Many B2B product companies assume the market sees the world the same way their existing customers do.
It’s an understandable assumption. After all, the product is selling, your customers are seeing results, and your company hears the same success stories over and over.
But existing customers represent only a fraction of the market. Your current customers are the companies that have already recognized the problem and gone looking for a solution. The next stage of growth often lies with organizations that don’t yet realize the problem exists, or don’t yet believe it’s important enough to solve.
This is one of the fundamental challenges of B2B product commercialization: helping a broader market understand why a problem matters before expecting buyers to become interested in the solution.
That’s where many product companies unintentionally change the conversation too quickly. Instead of helping prospective buyers recognize the business problem, they begin by explaining the product:
- The features
- The technology
- The engineering excellence
- The performance
The assumption is that once people understand the product, they’ll see its value. The reality is that most buyers don’t begin with products, they begin with their business problems.
If they don’t recognize they have the problem your product solves, they have no reason to search for a solution, no matter how innovative your technology may be.
We hear CEOs say, “We already have customers, so clearly our approach works.”
We say, “It works for companies that have already recognized the problem. The next stage of your growth comes from reaching companies that haven’t.”
The mistake many technical companies make
Many companies assume the market is ready to hear about their product.
Technical teams understandably take pride in the engineering, they want to explain how the product works, why it’s different, and the technology behind it.
This tendency is not unique to industrial companies. In the Harvard Business Review article (subscription required) Why the Best Tech Firms Keep Customers Front-of-Mind, Jeremy Korst and Kimberly A. Whitler examine how technology companies can become so focused on innovation and product features that they lose sight of what customers actually want. Their argument reinforces an important principle of B2B product commercialization: technical excellence creates value only when it addresses a problem customers recognize and consider worth solving.
Unfortunately, your buyers rarely begin there; they begin with questions such as:
- How can I reduce operating costs?
- How can I improve reliability?
- How can I reduce risk?
- How can I make my operation more efficient?
Your product is one possible answer.
Educate before you promote
One of marketing’s most important jobs is helping the market recognize a business problem that deserves attention. Once buyers understand the problem, and it is a problem they have, they naturally become interested in potential solutions, one of which could be your product.
Instead of convincing someone they need your product, you’re helping them understand why the issue matters in the first place.
Effective B2B product commercialization requires more than explaining what a product does. It requires helping prospective customers understand the business consequences of leaving the problem unresolved.
A simple example
We recently worked with a company that sells a valve designed to reduce commercial water costs.
The first instinct was to explain the valve:
- The design
- The ease of installation
- Its performance
- The cost savings
But none of those details mattered if a prospect had never considered a much simpler question:
What if your business is paying for something it never actually uses?
Many commercial facilities don’t realize that air moving through their water system will also be measured by the meter (and measured as water, as the meter can’t tell the difference); as a result, they are paying for air as well as the water that passes through their water meter. Why pay for air?
Now the conversation has changed; the discussion is no longer about a valve, it’s about unnecessary operating costs.
Once buyers understand the potential problem and decide it is painful enough to solve, they’re naturally interested in learning whether a solution exists; only then does the product become relevant.
This principle applies far beyond products
Whether you manufacture industrial equipment, write software, develop instrumentation, invent monitoring technology, or create specialized components, the same principle applies.
If your innovation creates a new way of solving a problem, you may first need to help the market recognize the problem itself. The companies that successfully commercialize innovation begin by changing how buyers think.
Five questions
If your product isn’t gaining the traction you expected, ask yourself:
- Are we leading with product features instead of business problems?
- Are we assuming prospects already understand why our solution matters to them?
- If we removed our product from the conversation, would buyers still agree the problem is worth solving?
- Are we educating the market, or describing what we’ve built?
- Are we leading with “low price”?
The answers often reveal why even excellent products struggle to gain momentum in the market.
Next Steps
Many technical leaders tell me, “Once customers see our product, they understand the value.”
They’re often right. But the challenge isn’t convincing the people who see it, the challenge is helping enough of the right people realize they should want to see it in the first place. Markets rarely buy products they don’t yet understand.
One of the most valuable roles of B2B product commercialization is closing the gap between technical innovation and commercial understanding. When buyers recognize a problem, understand its financial or operational consequences, and see why addressing it matters, sales conversations become more productive and innovative products have a greater opportunity to succeed.
Let’s discuss a commercialization challenge your company is having.
