How to Sell Blockchain and Emerging Tech

Blockchain, AI, machine learning and other emerging technologies can revolutionise your organisation and streamline business processes – marketing soundbites like these are often used to promote and sell cutting-edge enterprise technology. However, you shouldn’t rely on them to drive successful tech sales, and businesses that easily fall for the hype also fall out of it just as easily.

In order to effectively sell tech and blockchain solutions to businesses, a more comprehensive approach is needed; one that accounts for the regulatory and business trends of the industry you’re selling to, that clearly maps out how the client can harness real value from buying your solutions.

Don’t treat blockchain as just a tech buzzword with which to inflate your press releases. If you can show your prospective buyer how the technology can create new business opportunities and customer segments using documented success stories, you’ll have a much easier time getting them on board. They’re also more likely to stay on board, which gives you a solid clientele, both for your current and future prospects.

Basics for a More Convincing Pitch

Even if you’re an expert on the technology you’re selling, would you be confident in succeeding if you went to the negotiating table without understanding your customers or the problems they’re facing? Before you open or close any sales, make sure you understand not only the client you’re speaking to, but also the industry they’re in. Take note also of the overall trends affecting that industry. These factors affect buyers’ outlook and can easily make or break your pitch if you don’t account for them.

If you’re transitioning into the enterprise or blockchain tech space where the stakes are higher, you’ll need to understand more than just what buyers are thinking. You’d also need knowledge of what’s going on in their industry or even where and how they’re using their IT budgets. Armed with this information, you can make your sale in language that appeals to them while identifying the criteria they use to measure success and failure. This shows them that you are aware of the situation and issues they face, boosting their confidence in your tech solution being able to meet their needs.

When dealing with enterprise sales, you also need to be clear about the value offered by the software before you can convey this to your customers. On their end, customers will analyse your tech solution’s total cost of ownership. They’ll then arrive at a value measurement before deciding to go through with the sale, or opting for a cheaper alternative.

As you refine your pitch in this way, you also need to get a sense of the problems your technology claims to solve, and how it can be done with the inventory of toolkits that you possess. If your software solution has features that can be deployed to solve these problems, convey this to the customer to sweeten the value proposition.

Even automobile companies today are offering greater customisation options, from the paint coating to the type of leather used in the seats. Likewise, in the B2B space, your software should be tailored to customers’ requirements, and they in turn should be made aware of the options available for them to pick and choose from.

Unfamiliar Territory

Adjusting your messaging and pitch delivery to be more relatable to the customer is a great sales theory, but how exactly should you get started, especially when reaching out to customers in unfamiliar industries?

Perhaps you’ve decided on a potential buyer in the insurance industry, but the sector at large is still behind the curve on technology, with too much paper-based documentation and a lack of digitisation. However, there are forward-looking insurers adopting new tech and making cool breakthroughs with it.

Start with fundamentals – do research to learn about the trends in the industry, then expand your knowledge by reading annual reports of companies to understand their strategic view for the long-term: how they have been performing, the key metrics they look at to evaluate success, and how their performance stacks up against their peers. This will help you to not only understand the context that drives the customer and feeds their motivations, but also the industry that they operate in.

Even as you do this, there will be some gaps of knowledge regarding the state of the company and industry. To fill these gaps, you should talk to friends in the industry. Get connected with people who know more about the industry than you do, even if they are not your end buyers.

The same applies to talking to people in the company that may not be decision-makers, but work in adjacent functions. For instance, if you are selling to the head of a business unit or a product line in an insurance company, you might also want to talk to their IT and procurement people for insights on how the buying process works in the companies and what they take into consideration. While they may not be the one to sign off and approve the buy, don’t count them out as they’re aware of what’s going on and how things work.

Indeed, you may be selling directly to a business owner, but you also have to ensure that the business’s risk and compliance, IT and procurement teams are comfortable with you and your product offerings. Even if the owner is persuaded by your solution, the deal may fall through if one of these other players push against it.

Good salespeople also know how to get more information from the clients they’re trying to sell to. Tech solutions are not cookie-cutter, especially at the B2B level, and in the first few rounds of discussions with your customers you’ll want to figure out what’s on their minds. For example, they may have budget considerations to deal with, and identifying this concern will help you plan your next steps. Such variables underline the importance of understanding the buying process.

In essence, and particularly with emerging technology and enterprise software, bridging the gap between your solutions and customers in unfamiliar industries heavily rests on understanding how they gauge value, the industry trends that affect them, and how they go through the buying process.

Who Leads and Who Follows

Across several industries, acceptance of blockchain and emerging tech is on the upswing – there are some broad trends encouraging this and making these technologies more appealing to businesses.

