In this episode, James and Phoebe share with listeners the 7 essential ingredients to planning a product launch properly so you can actually accomplish your goals, while enrolling your entire team in the process.
Planning is the key in doing this. James quotes Brian Tracy:
“Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution”
Phoebe’s former basketball coach has a saying:
“Proper planning prevents p*ss poor performance”
The bigger your team gets, the more essential proper planning becomes. For James, planning was the opportunity to enrol everybody else in the goals and intentions for the launch.
Step #1: Set the intentions for the first meeting
Identify the strategy beforehand, so everybody knows what their roles will be. This way, they can be responsible, held accountable and have clarity. This will get them onboard with the “big picture.” To Phoebe, the intention was the most important thing as it showed her that everybody was heading in the same direction.
Step #2: Ask everyone on the team what they want to get out of the launch
Not everybody is motivated by money; it’s a job, but sometimes people want prestige or acknowledgment. By involving the entire team in the planning process, James gives people the opportunity to choose for themselves what type of outcome or benefit they will get for themselves. He finds that team members want to grow, or be a better person by the end of the launch. For Phoebe, she wanted to be a confident leader who is delegating effectively, as well as having it be a stress-free process. James himself wanted to be a more effective leader.
Step #3: Determine what is the intention, or commitment, to the audience
James asked everybody in the launch committee this question, individually, and blended together the results to come up with the following:
“We are committed to changing lives by inspiring entrepreneurs to what’s possible through easy and effective strategies”
Phoebe adds that when you come up with something together, it’s so much more powerful. Everyone feels like a bigger part of things.
Step #4: Set your goals
James shares his goals with the entire team, and believes it is important that they know “the game you’re playing.” In order to perform better, your people have to be informed. He sets three goals: “Middle-Of-The Road”, “Hairy-Scary” and “Wimpy-Wimpy.” This is meant to stretch you, without making you feel like a failure if you don’t hit the goal.
He comes at the goal from a place of confidence, knowing he’s done it before.
“If you go into something with zero confidence – good luck”
Step #5: Share and create the launch plan
Show the team what the entire process is going to look like when it’s actually in the launch period. James’ team intentionally left holes so that the entire team could come together to fill in the gaps. He considers this step as the “meat” of your plan.
Step #6: Identify the roles and responsibilities
Everyone has different talents but look at it from a project standpoint, rather than a skills standpoint. The meeting determined the responsibilities for every task of the launch: the videos series, emails, Facebook ads, etc. James’ responsibility was affiliates, while Phoebe was assigned the marketing funnel.
They share with listeners the concept of the RACI chart (responsible, accountable, consult & inform).
Step 7: Ask the team what it is going to take to achieve the goals
This could be getting enough people on the webinars, or watching the video series. It could be related to the organization; having more structure as a team.
James creates a follow up question, “what is that going to look like?” They created two types of calendars, one visual and one in list form, for example.
Daily “scrums”, or short meetings virtually, was part of the team’s launch (see “INTERVIEW LINKS” for book referenced in episode). They note that the scrums were only done during the launch period, when everyone was focused on the exact same thing.
James concludes the show with:
“If you want to make an impact on the world, and grow as an entrepreneur, you can’t do it alone.”
James and Phoebe will be recording a follow-up to this podcast, with specific results from the launch that was discussed.
INTERVIEW LINKS:
"Scrum: Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time" by Jeff Sutherland
