex database or a simple word document—most importantly it should be a system that works easily for you.

4. Go to Market Plan
Here is the heart and soul of the program. It is where the rubber meets the road. Once you understand your customer, have a good offer and processes in place, you must develop a plan. The plan includes the strategies and various tactics targeted to the appropriate audience. Among the most effective marketing tools available today are direct mail, email, newsletters, websites, blogs and message boards, collateral, user conferences, partnership marketing, and public relations. Don’t forget social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc. While there aren’t statistics yet on their “effectiveness” they are an important component of your marketing efforts. You must plan those tactics to work together as a campaign and then implement, implement, implement.

5. Measuring Marketing Results, Increasing Sales
Tracking your lead generation campaigns and seeing the results for yourself is the real power of this methodology. You’re building a bridge between your marketing campaigns and your sales efforts. You have a system set up with your processes, but the real trick is to analyze and measure the results to see what works and doesn’t work and then only repeat the successes.

Understanding Your Competitive Landscape

If you were a customer, would you choose your product over those offered by your competitors? Not sure how your products stack up against the others? Then you need a competitive landscape. Many companies think they know what their competition is up to, but they only take a close look once per year, or they only do serious research when they get into “feature wars” (what they have vs. what we have).

Understanding your competitors – which means any organization that offers the same, similar, or substitutable products or services in the business area you operate — is a fact of life. Successful companies conduct ongoing competitive research that shows them the big picture – why they win or lose deals, where the strengths and weaknesses are, where the next milestone on the roadmap is.

If you don’t have competitors, it is likely that you are in a radically new market (and competitors are likely to follow) or you are in a market so unattractive that nobody else wants to play.

However, if you are like most companies, you have some generalized awareness of who offers similar products. And that generalized awareness is not enough to leapfrog ahead into sustained growth.

What is a competitive landscape?
A competitive landscape (also known as “competitive intelligence”) provides cohesive, detailed information on what your competitors are doing including

• Who your real competitors are
• What their products are
• How your customers perceive the competition
• What your competitors’ business model is

You and your company need this vital information to plan and market profitable products that beat the competition. According to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Profession, a competitive landscape is a necessary business discipline for effective decision-making. The information enables management to make informed decisions about everything from marketing, R&D, and investing tactics to long-term business strategies. In short, a competitive landscape provides actionable intelligence that will provide a competitive edge.

Why do you need one?
Does a competitive landscape really make a difference? Yes! Studies show that companies that have active competitive intelligence programs generally outperform those that do not in sales, market share, and earnings per share. These studies suggest “there is a positive relationship between emphasis on competitive intelligence and successful financial performance.”

How do you create one?
First, get organized. In gathering competitive intelligence and creating your competitive landscape, you will gather a significant amount of information over time. You’ll need to create a file for each competitor, as being able to stay organized is critical.

Next, you need to know a variety of things about your competitors. At a minimum, you need to know

What makes your competitors the choice of some of your customers?

• Is it their overall perception of value for money?
• Quality?
• Price?
• The way they do business?

What, in the eyes of your customers, differentiates “them” from “you”?

What do their financials look like? How do your competitors make money and profits?

• Do they make their profits from having created better products and services?
• Have they established excellent financial deals with their suppliers?
• How much cash do they have?
• Can they react to impacts that you might make in the marketplace?
• If they are private, how much funding have they raised to date? When was it raised?

What are their future intentions? This is not an easy question to answer, but it should be one of the most important questions that you try to answer.

• In the next three years, which segments will your competitors be targeting?
• Could they be acquired or are they looking to acquire?
• What could they do in order to achieve growth?

