Marketing of a New Product Lessons Learned - Project,Business,Management,Marketing,Accouting Network

Lessons Learned

Understand more about local markets and cultures. This should be started long before a new product is launched. An interesting thing to do is to describe how not to launch the product in terms of the culture. By explaining what not to do, you show people how important culture is and how different this culture is from the one that they are familiar with.

Set interim milestones and reviews after the new product is launched. Many new product launches run into problems because of the extensive dependencies among tasks across countries. You can literally become lost in the maze of details. There are multiple deadlines in each country, etc. That is why you have to take a relational view of the tasks and look at them from the standpoint of headquarters, local offices, the consumer, etc.

Ensure that in-country staff and managers are up on the project and part of the sales and marketing team. Many local people have said that they only hear about the product on the eve of the launch. Then any deficiencies and problems noted fall on deaf ears. It is too late.

Set up a management approach that provides flexibility in dealing with issues and opportunities that surface during the launch of the new product. This has been a constant theme in this book and is very applicable here.

Implement facilitation, lessons learned, and collaboration among different countries. You may have to do this differently in each country, but it will still result in the same thing. Management should set up a reward system to encourage this collection of knowledge.