Sell

- Smart Products and Smart Operations are new to both the buyer and the seller. Therefore, to mitigate the higher risk of failure, we must get buy-in from the customer earlier than normal in the sales cycle. To minimize development costs and delivery time, we get the feedback even before we start engineering or development. To get this early customer feedback for a Smart Product, or internal stakeholder feedback for a Smart Operation, we sell through the development cycle. This selling takes place in a series of customer meetings for a Smart Product or internal stakeholder meetings for a Smart Operations. And it's always best to start with so-called friends and family customers, but this is a sales meeting and the reason it's a sales meeting and you're trying to sell this product in advance of you building it, is because the best feedback comes when money is on the line. This is an iterative process, not a linear one.…