Where do you get all this information?
Need information on a private company? Think you can’t get the information? Many think that because a company is privately held there is no information available. That is a myth. The information is out there, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Here are a few ideas for finding information – on both public and private companies – ethically:

1. Analyze competitors’ websites
2. Attend trade shows, exhibits and conferences
3. Talk to receptionists, salespeople and people in human resources in your competitors’ companies.
4. Check out local news outlets
5. Review 10-Ks, 10-Qs, annual reports and credit reports
6. Collect press releases
7. Read general business publications (Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Economist, etc.) and trade magazines
8. Listen and talk to industry analysts
9. Talk to vendors, partners and customers
10. Use on-line information service (e.g. Hoover’s Online, Dialog, and LexisNexis). This includes following blogs, message boards, Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, and other social media.
11. Buy your competitors products
12. Use third party services (e.g. BEK Enterprises)
    

How Much Should You Invest?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is an unsatisfying, “it depends.” The amount of time and money you need to spend in competitive research depends on your purpose.

If you are entering new markets, targeting new customers, looking to acquire or merge with another company, the time and effort is significantly greater than if you are creating a feature/benefit matrix. I often hear the cry, “it’s costs too much.” But the real question is: “Compared to what?”

If your competitors are consistently beating you, how much revenue have you lost? How expensive is it to send a sales rep to the client, and then lose the deal? How much have easily-avoided strategic and tactical mistakes cost your company over the past 12-24 months? If you could step around those mistakes and shut out your competition, what would that be worth?

Quality information is the basic component to making solid decisions, but it isn’t free. The public library is good, but it doesn’t cover all the bases, and even the best of business libraries have a limited amount of information. You need to plan to invest money and time to flesh out all the details in your landscape.

How long will it take?
Competitive analysis is an ongoing process – a discipline, if you will – rather than a once-a-year or ad hoc occurrence. Some companies have entire teams dedicated to the gathering of competitive intelligence.

However, if you don’t have the resources to dedicate to tracking your competition on a daily basis, don’t worry. Depending on your market, it is possible to successfully monitor your competition and use the information in decision making if you update your competitive information on a less frequent basis. Many companies do thorough updates on a monthly or quarterly basis.

The Bottom line
Acquiring competitive information is not easy, and turning raw data into a meaningful picture of your competition is an ongoing process. However, you can take solace in the fact that your competitors have the same challenges as you. If you have a better view of the competitive landscape, you can beat them at the game and see the difference that it makes on your bottom line!

The Philosophy of New Products

New products are the lifeblood of your company and one of the primary drivers of new growth. The decisions you make have profound impacts on the profitability of the company as well as potential impacts to your career. Given the current economy, many companies have stopped developing new products and/or services. Be aware, if you fit this profile. You want to make sure that when the recession starts to end you are prepared to catch the wave and grab the new business. If you don't have any new products and/or services you may miss out on a golden opportunity. The risk of failure of new products is quite high:

• Six out of seven ideas for new products never become commercial successes

• Three out of four prototyped new products never become commercial successes

• Two out of three launched new products never become a commercial success

However, new products that survive generally become very successful in generating high returns for your company. Companies that proactively embrace the philosophy of new products are often rewarded in turn: 15% of sales and 22-30% of profits come from new products. Definition of New Products Successful companies spend a considerable amount of resources defining, developing and launching new products. Generally speaking, the definition of a new product is:

• The product is part of a new product line versus an existing product line

• The product’s technology is new to the company versus using existing company technology

• The product is targeted at a new market versus an existing market

Targeting Markets for New Products 70% of new products are targeted at existing markets, as opposed to new markets. Existing markets have plenty of product choices, numerous competitors and knowledgeable customers. Many companies believe there is a lower risk entering an established market. This is not the case, as existing markets are extremely competitive. Most of the failures of new products can be directly attributed to a poor understanding of the marketplace. So what do you need to know in order to plan profitable products? Market Analysis

• What is the market opportunity?

• How is the market segmented?

• What are your target markets?

Product Strategy

• Does the product fit with the company objectives?

• What is the product roadmap?

• What are the customer requirements?

• What impact will the new product have on existing products?

Competitive Landscape

• Who are your real competitors and what are their products?

• What are the key differentiators?

Three Key Factors for New Products If you focus on market analysis, product strategy and competitive landscape you are well on your way to successfully introducing new products into the market and increasing your revenues and profits. Don't forget, your markets may well change as the business and economic climate continue to change.

