If you think you’re selling innovation, you’re already two steps behind reality.
Despite what your gut or your PR agency might be telling you, here’s the painful truth about technical audiences: engineers don’t buy innovation – they avoid risk. They tackle problems. They solve critical issues. They only change what they absolutely must because failure isn’t a badge of honor – it’s a career risk. This isn’t hype. It’s grounded in how B2B tech buyers actually behave: they research extensively, they evaluate outcomes, and they relentlessly minimize risk long before they talk to sales. In fact, 68% of B2B buyers say minimizing perceived risk is one of their top motivations to research vendors on their own terms as noted by Brixon Group.
Don’t get me wrong, innovation is a feature that certainly influences decisions, but risk reduction is the currency that closes deals.
Why “Innovation” Isn’t Enough
Founders will tell me: “Our product is game-changing!” That’s great – until you realize your buyers hear: “Our product is unproven, unfamiliar, and might cost you your job if it fails.” That’s what “innovation” translates to in a risk-averse culture. Even Geoffrey Moore’s seminal work on crossing adoption gaps makes the same point: early adopters are ignited by potential, but the early majority – where real revenue lives – buys proven solutions that solve mission-critical pain points.
This objective difference – visionary enthusiasm vs. pragmatic pain relief – is what creates the “chasm.” Cross it by selling pain reduction and business outcomes, not features.
Image: Jim McKeeth, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Here’s some candid feedback that buyers actually say they dislike about tech vendors:
- inconsistent product and pricing information
- lack of support teams that understand their real problems
- vendors that don’t evolve with industry needs
- confusion about how the product fits their organization
What do they all have in common? They aren’t “innovation” complaints – they’re “risk” complaints.
Engineers Solve Problems. Show Them the Pain First.
Engineers will engage when you quantify their pain:
- “You’re spending 2–3x more time on manual process X than your competitors.”
- “Team Y’s error rate is costing you 18% in wasted cycles per quarter.”
- “Last year your outage costs exceeded your new tool’s total price.”
This kind of numeric pain articulation speaks the language of results – not buzzwords.
If you can’t clearly quantify the pain you eliminate and the risk you remove, your “innovation” is just an expensive science experiment the market didn’t ask to fund.
In your messaging and positioning:
- Don’t lead with tech specs – lead with the cost of NOT acting.
- Don’t describe features – quantify outcomes.
- Don’t promise “innovative” – promise certainty, reliability, and ROI.
Tips, Tricks & Tactics to Break Through
Take heart, if your growth has stalled, it’s not because the market doesn’t get you – it’s because your messaging doesn’t motivate them enough to act.
- Map the Pain Across the Buying Group. B2B tech buys involve multiple stakeholders – operations, IT, finance. Identify the financial, operational, and career risks for each.
- Build Proof Before You Pitch. Your early adopters aren’t signals of mainstream fit. Create case studies or scoped pilots showing measurable impact – evidence reduces risk.
- Adopt a Whole-Product Narrative. Articulate not just your tech – but onboarding, support, training, integrations, and success outcomes. That’s what pragmatists buy.
- Lead With External Validation. Buyers trust third-party references – analyst quotes, benchmarks, and user community proof – more than your hype.
- Quantify Pain, Then Present the Cure. A product without a measurable pain to cure is something that sounds nice – and gets ignored. That’s the difference between engineering excellence and commercial traction.
If your current story doesn’t name the pain, quantify it, and then show exactly how it’s solved – you’re selling innovation, not risk reduction.
Earn Adoption or Get Ignored
If your growth is stuck, it’s not because your technology isn’t impressive. It’s because you’ve confused brilliance with relevance. Markets don’t reward elegance, originality, or ambition – they reward solutions that remove pain, reduce risk, and deliver outcomes people can defend in a meeting and sleep with at night. Until you can clearly name the problem, quantify the cost of doing nothing, and prove you can fix it reliably, you’re not selling a solution – you’re asking buyers to take a leap of faith. And faith is not a buying criterion in B2B. Do the hard work. Expose the pain. Kill the fluff. Because the market doesn’t owe you adoption – you have to earn it.
If you’re serious about turning great engineering into explosive, market-led growth, stop polishing features and start fixing the problem your buyers can’t ignore – reach out today and let’s engineer your marketing to close the gap between innovation and adoption.
