Effective Product Marketing Rule #8

This is the eighth in a series of posts on Pragmatic Marketing’s Effective Product Marketing Rules.

Effective Product Marketing Rule #8: To earn support for your go-to-market plan, give management a business case for their investment.

There are so many times, so many circumstances, when it just seems like one colossal, time-wasting pain in the butt to create a business case that backs your request for backing for your go-to-market plan.

Maybe you just know, deep in your heart, in the center of your remarkably acute and brilliant business gut, that this go-to-market plan is a winner. Why bother with a business case, guys? Trust me on this one.

Why bother with a business case? Guys, trust me on this one.

Whether you know it or not, whether you like it our not, you’re competing for resources with other projects. If your go-to-market plan - which no doubt includes some $$$ and some people’s time - doesn’t make a compelling case for why you should get those $$$ and people’s time, you’re apt to lose out to someone else who’s made just such a case. When that happens, the second worst case is that you’ll be completely refused resources. Worst case, you’ll be given a measly budget and partial headcount - just enough for you to fail with. Whoopee!

Creating a business case can accomplish a lot for you - and not just in terms of making sure that you get the investment you need. With a well thought through business case, you can make sure that your product truly ties to the strategic intent of your organization. If it doesn’t, then you can make changes to the product that will ensure that it supports the overall strategy and goals your company has - or you can be a grownup and recommend that the product gets end-of-lifed. In either case, you’ve inoculated yourself against someone else coming in and noticing (not to mention broadcasting) that your product is off-strategy. So long to you and it!

A good business case will force you to really look at the market opportunities out there. And, surprise, there may be more of them than you knew existed, that go beyond the borders of your original go-to-market.

A good business case will force you to mind your P’s and Q’s. Is the price right? Is this a price that we can sell at? That we can we make money at? What’s the break-even quantity we need to sell? When do we get more profitable? Or is this, operationally, a product that we’ll lose more on, the more we sell. Talk about ‘whoopee!’

A good business case will force you to take a look at the true and full costs associated with your product, and may even result in your organization becoming more operationally efficient. If your product is strategically necessary, then the organization has to find a way to make it work, doesn’t it?

Creating a business case can be painful. And it can be especially painful if you’ve been through the parade-of-business-case circus in which the only projects that get funded are those with the miracle-occurs-here, hockey-stick upside - and if your organization refuses to ever look back on any decision its made and question it. If that’s the case, the only thing I can tell you is that your organization is probably not going to be in business all that much longer, and you may want to think about gittin’ while the gittin’s good.

But if you’re in a good company, that takes a sensible approach to business, then creating a  solid business case is a very small price to pay.

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