How to Sell New Products

09/05/19 • 37 min

Thomas Steenburgh is a business professor at the Darden School of Business, with a focus on sales management and B2B sales processes.

We discuss the launch of new products by sales teams, as well as some of the challenges that accompany these product launches. In addition, we cover the types of people who do the best at selling new products, the “shiny new thing” problem when selling to customers, and other gems that will make any company better at selling new products.

To cap off the show, we talk about how B2B and sales topics have largely been ignored as a subject within academia.

In This Episode

The research that went into Dr. Steenburgh's analysis of innovation and product launches.
The different type of salespeople you'll need for product launches.
Why face-to-face meetings are important for selling new products.
The characteristics of reps who succeed at selling new products and those who don't.
The “shiny new thing” problem when prospecting.

Thomas Steenburgh is a business professor at the Darden School of Business, with a focus on sales management and B2B sales processes.

To cap off the show, we talk about how B2B and sales topics have largely been ignored as a subject within academia.

In This Episode

The research that went into Dr. Steenburgh's analysis of innovation and product launches.
The different type of salespeople you'll need for product launches.
Why face-to-face meetings are important for selling new products.
The characteristics of reps who succeed at selling new products and those who don't.
The “shiny new thing” problem when prospecting.

Previous Episode

Rising to Leadership

Today’s guest is Ron Carucci, Cofounder and Managing Partner at Navalent, a company that works with CEOs and Executives who are pursuing transformational change. His Harvard Business Review article “Executives Fail to Execute Strategy Because They’re Too Internally Focused” put him our radar and led us to his fantastic book, Rising to Power.

We tackle both the book and the HBR article in this interview.

The crux of the episode--to borrow Ron’s phrase--is the ‘altitude sickness’ that all "rising" executives come across.

Examples of this altitude sickness are: ineffective use of power, effective and ineffective communication and organization design, as well as how effectively they are looking at the competitive landscape to leverage that information and make their organizations more profitable, successful spaces.

In This Episode

Ron’s professional background and his current work with Navalent.
Managing the competitive context for executives.
The dizzying dynamics of managing and leveraging portfolios.
Organizational ‘compression’ and strategic thinking.
Why saying no is so important.
A few words on Millennials and intergenerational connection.
Why an executive should link their strategy to their company’s budget.
Telling executives the truths they don’t want to hear but need to hear.
Organization design as a system.
A breakdown of power and its dangers.

Next Episode

Writing Well

Josh Bernoff is the author of a stellar book called Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean. The book is focused on making everyone a better writer in business. Most importantly, due to Josh’s background in the technology sector, he has a lot of history with an industry that produces arguably the most jargon, poorly written emails, blog posts, and messaging of any business sector.

This episode centers on different examples of how people can improve their business writing, report writing, and emails, alongside many other great writing topics.

In This Episode