10 Ways To Kill A Product Rollout

5) Do not hold anyone accountable for any task related to creating, introducing and promoting the product. Fortunately, this will be a snap to do, if you have followed No. 2 and No. 3 above. First, you wont know who to hold accountable, because no one was assigned tasks and deadlines. Second, since there is no financial metric to meet, financial accountability is moot. Your only goal is get the product out there, to show everyone that you are doing something in that office of yours.

6) Do not listen to the field, the consumers or the industry research when you are building and executing your plan. Heavens, what could they possibly know? You and your team are the experts. In your rarefied quarters, you see clearly. If the field says customers wont buy that, or the price is too high, or competitors already have a lock on the market, not to worry. You know better. And, if you get wind of consumer polls that indicate people really need a different kind of design than you are building, just laugh it off. Consumer polls only test feelings at a moment in time. You have the long-term view right in your own headbecause you are special.

7) Do not fret too much about meeting the requirements of the various state insurance departments or other applicable regulators. They are just officials. What do they know about sales and marketing? If your product is new and innovative, be sure to let the regulators know you dont much appreciate them asking any questions about it or requiring additional information. This applies both to those filing the products and those selling them. Go ahead, be arrogant. And dont hesitate to point out that, if the laws and regulations get in your way, you can just get them changed to suit your will and your product.

8) Do not fret if your policy form and your marketing materials dont match very well. Who reads them, anyway? And, who ever said you have to have the same features identified in both document types. Isnt that redundant?

9) Do not have any team members around to talk to the field, the media or other interested outsiders during the rollout period. Your staff is tired, for goodness sake. They need a break. If someone calls to learn more about your new offering, just put them into voice mail or route the call to someone in shipping. The caller probably wont notice, and you can always get back to them when you return from Tahiti. Besides, who said the product team should have to talk to anyone at all about what youve created? This is the world of no accountability, remember.

10) Do not find out what the client who is interested in this new product wants, needs or can afford. This is the latest and greatest, after all. And thats what you do. You sell the New, to anybody who will buy. In view of that, doing all that client-centric stuff seems such a waste of time. If it later turns out the customer who bought your product didnt understand it or didnt even need it, ah, well, thats the roll of the dice. You can fix it laterperhaps.

As you can see, the strategies I have gleaned from watching product rollouts over the years are abundant. I can almost guarantee that if you implement even a few of the above steps, youll harvest bundlesof losses. So dont.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, July 1, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.