The 4 Pillars of Launching

The successes I have had with clients can be attributed to connecting the internal operations within a business to their customer's desired end goal. Conversely, my failures stem from only focusing on one or two parts of the process, leaving out other vital components that ultimately caused it all to collapse.

Any gains I have made with clients in recent years are a result of forming connections between what happens within a business and customers' desired results. My unsuccessful attempts to do this, however, stemmed from my tendency to focus on just one or two aspects while ignoring other vital components--ultimately resulting in failure.

I have had considerable success in recent years by leveraging the connections between an organisation's internal processes and the customer experience.?

After years of working with every kind of business, I've distilled this launching strategy into four essential elements that I refer to as the "4 Pillars of Launching".?

I'd like to share a part of the framework I've developed to help small to medium businesses in the early stages of development (i.e. pre-Series C, or expanding to new markets).

My hope it will help businesses under pressure to cut costs and reduce the drag in sales operations. It may also clear the way for those businesses who accelerate into the future, despite the challenging economic circumstances today.

For some background, here's what I've noticed in scaling companies entering new markets:

1. 90% of your issues are system-related. Not people. You'll need a new system that examines the causes why people act the way they do. It's difficult for people to work under a bad system. Your system will determine what kind of company you become.
2. In any dumb system, if you put in the wrong inputs, you'll get the wrong outputs. If you want to grow beyond €3 million to €10 million, you are going to need inputs that stand the test of time and the volatility of the market. Inputs are things like the conversations you have with customers, what salespeople are telling you. What people click on your site. Start with the bottlenecks. What's stopping your customer from making progress? Growth begins by taking your foot off the brakes and getting out of your own way.
3. The average CEO spends over 60% of their time in meetings and in reactive mode putting out fires, and only 3% with customers. Spend a concentrated few hours with a qualified professional who understands both sides and can present an outside perspective. Marketing for the beginning of your business is different from the middle phase - and the only way out and through the growth barrier is innovation.
4. Work smart. Pinpoint the bottlenecks, and create just one really good funnel, start to finish, that closes deals from digital channels. Then you can rapidly create a plan of action for you and your team that will scale over the coming months.

The 4 Pillars of Launching

The 4 Pillars of Launching offer a unique approach to acquiring more customers with digital technology. These pillars, Messaging, Data, Process and People provide your business the opportunity to grow without having the most capital.?

This framework allows you to trim the fat in your business and direct everyone to achieve one or two clearly expressed goals - usually sales.

Marketing becomes a function of the rest of the business, intrinsically connected to sales and revenue.

Sales becomes everyone's job.

Our clients are already seeing remarkable returns by concentrating their efforts on these core areas. This approach works. Not only does it generate more sales, it also helps you accelerate towards profitable marketing ROI.

Years ago, when I started working as a consultant with innovative businesses, I was overwhelmed by the amount of work it took to get everything up and running. It was like trying to build a house without having the right tools, or not knowing what kind of shape it should take when you're finished.

I eventually figured out how to launch without doing 'all the THINGS' - by focusing on four essential elements: messaging, data, process, and people.

Pillar 1: Messaging

Let's talk about messaging first. In order to launch your product, service or venture successfully, you need to get your message out there in a way that resonates with your target audience. You want to make sure it's clear and concise, and speaks directly to the problem or pain point that you're trying to solve.

Many assume Marketing should lead on messaging, but without involving sales and the rest of the business, it becomes impossible to tie marketing/sales together with steel thread for attributable, predictable revenue increases.

The messaging you choose should focus on one thing initially: from the customer's perspective, what are they hiring you or your product to help them do? What is their context, and why would they switch from the way they do things today to working with you or your product?

What is their struggling moment?

A lot of marketing focuses on features and benefits, and leaves it up to the customer to figure out how those features and benefits will help their uniquely challenging struggle.

People are idiosyncratic. Marketing should also be idiosyncratic. Speaking to the struggling moment in your Messaging is cheaper, more effective and more helpful.

Pillar 2: Data

Next is data. Every successful launch needs to have the right data in order to understand who your target market is, what channels they use and how they engage with your product or service. This helps make sure that you're targeting the right people at the right time with the right message.

Investing in new technology (like HubSpot) to tie your customer experience together is essential for a growing business, but it's not necessary to do everything all at once. I worked for a data analytics company once who had a major UK based airline as a client. They'd spend 5 years (!) tying their data systems together in order to completely track customer experience across every channel. With no output. For all I know, they're still working on it.

