AMA: Alicia & James on a failed product launch (and more)

Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.

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A few weeks ago, Alicia and I joined Steve Klein from the Launch Awesome community (powered by LaunchNotes) for a live AMA on how we turned around a failed product launch.

Over 45 minutes – at least 15 more than scheduled! – we covered everything from how our horror story unfolded, to how we share ‘#GongGold’ to build customer empathy.

Here are some of the top snippets. You can find the full video and transcript on the LaunchNotes blog here.

In this post:

Having the courage to acknowledge problems

Nobody wants to be the first person to say ‘uhh… this isn’t working’. But sometimes that needs to be said, acknowledging the tension that might exist, and getting ahead of what could be a car crash in slow motion.

Maintaining trust when things aren’t going so well

When we set about fixing multiple problems with our product launch – from poor pricing decisions to plain dumb onboarding flows – we couldn’t do it alone. We used transparency as a tool, sharing what we had found and bringing our marketing, sales, product, engineering, and CS teams on the journey too.

Includes my new favourite quote from Steve: “Trust dies in darkness.”

Discovering buyer personas

We can’t say it enough: don’t move ahead with your own biased assumptions of the people you sell to and what they care about.

Instead, look to your market and discover the buyer personas that actually exist.

The sales deck as the ideal home for your narrative

Your sales deck is the best place to build your narrative – but don’t miss the opportunity to use it as a conversation tool.

Share snippets from sales to enable and encourage

I love this idea from Alicia – using a #GongGold channel to share insights and celebrate when customers repeat their value messaging without prompt.

About Launch Awesome

Launch Awesome is a premium Slack community where the world’s best Product Managers and Marketers discuss the strategy, tactics, and pro tips they use to successfully launch new features and products. Find out more and request your invite here.

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