On Selling Innovations: Part One

A successful innovation requires selling. This is what determines the difference between an innovation and just an idea. Failure of innovation, in my view, is very often not the failure of the idea, but the failure of bringing the innovation into market. In this respect it is alarming to see how little emphasis is put on how to actually sell innovations. Selling something new is what both established companies and start ups have great challenges with.

Selling something new is very different from selling something old, slightly improved or moderated. Selling the first car is totally different from selling cars today. Steve Jobs for instance never believed in market studies, because he knew the fundamental underlying problem with them: they tell what has been sold in the past and are at their best creating linear correlations from that about what might be possibly sold in the future. With any radical innovations this predictability does not work. Actually, the more interesting and more potential your innovation has, the less you can use any historical references in selling it.

The reason is that any radical or really new innovations is not actually conciously needed beforehand. If you think of the mobile phone 50 years ago, no one could have said that there was a need for it. It was maybe an interesting view of the future (Maxwell Smart and shoe phone), but not something one would have asked for. With the best innovations the customers don’t yet know that they actually need the stuff. This means that ability to sell the need is required at first. What is needed in selling the need, is a stepwise process. This is based on psychology how people make decisions and is required in one way or another in every sales approach. I’ll use my own company, GloCell Oy as an example in this case and specifically the SoftaCell product.

First you need to come to a joint understanding that the issue what we’re talking about is important. In SoftaCell the important issue is raw material savings for paper or board makers. One can discuss the problematic of Scandinavian production and pressure from cheaper raw material or cheaper production locations to underline this importance. This can easily be achieved, but too often it is forgotten. It is crucial that the importance of the new innovation is always understood by the customer.

The second task is to generate a common understanding that there is something that can be improved from current. In too many cases, after the importance is seen, the customer is blind in seeing the room for their improvement. They often think they’ve done  everything in their power to optimize their way of working or products or services. With SoftaCell we created first demos that were showing a new way in optimizing the raw materials used in paper. We showed the mathematics ofthe  approach and explained why the old fashioned way of “we know how to run the machines” or “you cannot model this complicated things”  is wrong. We actually showed that the old fashioned way often cost 10 to even 30 Euros losses per ton of paper produced. 

When customer sees and understands these two points, the need for what you have to offer is established. In the next steps you then have to show that your innovation is the best way to answer for the need. If you fail in selling the need, the customers maybe see your product as interesting, but not as something for them. Sales and management of innovative companies too often take for granted the customers' understanding of the importance of the innovation and the improvement potential the customers have.  Emphasize the need first to make sure the customer on the same bandwagon. This is the only way to make customers interested in something new.

Do you have interesting additional approaches regarding selling the need?