4. 90 Day Blueprinting

90 Day Blueprinting lets your project teams rapidly develop Market Satisfaction Gap profiles of target market segments.

Now you can know exactly which outcomes customers want you to improve. And know it quickly. This lets you eliminate most commercial risk, so your R&D can focus on overcoming technical risk with your new product or service.

You'll reap major business benefits with 90 Day Blueprinting:

A) Accelerate Revenue: When a typical B2B business launches its new product just one month earlier, it generates $50-100,000 of net present value. Imagine the impact of launching many products many months earlier.

B) Transform Business: Want to turn your business into a growth machine? Apply 90 Day Blueprinting to "fingerprint" all your key market segments... 

• Repair your R&D project portfolio: Research shows nearly 50% of R&D resources are applied to "dud" projects, usually from misunderstanding market needs. With a Market Satisfaction Gap profile for each key market segment, you can now work only on what matters.
• Update your strategy: Successful B2B companies employ "market concentration"...devoting disproportionately high resources to the most attractive markets. Now you'll know which market segments have major unmet needs that fit your core competencies.
• Build permanent growth capabilities: You'll take your business to a new level of growth capability when you 1) train a critical mass of employees in these skills, and 2) insist on Market Satisfaction Gap profiles before starting development stage work.

The following conditions are best for applying 90 Day Blueprinting:

1. Core market segments: We don't recommend this for Horizon 2 or Horizon 3 projects where you lack customer relationships: It takes too long to secure such interviews. Even if you weren't planning a new product for one of your core markets, applying 90 Day Blueprinting will reveal its strategic fit with your capabilities... so you can increase or decrease dedicated resources.

2. One region per project: You can apply full New Product Blueprinting to global projects to discern region-specific needs, but the extra coordination takes time. If you need a global perspective, run a separate 90 Day Blueprinting project for each region. (We can show you how to coordinate between projects.)

3. Management commitment: By no means does this require an all-out, exhausting "sprint" by the project team. But many businesses stretch their resources so thin that any extra work moves at a snail's pace. Don't start 90 Day Blueprinting without these commitments:

• The business leader insulates the project team from disruptions (new assignments, job changes, etc.) and attends a Market Satisfaction Gap presentation at the end.
• The sales leader strongly encourages sales reps to quickly set up customer interviews when requested... and to also serve as "customers" in some initial interviews.
• The team members gain their managers' approval to give this project work high priority. This project should be the top priority for the team leader.

In exchange for speed, what will you "give up" compared to full New Product Blueprinting?

1. No market prioritization: With full Blueprinting, teams often begin by thoughtfully choosing the most attractive market to pursue. While the AIM Coach will still show them how to do this, 90 Day Blueprinting teams begin with a target market assigned by management.
2. No competitive testing insight: Preference interviews can be used to create customer-centric side-by-side testing protocols. But with 90 Day Blueprinting, Preference interviews are only used to generate Market Satisfaction Gap profiles.
3. No Market Case required: Full New Product Blueprinting generates a report with analyses of markets, customers, competitors, strategic fit, etc. With 90 Day Blueprinting, you just generate a Market Satisfaction Gap profile (but teams can opt to create a Market Case).
4. Possible "errors of omission": This is failing to uncover a key customer outcome. Much of 90 Day Blueprinting's speed comes from reducing the number of customer Discovery interviews, which are typically the rate-limiting step. Instead, these outcomes are gathered through a combination of a) AI generation, b) interviews with your sales team, and c) interviews of key customers (albeit fewer of them).

In many cases these tradeoffs are worth it. If you're already serving a market, you probably want to understand it regardless of any market prioritization (point 1 above). And points 2 and 3 above can be "added later." Finally, if you're already serving a market, it's unlikely you'll omit a key outcome (point 4) after combining three interview types: AI, sales colleagues, and customers.

Compared to full New Product Blueprinting, 90 Day Blueprinting teams attend the same workshop, access the same resources, and receive the same level of AIM coaching on their first project. (The cost is also the same.) They just experience different priorities and timeline:

1. Project team setup: Management selects a target market segment and multi-functional project team. (See www.blueprintingproject.com for guidance.) Team members choose which public Blueprinting workshop (4-hour virtual sessions on two consecutive days) they will attend. (See www.blueprintingworkshop.com for dates.)

2. AIM Coach meeting: Prior to the above public workshop, an AIM Coach meets with the sponsor and team leader to ensure 90 Day Blueprinting is a good fit. They schedule full-team virtual meetings to occur weekly or bi-weekly immediately after the public workshop.

3. Public workshop: Team members learn everything and receive the same resources as full New Product Blueprinting learners. This includes Discovery interview role-playing on both days of the virtual public workshop.

4. Project team kickoff: At the first team meeting, the team leader and AIM Coach describe the commitment level needed and make any adjustments needed. With team members' agreement, a meeting is put on the calendar (in 90+ days) to present their Market Satisfaction Gap profile and recommendations to the business leader.

5. Project team meetings: The AIM Coach focuses on the following to ensure speed:

1. Team members are shown early how to work with sales in scheduling customer interviews.
2. "Interviews" are conducted with the AI tool to generate dozens of customer problems.
3. The AIM Coach conducts Discovery interview role-playing with the team.
4. The team conducts Discovery interviews with sales reps standing in as "customers."
5. The team is encouraged to conduct virtual customer interviews (via Teams, Zoom, etc.) instead of in-person interviews.
6. The first two months are dedicated to conducting all three types of Discovery interviews (AI, sales colleagues, and customers).
7. The team plans either Preference interviews or a Preference survey for the third month. (Each Preference interview should be scheduled with the customer at the end of their Discovery interview.)
8. The AIM Coach helps the team analyze its Preference data. This can lead to multiple Market Satisfaction Gap profiles if market sub-segmentation is warranted.

6. Market Satisfaction Gap Presentation: The AIM Coach joins the project team in presenting their results to the business leader.

Not sure if 90 Day Blueprinting is right for your business? Contact AIM for a complimentary consultation. 

Keywords: 90 Day, 90-day, accelerate Blueprinting, rapid Blueprinting, Market Satisfaction Gap profiles, accelerate revenue, transform business, management commitment, tradeoffs