Big Company Experience in a Small Company

05/12/08 21:26 Filed in: Corporate & Business Strategy

As small company’s grow and they look to fill out their executive staff, one of the common mistakes made by many of these organizations is they fall in love with a person’s resume and experience working in a large company.

Working in a large organization like IBM or Microsoft is not necessarily a training ground for working in a small company, nor does it mean instant success. (The common misconception is “Hey, look at their resume, they worked at Microsoft, certainly they can help us out with our little software application”.) We are here to tell you that when looking for an executive or upper management person in a smaller company, its OK to get someone with experience from those larger company’s, however, make sure that person also has experience within smaller company’s - close to your size - as well.

Individuals who come from larger corporations tend to be very process driven and have expectations about what others in the organization will do for them. Large company folks are used to having departments or groups within their company to give them market research or conduct customer polling, etc. What these individuals are not used to is rolling up their sleeves and having to do this work themselves.

We have seen this many times before - someone with a great resume who has spent significant time in a large organization, takes on a higher-level position in a smaller company only to get frustrated and leave within 12 months. Why? Because these are individuals who are not used to having to roll up their sleeves and actually do a lot of the work themselves, they are used to delegating or having someone else within their organization do a lot of the heavy lifting for them.

What a small company that is growing quickly needs, is someone who has worked in a smaller organization and knows what it is like to wear multiple hats and not worry about recognition for work done, etc. The type of person a smaller organization needs is someone who has walked in the footsteps of a smaller organization before and knows that the most important thing for a small company’s success is not to worry about putting processes in place, but getting work done. “Getting things done” is more important in a smaller organization that worrying about having the proper processes in place, etc. there is plenty of time as the organization grows to put the processes in place to make the company successful - initially, find someone who can roll up their sleeves and get work done for your company that will help your organization generate revenue.

Happy Selling...

Importance of a proper Product Launch

26/11/08 15:09 Filed in: Product Mktg/Launch Strategy

I have worked at 2 companies over the last 15 years that actually thought a product launch entailed putting together a press release and sending an email out to the company letting them know the product was available. One of the company’s was a startup, so I’ll let that one slide, but the other was a worldwide company with offices across the globe that had revenues in excess of $40M!!

As an organization grows and brings on Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers to manage individual product lines, the function of a product launch will be handled by these teams - typically a Product Marketing Manager. However, in smaller company’s that don’t have those resources available to them, it is critical for the organization to assign an owner within the organization to take responsibility for the launch of the product. (It doesn’t matter who that person is in a smaller company, it is more important you have the person assigned to the task)

As your company grows, you can put a formal process in place, but as a small company there are things you need to do in order to ensure a successful launch of your product:

Assign a Launch Team Leader
Create a launch team of at least 1 person from the major groups in the company.
Hold launch meetings - at least bi-weekly - but as you get closer to GA you should hold them weekly.
Create a task list of everything that needs to be completed for your launch. (Assign the tasks across the group to ensure you have “ownership” by the whole team) You don’t want 1 person owning all tasks.
Make sure you capture any and all tasks - successful launches depend on everything rolling out smoothly
Get status on all tasks during the launch team meetings

Product launches have often been described as shooting a “Bow and Arrow”. You pull the bow backwards as far as you can to gain momentum - putting together your launch team and task lists and getting everything ready. Then, you release the bow and the arrow flies out and (hopefully) on target - you hit GA with the maximumi efficiency and noise possible for your organization - and (hopefully) on target.

Putting together a launch team and process won’t by itself make your organization successful, that ultimately falls on how well you solve prospects problems in your market and how well you position and message your product. But putting together the launch team and process will allow your organization to maximize its efficiency when launching your products.

Have a Great Thanksgiving Day Weekend everyone!!!