Turn Off New Product Overload

You can get a bit tired of world-according-to-Steve-Jobs commandments.

Yet here’s a construct worthy of triggering thought.

He apparently insisted Apple should have no more than six products. If (when) they conjured a winner, they had to kill something from the past before they could launch the new one.

The policy was considered a roaring success. Especially when mapped against the once huge competition of Sony. Who took the opposite view and became seen as a meandering behemoth.

How many products are good for you – or your salesforce – to sell?

And would adding one more push this ‘selling span’ into meltdown?

This is precisely why sales substitution occurs.

New product is unleashed into the sales bag. Sellers fall into two camps. Those that eagerly embrace the uncharted seas but spend so much time pitching the fresh, their old sales dwindle. Those that know how tricky it is to sell anything new, so stick to selling only the tried and tested and any blue ocean gets quickly reddened by competitive fleet.

All data drives have a limit. What’s your current capacity? Are you in danger of hitting its buffers?

If the (‘marginal’, or +1) new product increase exceeds it, then perhaps time for a mercy culling of your own?