Five tips on how to sell high tech in low tech industries

By Robin Saluoks, Co-Founder and CEO of eAgronom.

Do you speak Klingon, Dothraki or Valyrian? No, me neither. But that's what I would tell my customers if I tried to explain some of the details of our technology to them.

My clients are farmers who do backbreaking dusk-to-dawn work to put food on our tables; they don't have time to spend hours hunched over laptops keeping up with the latest software updates, nor should they have to. Things have to work, and if something goes wrong, there has to be someone to turn to.

There are many industries, or probably parts of any industry, where high tech needs to be translated into low-tech uses, which, believe me, is no small feat. Having spent the last eight years of my life doing just that, allow me to share some tips on how to get it right the first time.

1. Know your users

It may seem obvious, but it's harder than you think. Confirmation bias – a human tendency to favor information consistent with our existing beliefs – is a big problem in software development that the industry is struggling to get a handle on. It's like saying that you might think you know how your users think and act, but that might be far from the truth.

Before getting into product development, ideally you should have personal experience yourself as a user in a particular area, but if that's not possible, fully immerse yourself in that world . Of course, there are cases of disruptive innovation where a technology no one knew they needed took the world by storm; however, more often than not, technology should enrich life, not disrupt it. Amazon may have made us all online shoppers and Apple made everyone carry a mini laptop in their pocket, but disruptive examples like this are rare.

2. Gather ongoing feedback

At my company, we don't sit in the office thinking about ways to improve the lives of farmers. We talk to them. When we first launched our farm management software in 2016, our platform was not slick and was singing and dancing. I would go to meetings with farmers, come back to the office with new information and ideas, and then the dev team would get down to coding.

This crude and, to some, seemingly haphazard way of working developed due to chance events that led to the creation of our business, but it means we have always been perfectly in tune with our customer base. and were able to build an intuitive platform that feels natural to use.

It is also important not to be afraid of comments. Don't hide. Instead, heed negative feedback and confront your mistakes. No one can get it all right the first time.

3. Dive deep into new markets

When considering entering new markets, you should once again be aware of confirmation bias. You may think the neighboring market works the same way as your home market - the culture, people and challenges are the same and you can get away with an English version rather than localizing the software. - but those decisions can come back to haunt you.

When we decided to enter Poland, for example, I temporarily moved there. Poland is the second largest grain producer in Europe, and we knew we had to get into the market right the first time. I'm not saying a drastic step like this is always necessary, but engaging experts in the field who can provide insights into your target audience in order to refine strategy, messages and approach is a critically important.

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