Partners and Platforms - Moving Together - Part 2 of 3

There are three phases that must be completed in order to drive the ultimate success of any product or service. There are countless ways that each can be accomplished, but they each must be involved ... in order ... for any product lifecycle. 

I call them AAR for simplicity. 

They are Awareness, Adoption, and Revenue

• Awareness
• Adoption
• Revenue

In the simplest terms if no one knows about your product or service (aka being aware) they'll never be able to try it (adopt it) and never buy it (drive revenue). 

This aligns nicely with the Technology Adoption Lifecycle (TALC) espoused by Geoffrey Moore in his seminal work "Crossing the Chasm" 

When building a product or service make sure you make plans to consider each step.

If you only focus on the Revenue and ignore the Awareness and Adoption phases you'll never achieve to success you expect or deserve. Sure, there are inevitable edge cases where revenue could come first. Perhaps by someone gifting a product that they really love to you. But, at some point in the product lifecycle the awareness had to happen as did the adoption.

A bit more detail on each is below. 

Also, think in terms of lifecycle. There is a need to think short term and there is a need to think long term. Consider AAR in 90 day cycles and also in 18 and 36 month cycles. If you honestly think you'll be out of a market in a shorter time frame ... plan for that. Whether it's a fad you are capitalizing upon or if you think you'll get acquired (it can happen) or something else will shorten your market runway ... plan for it.

• Awareness - There is no wrong way to drive awareness. Awareness is just what it sounds like ... helping customers to become aware of your products or services. Use something that makes sense for your business, for your industry, for your style. Whether it's standing on a street corner with a sign board or putting up a billboard in Times Square. If advertising in the public is the way to go ... use it. Other times it's more of a word of mouth effort ... where experts talk with experts. This is where the community effect comes in. Where people "in" the community will have an implicit level of trust with others in the community. Depending on how you plan to go to market you might need to rely on partners to get the word out. The key thing is to decide together with all the partners involved what "awareness" looks like, how it will be obtained, and how it will be measured.
  
  
• Adoption - As with awareness it's important to agree on what "adoption" means. It could be a pilot project, a funded proof of concept, or a fully deployed solution. Or, it could be a mix of all three and a whole lot more. As you begin it's important to make sure everyone agrees on the definition of awareness and works towards the goals together. Some of the outcomes of adoption can take the form of Customer Evidence. For example, you might seek to be able to use the customers logo and name in your online, print, and event collateral. These are big asks and you may want to start smaller. The critical point with adoption is to deliver what you commit to. 
  
  
• Revenue - The obvious measurement with revenue is just that ... revenue, dollars, cash on the barrelhead. If a customer is willing to dole out funds to try your product you know they have made a commitment and you need to make sure you live up to your commitments you made to them. Beyond revenue ...there might be some intangible elements that can be counted in this category. For example, customer references are invaluable. And, while they cannot be deposited into a bank account they can be critical to drive Awarenes and Adoption ... so that you can get to revenue faster. Again, everyone should agree on what the expectations are for revenue ... and work together to accomplish them.

Measure, Measure, Measure

Every step of the way needs to have metrics aligned with them. 

You cannot expect what you do not inspect.

To put some sense to Awareness, Adoption, and Revenue consider aligning each of them as SMART goals. Again, make sure all parties agree on each goal. And, make sure each point can be measured. And, of course, make sure everyone is held accountable. 

There are a lot of different ways to assign and align AAR. The point of this post is to put them out there as thinking points as a way to launch any product or service. If you have another model that works for you please share in the comments or loop me into a conversation on social media.

Good luck and good selling!

This is part 2 of a 3 part series in working with partners. The next post covers SMTE.

Part 1 is posted here: Link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/partners-platforms-working-together-part-1-3-jeff-shuey   

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Tags: #Partners #GTM #GTD #CustEv #CustomerEvidence #WinWires #Awareness #Adoption #Revenue
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 Jeff is business advisor, mentor and community engagement expert. He brings over 20 years of Channel Sales, Partner Marketing and Alliance expertise to audiences around the world in speaking engagements and via his writing. He has worked for Microsoft, Kodak, and K2. He is currently at Oracle where he works with partners, including Microsoft and Microsoft partners, to create Hybrid Cloud solutions on a global scale.

Connect with me on Twitter @jshuey

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He is a contributing author to Entrepreneur, Elite Daily, Yahoo, US News and to
the Personal Branding Blog with over 250 articles published.