How to Convince Your Clients to Embrace Your Innovative

Ideas
entrepreneurshandbook.co/how-to-convince-your-clients-to-embrace-your-innovative-ideas-71aa53ea7fee

17 de julio de 2020

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Step 1: Offer them something familiar

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Image for post
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

After selling my tech start-up Xioneer Systems in 2019, I remained

on board as the company’s CEO and a part of my job was to develop
new products for clients.

I enjoyed this because I loved creating new tech and after making
machines, widgets, and software for several years prior to our
acquisition, I thought that we also became quite good at it.

For one of our clients, we started the development of an original,

innovative, and highly effective product. It was breaking new ground
in the industry. And we believed it to be exactly what the client
needed.

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But we faced a problem: our client was unfamiliar with the tech
behind it. After days of talking and arguing about the benefits of
making it work for them, they rejected it:

“Andrei, you and your team have put in hard work in this one. But
your solution seems too complicated. Instead, we would like you to
come up with something… hmm… less fancy.”

Less fancy? We felt our hearts drop. It was frustrating to be hired as a

team of experts, only to learn that our client refused our most trusted
recommendation.

But you can still empower your client (or your boss) to accept your
innovative idea. And here is how we did it.

Familiarity Alleviates the Fear

According to the neuroscientist Gregory Berns, our brain prefers
familiar things. People root for the home team, and they are more
comfortable investing in businesses which are familiar to them.
Equity managers in the US and other countries prefer domestic
stock, etc.

Interestingly, familiar things are not necessarily more pleasurable or

rewarding. It’s just that our brains see unfamiliar things as alarming
and potentially dangerous. Anything which seems new, innovative,
and different triggers our fear of the unknown. Add the fear of failure
to the mix, and an innovative idea loses any chance for approval.

But luckily, the sense of familiarity quiets the fear center in our brain.

So we needed to propose something familiar to alleviate our client’s

worries: some tech they knew and felt comfortable around.

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Offer Two Solutions: an Innovative and a Familiar One
In 2018, Intel and PSB Research showed that most adults are more
excited about familiar products than emerging technologies.

So are we more thrilled about computers, tablets, and smartphones

than drones, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR)?
Apparently yes, because “newer, emerging technologies like AI and
5G are abstract, and harder to grasp, likely leading to anxiety around
what they may bring” according to Intel.

Our client wasn’t thrilled about our innovative solution either. So we

needed to find some old shoe tech with the aura of familiarity to keep
their fear in check.

And we found such tech in one of the client’s “cellar” labs: a relic
from a past project. So based on this tech, we offered them a feel-safe
solution. But there was a problem: it was by far not as effective as our
innovation.

And here comes the good part.

Now, equipped with a plan based on familiar tech, our client was
suddenly eager to explore the benefits of the innovative solution too.

And to our surprise, they agreed to develop both solutions side-by-

side. And the feel-safe solution became the contingency plan to the
innovative solution.

The contingency solution gave the client the safety and assurance
they needed. At the same time, the client didn’t want to miss out on
the highly effective solution we proposed.

It seemed like a perfect plan.

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I know what you’re thinking. Following two solutions seems like
chasing two rabbits and not catching any. “To do two things at once is
to do neither,” said Publilius Syrus two thousand years ago.

But in our case, the benefits outweighed the risks. There was just
more at stake because neither solution on its own was acceptable.
The client rejected the innovative solution, but the fail-safe solution
was not as effective as the innovation.

The client knew it; we knew it. So chasing two rabbits was a good
plan.

Teach Them About Your Innovation Regularly

We secured both solutions in our development schedule. So far, so
good.

But there was still a fair chance that at the end of our project, the
client would prefer the old-shoe to the innovation. That chance was
still there even if the innovation would beat the old shoe in
performance.

The fear of the unknown is just too strong of a motivator. And it’s
typically stronger than the fear of missing out.

But there was a solution.

Psychologists Chip Heath and Amos Tversky discovered something

interesting. They have shown that as consumers gain more
experience with a particular product, they start to feel more
confident about it and perceive it as less risky.

So if we wanted to resolve any reservations towards our innovation,

we had to make sure that our client gained enough experience with it.

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Over the following weeks, we used every opportunity to teach our
client about the tech. By regularly taking away the veil of the
unknown, we were making them more familiar with our tech:

“This week, our prototype performed five times faster without a

single failure…”

And then we went on to explain why our product was performing so

well compared to the old shoe solution. We exposed our client to the
new tech regularly: sometimes even every day.

Weeks passed, and with more experience, the client started to pay
more attention to new and unique features of the innovative solution.
Their fears began to alleviate, and they began to listen.

Finally, the client was confident enough to demonstrate the

innovative product on one of the largest trade shows in the industry.
It was a major achievement for the client and for us.

Where to Go From Here

It’s common to deal with clients or bosses who won’t accept
innovations. And the best way to approach them is to first listen to
their fears and worries. Because far too often, your client or boss will
reject a beneficial innovative solution because it’s too unfamiliar.

But don’t worry, we found that the following approach can work well
to persuade even a dinosaur towards an innovation.

When offering a novel, original, and innovative solution that will

challenge the gut of your client, do the following:

Step 1: Propose a back-up solution which is familiar to

them. A familiar solution will relieve some anxiety and will lure
them into trying your innovative solution along with the back-up
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plan.

Step 2: Then, use every opportunity to educate the client

about your innovation. Share results, opinions, and let them talk
to your experts. And do this regularly to maximize their exposure to
innovation. The more you do that, the more they get used to the
novel solution you are selling them.

But remember to stay objective. Guide them, don’t fight them.

At the end of the day, your client may develop enough trust in the
innovation and drop the contingency solution altogether. In this case,
celebrate: your hard work has paid for itself.

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