Simply focusing on the essential data elements you need to track and measure to provide one complete Customer Journey is sufficient. If any of the 4 pillars are missing, the customer will fall between the cracks and all your work will be for nothing. Build a bridge between messaging, data, process and people so nobody gets lost.

Pillar 3: Process

Process comes third. You need to have a process in place that supports your launch, from start to finish. From creating content and leveraging your network, to managing customer sales operations and tracking the effectiveness of each step - you need an organised plan of attack so that everything is taken care of with precision.

Reaching operational excellence and an ability to report on end-to-end customer experience should be the goal. But this can take years to get right.

Sales organisations need to sell, so naturally processes take a back seat to direct customer interactions.

The trade-off here is about choosing the right processes to prioritise, and making sure they're connected with a steel thread through your business.

Pillar 4: People

Finally, people. Launching can be a daunting task, but having the right team behind you is essential. You need to have people who know how to navigate the process and make sure everything runs smoothly. It's also important that your team is driven, passionate and committed to your mission.

Most B2B campaigns begin by looking at people through the lens of Personas and Ideal Customer Profiles. You might start your launch with a Persona, Ideal Customer Profile and your Market, plus a competitive analysis.

Beginning with promotional campaign launches to these Personas and ICPs is expensive, doesn't necessarily create customers (if it does, it is random and hard to track), and 80% of campaigns like this fail, and for SMBs and Startups there is an even smaller success rate.?

The reason for this is that markets change, and personas change, as you find your market and expand. If you have embedded your personas before becoming a fully mature sales organisation, the backward pull of decisions made at the beginning of your launch can prevent you from successfully and more efficiently reaching the markets you are actually supposed to be targeting. In other words, 'Personas and ICP' thinking can get you to over-commit to the wrong people too early on.

Demand Side Sales

Instead, it is better to think of markets as a group of people and the 'job' they are trying to get done. This 'job' is not the same as most people's definition for a market. It comes from 'Jobs To Be Done' theory. Another way to look at a job is the progress a customer is trying to make in a certain context. Marketing becomes an exercise of recognising a bunch of people in a similar situation that you can help progress. Successful marketing becomes an accelerated push towards meaningful conversations with those people, and helping them to buy your product (which is designed to ultimately help them get the job done!).

A market defined this way (a group of people with a similar job they'd like to get done) can straddle several different markets. This is a hard one to get your head around! Think of it from the customer's perspective. For example, at Mount Arbor, the classic definition of our market might be: "Business owners, sales leaders and c-level Marketing executives in SMBs launching new businesses or products". That market could be refined to focus on a particular industry, for example.

But according to this new definition of a market, our market is all business owners who want to launch successfully using digital channels to acquire their customers in a way that successfully includes their salespeople. I can position our services outside of normal market definitions, and by doing so, our market opens up and we become unique in our market. It's exciting!

By understanding these four pillars of launching - messaging, data, process and people - you can start building a strong foundation for success.

It is essential to know the 'job to be done', in context, during the sales process. This reaches all the way up to marketing, and all the way around beyond the sale when the actual value is finally delivered (and beyond that too).

Reframing the sales process is hard work. Everything is fine until you realise that your entire company message, all your sales material, your website... they sell your product, rather than help your customer to buy.

So what do you do? If you look at things this way (and once you do there is no turning back) you can come off a little crazy, pushing this abstract idea that regressing to the initial struggling moment and solving that is enough to market and sell to - even if it cuts out 90% of the features and benefits of your product in the early stages.

The reverse approach (to promote features/benefits first) is so engrained in everything, especially engineering and product development.

Yet the results speak for themselves - no matter how invested you are, speaking initially to the push/pull forces in context, and the anxieties and habits holding someone back, do more for advancing the sale and keeping things real than any amount of promotional feature/benefit pushing.

This isn't about 'land and expand' - it's about a complete 360 on how you frame the journey in the first place.

The Mount Arbor LAUNCH! 90 Day Accelerator Program:

We offer an effective method for you to get started with a minimal investment before rapidly scaling up and launching your product or service.

By doing this, you can maintain your costs at a minimum while having the assurance that when and if you decide to invest more in marketing and promotion, you have already established the right foundations for success.

With a one-of-a-kind program, you'll have complete control for 90 days with access to expert strategic consultancy and a whole lot more. Plus, you'll get all the necessary components of a lead converting funnel that actually works, including essential content.

If you're interested in learning more, start by taking our quiz and discover your own unique Go-To-Market Advantage. With no commitment on your side, you'll get a personalised report for your unique business:

Discover Your Personalised Go-To-Market Advantage Score