Going International: What You Need to Know

Many small business owners are considering entering international markets to expand their business. Regardless of the economic climate, there are several things you need to know first.

Entering international markets is a logical growth step for many companies. Selling products beyond your borders, however, is not a trivial matter. Here are a few questions to make sure you ask before entering an international market.

1. Have you researched your new target markets to make sure that the product is really needed? Does your business plan show revenue growth and is the ROI higher than taking your product into additional vertical markets domestically?
   
   
2. What is the competition like in your new target markets? Competition outside of domestic markets can be vastly different.
   
   
3. How will you distribute your product?
   
   
4. Are there any laws and regulations that determine how the product is built, sold, or used?
   
   
5. Will an American English version of the product work or do you need to have a localized version of the product?
   

The quickest way to learn about your new target market(s) is to partner with a local distributor. A good distributor will be able to help you answer the questions above and will help you determine if there is a solid business opportunity. If there is a significant market the distributor can be your local operation for sales, marketing, installation, support and services.

The advantage to using a local distributor is that they will help you learn about business, cultural and language issues that you may not be aware of and may not be equipped to handle on your own. It is not uncommon for companies to start their international operations using distributors and then add their own direct operations over time.

Once you’ve decided that going global is right for your company be aware that the internal changes will be significant for your company. Here are a few challenging opportunities that will present themselves:

• Time differences – 5, 8, 10 … hour differences make scheduling meetings difficult.

• Communications: face-to-face communications will be rare given the cost of international travel, so most of your communications will be done via e-mail and conference calls. This can be a challenge especially when you are dealing with controversial issues.

• Marketing, sales and support will need to be visited to determine what services are needed and how they can be provided.

• Multiple product versions – For hardware products, in order to comply with laws and regulations it may be necessary to have international versions of certain components of your product. If you have a software product, it is recommended that you internationalize your product so that it can support multiple languages.

• Cultural differences: language differences and business styles may take some getting used to when dealing with other countries.

Going international is a great way to grow your company! Just make sure that you do the appropriate due diligence before entering new markets.

Customer Advisory Board

Regardless of the economic climate, it is always easier and cheaper to keep customers rather than go find new ones! If you are a “market-driven” company, then you will want regular feedback from your customers. One way to solicit input and have an on-going dialog from your customers is to have a Customer Advisory Board. A Customer Advisory Board is typically made up of “strategic” customers and/or partners and key members from your staff. You will want to have a set of customers that represents a broad segment of your market – different industries, segments/markets and user types. Establish a meeting on a regular basis (perhaps quarterly or twice a year – depending on your business). Ideally you want to be face-to-face. If that isn’t possible there are a number of technologies that you can use. Consider mixing it up –maybe face-to-face meetings twice a year and then video, conference calls, webinars, etc. for other dialogs.

Topics for your Customer Advisory Board can include product direction (new markets, products or features), getting feedback on marketing messages, documenting service/support requirements, or testing out new pricing and/or packaging ideas to name a few. Another key topic will be to continue to keep your pulse on your customers business and how the economic and political climate is impacting them. These can be some important early indicators for your business, especially to gage when they feel that they are heading out of the recession.

The Advisory Board will often have topics for you too! When I ran Customer Advisory Board’s, customers always came up with new ideas that hadn’t been thought of. The Customer Advisory Board is there to provide you with inputs, ideas and validation. Your customers will benefit as they often get to see/hear about what is coming next before everyone else and you are continuing to build a strong relationship with them by making them an integral part of your business. Make sure you have an agreed upon agenda prior to each meeting that states what you will cover and what you want to accomplish during the meeting so that everyone walks away with value. Your customer’s time is valuable (as is yours) so make sure there is something in it for them too (WIIFM – what’s in it for me).

When you are selling your product/service, you can tout that you value the inputs of your customers so much that you have a Customer Advisory Board to provide on-going feedback to the organization. Be prepared to be amazed at what you will learn from your customers, not to mention that they will be feeling your “love” knowing that you pay attention to them.