Selling your Solution

Imagine this - you have sat with the users for hours through the requirement gathering sessions. You got your technical team to design some magic to get those requirements in the application. Then one day you provide a demonstration of the built capabilities, but to your horror find that the SMEs are lukewarm at best. Happens to a lot of us - one of the things that you have to do is to reevaluate whether the story looks compelling to the users. That is where the art of selling your solution comes in.

The one major mistake that technologists often do is to assume that someone does care about the tech magic and the associated paraphernalia. The story that really sells is how the users get benefited from the implemented solution - may it be these of use, increased effectiveness or reduced cost of capturing and managing data, and so forth. Assuming that the solution is indeed good, you will find a lot more receptive audience by applying some basic thumb rules..

• State the business problem. This has to be done during the entire project, to make sure you are aligned to business problems, as the business group sees it
• Sell the solution to the business problem, not the technology. Do not focus on technical magic, no matter how magical it may seem to you
• Build a story. Everyone likes a good story. Even if you are demonstrating two screens and getting usability feedback, it is important to not showcase the two screens as simply that but include an end-to-end picture that the business SMEs/users understand