TrainersDirect Seminars
TrainersDirect presents

Managing the Product Life Cycle On-Site Training

The course shows, in a very real sense, how integral the roles of product managers and product teams are throughout the life cycles of products and services

Course Description/Agenda

Length: 2 days
Number of Participants: Up to 20
Materials: Notebooks and handouts provided

Product life cycle management refers to the strategies and tactics of treating the product like a mini-business after the product is launched. In vigorously competitive markets, characterized by compressed product life spans, emerging categories, and brand diffusion, you need to understand how to assess the performance of your product or service within the context of the master product plan. In this course, you'll learn to monitor the marketplace, the competition, and to analyze the financial health of your product or service. Attention is paid to product capabilities, pricing, supply chain, channel effectiveness, and promotional tactics. You'll learn that information is a major asset to leverage as attention turns to customer satisfaction, product usage, and buying behavior in targeted segments.

Through the explanation of the characteristics and behaviors of products and services, you'll learn important strategies and imperatives for managing each stage of the life cycle, namely growth, maturity, and decline. You'll even learn how to engineer a graceful market exit. Using the product life cycle model to depict unit sales, revenue, profitability, and cash flow, you'll learn the analytical techniques, which show you how to interpret business performance so that the appropriate strategies can be determined, applied, and monitored. This class illustrates how marketing strategies, which are timely and highly integrated with life cycle activities promote greater levels of marketplace agility.

The course shows, in a very real sense, how integral the roles of product managers and product teams are throughout the life cycles of products and services. This highly interactive class uses a combination of lecture, interactive discussions, and in-class exercise. When you complete this class, you'll have a clear understanding of the things you need to do to optimize the performance of your products and services to sustain your competitive advantage.

Primary course elements include:

The importance of gathering information, including customer feedback and satisfaction, industry and competitive assessments, and product quality
Product revitalization strategies
Effective use of a Life Cycle Action Review
Adjusting the marketing mix for maximum advantage
Finding new markets for existing products and services
Maximizing effectiveness of the cross functional team as the product evolves
Repositioning the product
Refining the value proposition
The role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Leading a cohesive product team
The role of LCM tools, software, and product data management
Improving customer loyalty
Using financial tools to monitor product performance
Creating and maintaining a durable brand
Executing mature product strategies to maximize profits
Understanding decline stage activities and product retirement approaches
Discontinuing products and exiting markets
Maintaining and updating the master product plan