One key factor is proactive engagement by industry regulators. Good regulators are beginning to study and experiment with such technology to understand their impact on the industry. In the finance industry, central banks in the Asia-Pacific region like the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bank of Thailand and the Reserve Bank of Australia are launching pilot programmes and proofs of concept, even considering taking the technology to production-grade usage.

In order to better define regulations governing the use of emerging technologies, forward-looking regulators are trying to understand the tech and its practical usage and to assess its capabilities, identify possible risks and pinpoint aspects that would need regulation.

Backed by the actions, validation and approval of such regulators, more businesses are adopting new technology. If a regulator like the Bank of Thailand has tested and given the go-ahead for a tech solution, then another bank in the country might be a lot more comfortable with implementing it. With the regulator’s blessing, they won’t worry about being fined or slapped with a compliance action by going down this new route.

The influence of governments is also significant in expanding the tech marketplace. A talk by the Chinese President on developing a blockchain or digital currency for the country elevated awareness and fuelled many discussions on the emerging technologies. Governments’ push for technology can create powerful positive ripple effects, as their validation gives businesses in local markets a level of comfort to take more risks and opt for breakthrough technology.

Beyond the top-down example-setting by regulators and governments, evidence of successful use cases by fellow industry players is another key factor spurring businesses’ greater adoption of emerging technology. People are coming to the realisation that such technologies are not merely fluff, conceptual or marketing talk – there are companies that have implemented them in the right way to deliver real value.

Blockchain first debuted in the business world as a trendy talking point representing a solution for everything, but as time passed, its hype has shrunk, and what’s left behind is a clearer understanding of the value that it can provide. Reference cases of regulators and other businesses can drive adoption of emerging technologies by building confidence in customers who may hesitate to embrace new solutions.

For instance, if you’re trying to sell to smaller banks in the Asia-Pacific region, you can point to the experiences of bigger banks like Standard Chartered or HSBC leading the way by going through the hoops, validating the usage of the technology and receiving approval from their risk and compliance, IT and procurement teams. The big players have assessed the technology and feel that it is worth implementing. This knowledge might encourage your customers to consider doing the same.

As more companies drive the value of emerging technology by using them effectively, others will begin to consider how they can gain value by integrating the same technology into their operations or with their own counterparts. This leads to a self-perpetuating cycle – successful use cases encourage more businesses to adopt tech solutions, leading to more successful use cases being produced.

Blockchain technology introduces additional complexities that you should keep in mind when you are selling it. Traditional enterprise software is sold on a one-to-one basis. However, blockchain is a multi-institution technology. This means that you’re almost always going to be selling a single product to a group of customers. Whether you’re doing it in sequence or in parallel depends on the scenario, but you’ll need to sell to more than one entity to kickstart things.

This means that you’ll not only be dealing with one company (for instance, a retail company), but likely a bank and a supplier in the mix at the same time and trying to get them on the same page. The increased complexity rests in having to gauge the value of your blockchain solution and pinpointing the problems that it can solve multiple times – once for each party involved in the blockchain – and getting everyone to agree to work with each other.

Which institution is the most significant player in this group that you’re selling to? If there’s an ecosystem of 5 institutions that have to adopt this blockchain, there are institutions in that chain that are more prominent or more dominant. The others will listen to what they have to say, and you want to capitalise on this.

With the earlier example of the retail company, the bank and the supplier, if the retail company is the dominant institution and they approve of using the blockchain, then the bank and the suppliers will likely follow suit. If you can’t identify the most significant institution in the group, you would have to navigate around the different agendas of the participants in the chain, clearly communicate your value proposition to each of them and get them to cooperate in order to benefit from the collective and individual values offered by your solution.

One of the leading banks in Thailand, Siam Commercial Bank, possesses an innovation team called Digital Ventures; this team worked with R3 and Accenture to build a trade finance platform. The bank then took this platform to one of its primary clients, Siam Cement Group. As part of the two parties’ plans to digitise their trade finance, they instituted the platform on a blockchain. Over time, more than a thousand suppliers onto it over time. By digitising existing paper- and email-based transactions, certain finance processes saw a 50% reduction in costs.

Before creating the blockchain platform, Siam Commercial Bank had also lacked access to the downstream suppliers. The suppliers are mainly very small companies, and banks tend to struggle with such SMEs as it is difficult to assess the risks of doing business with them. Through the blockchain, the bank now has access to some of these smaller SMEs, with the ability to provide them with direct financing. The bank benefits from these new customer segments. The SMEs who previously had to opt for other forms of financing, possibly with higher interest rates, now benefit from direct access to a reputable bank. Win-win.

