New Survey Data About B2B Product Launches

Schneider Associates recently partnered with the Center for Business Innovation at Babson College to create the Schneider Business-to-Business Launch Survey.

It profiles the ten key lessons B2B companies can use to improve their odds for product launch success.

The report arrived at just the right time because I was in the middle of writing a newsletter for my client, Sequent Learning Networks, about product launches. (They do training for product managers.)

According to Sequent VP Lisa Hida, you can find lots of research, articles, etc., about ensuring product launch success, but very little is said about how to measure the success of a launch.

The Schneider data backs up Hida’s assertion. While 58% of survey respondents indicated they “established their success metrics before the launch took place,” 29% said they established metrics during the launch — definitely not a best practice, according to Hida.

Even worse, 13% said they did not set metrics until after the launch was over – and 6% said they never set any metrics at all. Wow!

You can find the survey here at the Schneider Associates website. (It’s a PDF.) Also be sure to check out Schneider’s Most Memorable Products list for 2007.

You can read Sequent’s article about product launch metrics by subscribing to the company’s newsletter. (I believe it goes out this week.)