New Product Prospectus

I’ve attended countless formal sales meetings in my capacity as an externally hired hand to help with certain elements of salesteam improvement.  Several, a majority even, have featured the discussion of a latest product which, if not quite brand spanking new, has a large component of new-ness associated with it.

Usually a Marketing person is in attendance, and most times a ‘glossy’ is presented to the assembled salesteam.  Leaving aside the indisputable fact that in the overwhelming number of cases the salesforce consider what’s produced as irrelevant to them (or indeed, for the purpose of balance, that the Marketers deem the salesteam to be secondary to the customer audience) it is commonplace that this type of marketing ‘pack’ is all that gets passed around.

I mentioned this to a marketeer at one of my clients during a highly irreverent conversation where all parties within earshot joked in the most colourful of terms about the traditional battle lines between marketing and sales.

Once the ribbing and giggling eventually subsided I realised that a serious point could be addressed here.  My flash of inspiration was to recall a Prospectus I once saw for an IPO.

This was a document aimed at enticing potential investors to buy shares in a company that was about to float on the stock market.  It struck me that such an approach would be readily adaptable to that typical sales meeting environment and the moment handouts about the new product go around the room.

Furthermore, I reckon that you could fit all you need on a single piece of paper.  It could also serve as a useful template for a marketer perhaps inexperienced in making presentations to the salesteam upon which to base their twenty minute slot.

So, bearing in mind that any decent Prospectus must also explain why Returns can be expected and what you need to do in order to realise them, topics that I believe would allow you to create a difference with such a New Product Prospectus document include:

• The Strapline
• Reasons To Buy
• Client Return & Benefit Promise
• Our Investment / Back Story
• Pricing Policy (including Launch Offers)
• Overall & Individual Sales Expectations & Timescales
• Personal Investment Required By Sales Person

Feel free to put these into snappy headings as you go 🙂