Blockchain is also a relatively early-stage technology, and its newness comes with a general lack of understanding on how it operates. You’ll want to educate customers and clear up the confusion and myths surrounding blockchain; one common misconception is that all use cases of blockchain have to do with cryptocurrency. Part of the difficulty in selling blockchain lies in the need to clarify what the platform is, through providing real examples of successful implementations and communicating the value offered by blockchain. Customers may also find it difficult to understand blockchain, not simply from a technical standpoint, but also why they should implement it and the appropriate timeframe for doing so. Why should they adopt blockchain now, when they can get on board at a future time? You might find yourself having to answer this question to close the sale.

Focus on Value, Not on FOMO

In order to sell blockchain products, some aim to cultivate a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) in their customers. In other words, they focus on helping the customer catch up with their competitors technologically, but don’t think about what value the solution adds to the customer. Companies that are not industry leaders in tech adoption may be looking at those who are and wondering if they should follow in their footsteps.

While this presents a good opportunity to leverage your pitch with, you also need to give some thought to the value proposition to your customer. Even if FOMO spurs them to get on board with blockchain, they will only stick with your solution if they see real value. Otherwise, whether it’s in six months’ time, or a year or two ahead, they might drop your solution. They might find that they referenced the wrong use case or failed to implement it correctly, having picked the technology just for the sake of doing so.

It’s important to balance a customer’s need to stay updated with the value that a solution provides, even if it’s not immediately evident sometimes. While there was a period where blockchain was riding on inflated hype and businesses were applying blockchain to everything, I would say that this period was actually bad for the blockchain industry. The use cases might have spiked significantly when the hype was peaking, but I’d bet that most of them were quite short-lived.

As blockchain providers and the face of the industry, you have the responsibility to take the industry forward, rather than doing stuff that isn’t value-additive to clients. Even if customers buy into the hype and look for you to implement a solution, make sure they find the right reasons to use it. Keep your eye on the value you’re providing and the problems that your technology needs to solve.

Playing the Long Game for Tech Selling

If you want to convince businesses to embrace blockchain and other emerging technologies, your first move is to understand who the right stakeholders are in the company. You can’t hit the centre of a bulls-eye target, or anywhere near it, if you don’t even know where your targets lie. The ideal stakeholders are those who care about innovation, upgrading current technology to maintain the cutting edge, and understand the value that they can get by implementing your solutions.

You may encounter someone who initially seems like the right stakeholder but find that they’re very risk-averse, with zero incentives to steer their organisation towards any technology adoption or innovation. If this person is the ultimate decision-maker behind implementing your solution, you may have to start navigating around them.

Seek out the individuals around them, particularly those who are either more forward-looking and innovative, or holding roles where being open-minded toward innovation is a major responsibility. You want to talk to them first, before opening discussions with the risk-averse decision-maker. Surround the individual with their colleagues and confidants, who have a good chance of convincing this person that the technology has merit and should at least be considered, backed by the total cost of ownership evaluated and use cases presented.

Another approach is to make it easier for businesses to get started with your solutions. Instead of presenting an all-or-nothing million-dollar cheque that they have to sign, go a different route. Get them oriented with a simple proof of concept, subsidised by your company or another party involved in the process, to get them to dip their toes into the technology and slowly embrace it. Perhaps you could offer them a trial period of three to six months, getting them to focus on the positive changes offered by your solution. If they feel that it’s not worth getting on board over their existing technology, it’s fine to let them walk away.

Driving change is never easy, regardless of size. Timing also plays a key role in influencing sales. For instance, if they have recently invested twenty million dollars in upgrading technology and infrastructure, it’s likely that they won’t be inclined to make another big investment for a while.

Sometimes, the best decision is actually to walk away from the client, especially when the timing is not right, or if they’re unready for various reasons. You can come back to them at a future time, perhaps in six months, when their peers in the industry have adopted emerging technologies and shown them the path forward.

In enterprise software, sales cycles tend to be quite long – even as an all-star hitting home runs, you might still need six to 12 months to get a client onboarded. In this context, the best way forward might be to wait another six months to make the sale to a client that is not yet prepared to commit today but might be in a better position to do so in the future. As a salesperson, time is precious, and you want to follow up immediately with the clients who have the budget, understand the value of your solutions, and possess the incentive to transform digitally.

1. Research Your Customer Thoroughly

To boost your chances of a successful sale, you don’t just want to understand your customers, but also the industries they are in, the trends affecting said industries and even the key metrics they use to define success.

2. Nail the Value Proposition

In the B2B tech space, customers will be evaluating the total cost of ownership for your solution. Value is on their minds, and it should be on yours when selling to them – elaborate on successful use cases, business problems that your tech can solve and how it provides value to them.

3. Talk to the Right People

Talking to the right people near the client, even in adjacent departments, goes a long way. They may offer advice on what factors are considered when approving a purchase, or even be in a position to approve or reject the sale.