Hi there,
Many machine builders who have invested in their own IIoT capabilities are struggling to sell the value from these services to their customers.
Selling digital services is not the same as selling machines. Doing so requires a certain level of organizational change.
This edition is part 2 of a 3-part series where we’re going to delve into the key organizational challenges machine builders face when launching a digital product. Each edition will cover one challenge.
By drawing inspiration from SaaS companies (my background is in SaaS), we’ll look into how you can adopt best practices that are proven in the digital services space versus trying to reinvent the wheel.
Part 2: Bridging the Gap Between Engineering and Sales
Here’s a pattern we see with machine builders launching digital services:
- IIoT capabilities are developed by the Engineering team. They talk to customers in the process but typically have a technology focus (instead of value-driven).
- They are struggling to consistently articulate product value and how digital services uniquely solve a specific problem. Not just to customers but also internally.
- Digital services are not being sold by Sales at the rate expected. Sales is not confident about the offering and is not rewarded for selling services (only machines).
The people in Engineering working in these digital teams are really smart people. They know the product and they know the customer. So what’s going wrong here?
The Engineering teams typically excel in the left-brained duties – identifying problems for customers and developing the best possible technical solution.
But for a successful product launch you also need to nail the right-brained ones like engaging internal stakeholders and crafting killer messaging.
Product Marketing
That’s why most SaaS companies today have a dedicated function called Product Marketing. They play a crucial role in bridging the gap between Sales and Engineering by acting as a liaison between the two functions.
Here are three ways in which Product Marketeers in SaaS facilitate communication and collaboration between Sales and Engineering (in SaaS that’s often with the product manager):
- Craft and communicate the product's value proposition and messaging, ensuring that it aligns with customer needs and resonates with the target audience.
- Create sales collateral, training materials, and other resources that help the Sales team effectively communicate the value of the product.
- Communicating and highlighting (new) features when released, ensuring that sales and customers are well-informed about the product and how it evolves.
Key-takeaways
- Successful product launches require collaboration between Engineering, Marketing and Sales.
- Product Marketers are hard to find and expensive. But with the training materials available at PMA you can train people you already have.
- Another great source of information and inspiration for this topic is April Dunford. Check out her podcast and her website. Or follow her on LinkedIn.
- Want to have a chat about this? Feel free to reach out to me by replying to this email.
I hope this will inspire you and your colleagues.
See you in two weeks for part 3 where I’ll talk about how the management team at the machine builder doesn’t always consider machine connectivity to be a strategic topic.
Thanks for reading this. I really appreciate it.
- Steven