B2B Marketer
Issue No. 51 - February/March 2010
What every high-tech SME wants
by Kimon Lycos and Kimon Lycos and Kimon Lycos and Kimon Lycos
If you are not involved with a high-tech SME selling to other companies, just skip this article. This is for SMEs which have created a wonderful innovation, or a breakthrough technology, and have bled through the ears to do it. Excuse my tone, but I feel very strongly about this topic and a segment I read recently in “Virgin Blue Voyeur – Success Files”, giving advice to SMEs has annoyed me. The advice was for someone who wants to sell something like knitted socks at retail. The suggested media channels of TV and radio offered nothing to the B2B guys.
An SME who has developed the next big thing for industry has nothing in common with mum and dad kicking off a bakery. When delivering advice, I wish those knocking out the prose could keep a specific target market in mind.
I have struck upon an exact formula for high-tech SMEs because I have looked purely at answering the question: “what does an SME selling technology and innovation to other companies globally want?” The answer is remarkably simple, and potentially very explosive. When you get rid of all the fluff, nonsense, noise and touchy-feely stuff, here is what every hightech SME wants in three parts.
Credability: It sucks being small. Even if you can melt carbon steel by thought alone, being small generates cancerous perceptions. Small means risk, uncertainty, lack of success, inability to perform, lack of popularity.
Thanks to our friend the Web you can be small, but take on the guise of something much bigger, to generate the credibility you deserve to match your capabilities. A website that is not only pitch-perfect, but also has the design, look and feel to attract the right type of audience becomes a powerful thing. Often websites from technology-based companies are technical. They are ablaze with motherhood statements and information only an expert understands. But sometimes you need to sell to people who are not experts, so ensure there is something called ‘benefits...
