Innovation is more expensive to sell when the company lacks clarity on

• Ideal target customer attributes
• Value proposition per target customer
• Effective marketing message
• Effective lead generation strategy
• Competitors/alternatives
• Current institutional knowledge base
• Buyer’s decision criteria
• Required salesperson skill, experience
• Alignment between marketing and sales

The customer often lacks understanding

•  If they have the problem and urgency to solve it
• Little to no experience buying the solution
• Internal buying process has not be used for this type of purchase
• Advocate takes longer to make the internal sale
• Unclear who is a good referral for the salesperson

An effective marketing structure reduces the cost to sell innovation

• Greater on paper clarity of the ideal target customer profile 
• Company’s value proposition is accurately defined by customer profile 
• Marketing message focused on the customer’s value, pressure to act 
• Customers better equipped to make introductions 
• Qualified prospects will more often contact the company
• The sales team has better tools to educate the prospect
• Only qualified prospects are advanced by the sales team 
• The prospect has what they need to make the ‘internal sale’ 
• Customer experience and sales team feedback improves the marketing team work
• New categories and services can be tested in systematic process