How to Enhance Buyer Adoption of Your Products

Launching a new product can be an exhilarating time for your business. Your management team and staff members are optimistic about the company’s future. Your investors look forward to higher returns, and your suppliers anticipate larger purchase orders.

But what if your target market is not ready to buy your product?

What if your prospects do not adopt your new technology?

How can you speed up the rate of adoption for your new product?

These are questions you need to ask long before you begin to sell your product, and the answers may at first surprise you.

Sales Results Begin with Buyer Adoption

Many companies fail in promoting a new product because sellers and buyers clash. Sellers overvalue their innovations, whereas buyers overvalue the benefits of the products they own over those they do not own and do not know why they need the new product. Examples of product failures include:

• TiVo failed to meet projected sales of its digital video recorder, despite rave reviews from early adopters.
• Webvan ceased operations of its online grocery store because it could not attract a sufficient number of customers, despite spending over $1 billion
• Electric car sales lag behind projections even though they are more environmentally friendly than gas guzzling vehicles.

Nonetheless, the common knee-jerk approach to promote a new product is to increase your sales force and marketing budget. You may want to meet with as many prospects as possible to talk about your product solution. You may develop a website that highlights the benefits of the product. You may also execute an advertising campaign that promotes the product.

These are all good strategies when the market is ready to buy your product. But these strategies early on may limit your outcome. That’s because your prospect may not know enough about their problem to realize they need your solution.

If your prospect does not know what problem they need to solve, then how can you expect to sell your product solution?

To maximize sales of your product, you must first help your prospect understand his problem. The problem–and not your product–is where you must first focus your sales and marketing communication. This may seem odd, but once you understand the underlying psychology, you’ll soon see the strength in this approach.

What Is Buyer Adoption?

Buyers go through a process before they start to use a new technology or innovation. Some of the factors that can affect the rate of adoption to a product include advantages over existing products, ease of use and maintenance and cost.

Buyer adoption is a process buyers pursue to identify and solve a problem before they buy and use a new product solution.

The problem a buyer has is unmet needs or desired outcomes. Until the buyer is able to fully identify this problem, she may not realize your product is beneficial for her. So she doesn’t buy, at least not yet.

How You Can Enhance Buyer Adoption of Your Products

The number of buyers that are aware of their problems and actively seek a solution is what limits your sales outcome.
To increase your sales, your priority should be to help prospective buyers:

• identify their pain and clarify their problem
• see and understand options from different technologies available to solve the problem
• make behavioral changes throughout their organization to support your product solution 

By doing these things, you will expand and speed up the market potential for your product sales.

Identify the Problem

The best way to sell your product to prospective buyers is to focus on the buyer’s problem. Companies that address buyer concerns have a big competitive advantage.

You need to address the buyer’s problems and concerns throughout your marketing communication. The first place to do this is your website. That’s because more buyers today do NOT seek information from salespeople. They go to websites and look at the product page. Yet if the buyers go to your website and see just features about your product, they may get confused. They won’t likely know how it can help them if they don’t fully know the problem they must solve.

You’ll need to focus the content on your website and marketing materials on the common problems your prospects face. Focusing your content on the problem will enable more prospective buyers to find your website when they search for solutions to problems of which they are aware. You need to use keywords on your website that buyers use in their search. When they get to your site, the new content will engage buyers. It will empathize with the buyer’s pain. And it will help them see the viability of your solution.

Explore Solution Options

Once you begin to develop a relationship with the buyers, help them determine the requirements of a solution to their problem. This is NOT the time to start touting about your product because the buyers may not be ready. Instead show them all of the options and alternatives available in the market. Continue to identify and match problem with solution. Help the buyers differentiate the solution options. This strategy will help foster trust.

Change Organizational Behavior

The best way to sell is to get the buyer to want to buy from you. After you’ve helped the buyer identify his problem and see the landscape of solutions, you can present your product. This is the time to show why your product solves his unmet needs and desired outcomes. Now that you’ve developed a trusted relationship, you can push to close the sale.

You must also inspire the buyer to make the needed changes throughout their organization to support the product. These changes may vary by the type of product and industry.

Know What's Ahead

The rapid influx of new technologies makes it hard to sell a new product. Life cycles of these products are short. You must maximize return on investment before a newer technology comes along. No matter how fast technologies may emerge, it takes time for buyers to adopt.

Your company can gain a competitive advantage by integrating buyer adoption in your marketing strategy. The better your company can anticipate business symptoms, the better it will identify buyer problems. This can help you create the right message for your marketing communication. As a result, you’ll be able to reach more buyers faster and sell more products.