• Not testing enough can make your product dangerous to people and the environment, which could make harm and big legal responsibilities for your company.
• If you don’t test, you might break strict rules about chemical products, which can result in legal trouble and fines.
• If you skip testing, you might miss problems that affect how well your product works. This can make customers unhappy and hurt your brand’s reputation.
• A product that hasn’t been tested well might not live up to what customers expect or need. This can lead to it being rejected in the market and causing financial losses.

Tips

• Make Testing a Key Part of Development: Start testing early in the product development process to catch and fix problems early.
• Know the Regulations: Understand all the legal requirements for your product and design your tests to meet these standards.
• Do Various Tests: Run all necessary tests to check your product’s quality, safety, and performance.
• Use External Labs: Sometimes, getting an outside lab to test your product adds more trustworthiness to your results.
• Keep Detailed Records: Document all your testing methods and results carefully for regulatory purposes and future reference.

7. Forgetting Post-Launch Support

After launching a chemical product, customers might run into problems or have questions about using it, keeping it safe, storing it, or getting rid of it. Without good support, these issues can make customers unhappy, lead to bad reviews, and eventually harm sales and the product’s reputation. In the chemical industry, where products need to be handled carefully and follow safety rules, providing help and information after the launch is especially important. This ensures that customers use the products safely and correctly.

Tips

• Strong Customer Service Team: Set up a team specifically trained in your chemical product. They should be ready to answer questions, provide technical help, and guide on usage and safety, accessible through various channels like phone, email, training or educational sessions, and live chat.
• Detailed Documentation: Prepare thorough materials like user manuals, safety data sheets, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides. Make these easily available, preferably on your website.
• Collect and Use Feedback: Actively seek customer feedback through surveys and reviews. Use this information to fix common problems and improve your product.
• Focus on Continuous Improvement: Use the feedback and experiences from customers to keep improving your product and the support you offer.
• Ready Availability of Parts or Consumables: Ensure that any necessary consumables or replaceable parts for your product are easily available to avoid customer inconvenience

8. Setting Unrealistic Goals

Setting unrealistic goals can come from thinking the market is more ready for the product than it actually is, underestimating the difficulties in getting approval and managing logistics, or being too optimistic about how well the product will compete. In the chemical industry, where making and launching products is especially complex and controlled by regulations, it’s really important to set goals that are actually achievable to keep things moving smoothly and make sure the launch is successful.

Tips

• Do In-Depth Market Research: Understand the size of the market, the competition, and what customers need. This helps set sales targets and timelines that are realistic.
• Understand the Regulatory Process: Take into account the time and effort needed to get regulatory approvals. Realistic goals need a good understanding of these processes and possible delays.
• Set SMART Goals: Make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This method helps make sure the objectives are clear and achievable in a realistic timeframe.
• Include Various Teams in Setting Goals: Get input from different teams like R&D, marketing, sales, and regulatory affairs to ensure goals are well-rounded and informed.
• Use Data for Forecasting: Base your goals on historical data, industry standards, and predictive analytics. This can lead to more realistic targets based on solid evidence.

9. Wrong Pricing

Setting prices in this industry is tricky because there are lots of costs to consider, like research and development, meeting regulations, and the different ways customers see the value of your product. The price you set can make or break how well your product sells and how much profit you make. In the chemical industry, products can be basic, with little profit margin, or specialized, with more potential for profit. If the price is too low, you might not make as much money as you could. If it’s too high, customers might not buy it.

Tips

• Use Value-Based Pricing: Set prices based on the value your product provides to customers, not just on the cost to make it. This means understanding what makes your product special compared to others.
• Flexible Pricing Strategies: Be ready to change your prices in response to things like market demand, competition, and other outside factors.
• Know Your Costs Well: Make sure you understand all your costs, including production, overhead, and compliance costs. This helps in setting a price that covers your expenses and brings in profit.
• Effectively Communicate Value: Make a strong case for your product’s value and benefits. This can support a higher price if customers understand and appreciate what they’re getting.
• Keep an Eye on the Market: Always monitor how your product is doing and what’s happening in the market. Be ready to tweak your pricing based on new information and competitive moves.

10. Not Involving Your Team Early

Cross-functional collaboration is essential for a successful launch. If your team isn’t involved from the start, they might not fully understand or agree on the goals and plans for the product, which is crucial for a good launch. It’s important for different departments like R&D, marketing, sales, and regulatory affairs to work together smoothly. This ensures everyone knows their role and how it fits into the bigger picture. Waiting too long to involve your team can lead to misunderstandings, delays, and a lack of responsibility and readiness, all of which can harm the launch.

Tips

• Encourage Teamwork Across Departments: Get teams like R&D, marketing, sales, and regulatory affairs working together from the start. This way, everyone contributes their expertise and aligns on the launch plan.
• Define Everyone’s Role Clearly: Make sure each team member knows exactly what they are responsible for. This avoids confusion and ensures everyone knows what they need to do.
• Plan Together: Hold sessions where all key stakeholders plan the launch strategy and timeline together. This helps spot and solve potential problems early.
• Train and Educate Your Team: Ensure everyone understands the new product, including its features, benefits, and who it’s for. This knowledge helps them contribute more effectively.
• Ask for Feedback Early and Often: Get thoughts and suggestions from your team during development and before the launch. This can lead to valuable improvements.

Key Takeaways

1. Choosing the Wrong Time to Launch: If you launch at a bad time, you might have too many or too few products, or struggle to get noticed among competitors.
2. Not Planning for Approval Delays: It takes time to get all the needed safety approvals. Not planning for this can delay your launch.
3. Poor Coordination with Manufacturing and Supply: If you don’t coordinate the making and delivering of your product, you could face delays or quality issues.
4. Not Educating Customers First: If customers don’t understand your product, they might not use it properly or see its value.
5. Launching When Everyone Else Does: If you launch your product at the same time as similar products, it’s harder to stand out and you might lose sales.
6. Skipping Product Testing: Not testing your product enough can lead to safety issues, legal problems, and unhappy customers.
7. Forgetting Post-Launch Support: If you don’t support your customers with any problems or questions they have after buying your product, they might get frustrated and give bad reviews.
8. Setting Unrealistic Goals: If your goals are too high or not well thought out, your launch might not go as planned.
9. Wrong Pricing: If your product is too expensive or too cheap, it might not sell well.
10. Not Involving Your Team Early: If you don’t get everyone in your team involved early in planning the launch, there could be confusion and mistakes.

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this Linkedin article are solely my own and do not represent the views or opinions of my current employer. This article is a personal reflection and does not involve any proprietary or confidential information from my current company. Any similarities in ideas or concepts presented in this article to my current company’s work are purely coincidental.

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