It’s always great to get resellers, or users, together to review and discuss issues. And as long as it's in an interesting/comfortabled venue providing decent food and drink, and you put on some entertainment and fun, they’re a a captive audience for your latest sales pitch.
But what to present ? Rather than the usual boring old list of product features delivered by each Product Manager, how’s about….?
· The Marketplace: analysis of current market needs, the competition and your positioning
· Peek into the Future from R&D
· Product Strategy - the big industry and business trends and how you satisfy them
· User stories (preferably given by the users themselves)
· The Ideal Prospect: a workshop to define the perfect user (you can use it to define questions to identify them !)
When you’re preparing, remember to:
· Poll all attendees asking them what they’d like to see, or vote on possible topics
· Create special interest groups and workshops to break things up
· Run parallel tracks for sale and technical: cross-train each group (but don’t tell the techs you’re giving them sales techniques, they’ll tell you their integrity will be compromised: tell them SPIN is a consultative approach used by doctors and therapists).
During the meeting:
· have a Twitter feed on a large projector screen in everyone’s view so a proper many-to-many dialogue can take place
· old-fashioned flip charts are also still essential for recording actions/key concerns that arise, so the meeting leader can refer to them in their closing speech.
Make sure the Closing Address is impressive. Recut your last Company Kick Off presentations (see previous Blog) into a suitable form for this more specialised audience: call it a company update to disguise the selling :-)
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