Tag Archives: product development

“The Channel” to Nowhere

Posted on Thursday, 10 November 2011 9:00 am by markpilip

Why do you sell through distributors, resellers, VARs, or in other words, “the channel?” Is it worth your time building lots of infrastructure to manage the rules around distributing your product, dealing with channel conflict, commissions, “owning the customer” and … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer Care, Organization, Product Development | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

No Press Didn’t Kill Your Product

Posted on Monday, 7 November 2011 5:01 am by markpilip

Products fail in the marketplace all the time.  There’s a couple of main reasons why, but I’ll tell you why they didn’t fail: Marketing Corporate Communications All the marketing in the world can’t make a crummy product work.  Look at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, Marketing, Product Development, Rants | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Two Types of People

Posted on Wednesday, 26 October 2011 7:58 am by markpilip

There are two types of people in the corporate world. Those that ship product. Those that explain how they’re planning to get a team together to build the requirements to gain the approval to get the funding to hire the … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Leadership, Philosophy, Rants | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Two Types of People

Why There’s No iPhone 5

Posted on Thursday, 6 October 2011 5:45 am by markpilip

Now I know why Tim Cook didn’t introduce the iPhone 5. I believe that Steve Jobs, ever the thinker and ever the showman, is playing out his final and best script. And while doing so, he completes the smooth transition … Continue reading →

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Passionate Product Managers

Posted on Monday, 22 August 2011 8:46 am by markpilip

Startups beat large corporations primarily due to a lack of passion.  Sure, the large company might have everything one thinks you might need to win in new product development: Capital Development resources Development process But what’s missing is the thing … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Product Development | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Fifty Little Cups of Coffee

Posted on Friday, 19 August 2011 11:50 am by markpilip

I’m a continuity direct response marketer.  My 10,000 hours were spent testing hypotheses about lists, creative, offers, products and fulfillment methods by doing thousands of univariate and multivariate tests.  Each test was, essentially, a small bet of $500 to $50,000. … Continue reading →

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Planning to Kill Creativity

Posted on Tuesday, 5 July 2011 8:56 am by markpilip

It’s annual planning time for big corporations and many of us are working feverishly on revenue and expense forecasts for existing products, planning our three year product roadmaps, capital budgets, new initiatives and the like.  It’s all very important, especially … Continue reading →

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Product Development | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Minimum Viable Work Product

Posted on Wednesday, 29 June 2011 5:01 am by markpilip

I love the concept of the Lean Startup.  But does the philosophy work for those of us who work for larger corporations or who are entrepreneurs? I won’t get started on my opinions on most Product Management and Product Marketing Management … Continue reading →

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Fire 20%

Posted on Tuesday, 24 May 2011 8:19 am by markpilip

You need to fire 20% of: Customers Products Features Things you do every day each and every year. A lot of those things made sense last year or the year before.  And a lot of those customers may have been … Continue reading →

Posted in Leadership, Product Development, Rants | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Fail Spectacularly

Posted on Monday, 21 March 2011 5:58 pm by markpilip

Andy Swan writes, as usual, another good blog post today.  He asserts that in order to win, you have to know how much you’re willing to lose.  And he takes to task the use of Chinese Math, which I learned … Continue reading →

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Product Development | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Fail Spectacularly