If you believe that the best always prevails in a high-tech environment, here’s a story about the unmatched persuasive power of simplicity:

When I was a young R&D engineer, I developed a very small and cheap component to replace a rather expensive obsolete one on a project I was working on.

One day, a manufacturing line manager calls me and schedules a meeting with me and a project manager who may need what I’ve developed for another project.

We start the meeting and the project manager explains:

I have a fairly old product.

Even though it’s old-fashioned, it’s been very successful with our customers, and I don’t want to change a thing…

My problem is this component is obsolete by design and I have a new batch to manufacture… it’s hard to find a reliable supplier that has this component in stock.

…I heard you designed a cheap new component that can replace it, is that true?

So I show him my design and reply:
“It’s much better than you think. See, my cheap new component will not only replace your deprecated component, it actually replaces the entire module that your deprecated component sits in, and it’s much more robust than this old design you have Integrating my new design into your product will literally save you hundreds of dollars in manufacturing costs.”

And I had the smug smile of a young engineer on my face.

I was stunned… I couldn’t believe how good this sounds…

He looked at me…
Then he looked at my new design…
He then looked at the head of the manufacturing line…
Then he calmed down and thought for a minute.

He then quietly stood up and said, “On second thought, I think I’ll manage to find some supplier that I can buy that obsolete component from…thanks for your time anyway…”

And he left the room.

I was shocked!

I looked at the head of the manufacturing line and said, “Is this a joke? What the hell just happened here?! I showed this person a dream solution to his problem and he doesn’t want it.”

And then he explained something I will never forget:

“Look Shlomi, your design is good and it will actually save the project a lot of money, but look at this situation from that guy’s point of view: now he’s going to have to get a quote for the integration of this new component… testing …regulatory…documentation…instead of all that headache, you could find one more vendor with the obsolete component and it will give you some peace of mind until the next batch. I’ll do that at some point in the future.”

The moral of the story?

When selling B2B, the person on the other end is usually buying for a company, not for himself, but at the end of the day: he is a person with his own interest as top priority, and if the choice in favor of the company contradicts that interest his own: guess what choice he will make?…

Yes, a better solution for the business may not always be better for the person who needs to carry it out.

Always present your product and its implementation as the easiest thing to do, simply because laziness is a very tough adversary.