Selling Ice In The Arctic

Innovation Selling Ice In The Arctic Arie Brish Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Sep 9, 2022, 09:15am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Arie Brish writes and speaks about the practical challenges and pitfalls in commercializing innovation.

cxo360. net . getty Trying to sell ice in the Arctic? This is a figure of speech to describe good salesmanship, not a literal challenge.

Good salesmanship will not work in this case, however. The last thing people who live in the Arctic need is more plain ice. Your starting point must be in finding a conversion process to add value to the ice in such a way that the Arctic people will pay a premium price for it.

What does ice have to do with the focus of this article? For the purpose of this piece, ice has two acronyms: “I. C. E.

” as in “I Consume Energy” on one side of the equation, and “I. C. E.

” as in “I Create Energy” on the other side (“convert” energy is more scientifically correct, but “create” energy sounds better for this discussion). Let’s investigate if we can sell ice to people who live in the Arctic by adding value to it in the form of energy. Furthermore, this is not the end of the story.

Let’s talk about adding even more value to the energy we just created. Data centers are power hogs. Data centers consume 10 to 50 times more electricity per square foot than a normal commercial building.

The two main power consumptions of data centers are energy used by the servers (about 40%) and energy utilization of the cooling system required to chill the hot servers (this is about 40% as well). MORE FOR YOU Google Issues Warning For 2 Billion Chrome Users Forget The MacBook Pro, Apple Has Bigger Plans Google Discounts Pixel 6, Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited-Time Sale Event On the “I Consume Energy” side of the equation, the cold climate in the Arctic significantly reduces the amount of energy required to power the cooling systems of the data center because the environment is naturally cold (rrrreally cold). Let’s talk now about the “I Create Energy” side of the equation.

Here, the natural ice comes to the rescue. Some of the ice is continuously melting slowly to feed the local rivers and lakes. This ice/water ecosystem is being harnessed to create hydroelectricity that is being used to power the Arctic data centers.

This trend of moving some of the global data centers to the Arctic regions added thousands of jobs to the local communities. We are adding value to the ice by converting it to data. The moral of the story here is instead of force-feeding people with something they don’t really need, add value by converting it into something they will pay for.

Instead of trying to sell gallons of ice, or CPU MIPS, find a way to add value to these basic generic metrics. Be aware that, quite often, the value of a product is emotional, not functional. People stand in line all night long to buy the latest model of a smartphone, not because their current phone is not sufficient but because they want to show up to the office the next morning and be the center of attention, at least for a few hours.

This is referred to as the emotional benefit of a product. Emotional selling is very powerful when you’re able to connect with customers. Business success, technology business included, is limited if you think in B2B (business-to-business) terms or B2C (business-to-consumers) terms; rather, salespeople should think about the H2H (human-to-human) benefits.

A good salesperson is one who can empathize with the customer and understand their needs. Furthermore, a good salesperson can function as a two-way street of sorts, especially in technology. In other words, a salesperson should not only be able to sell a product but also be an active part of the product planning process by communicating customers’ needs to the home office.

Once that needed product or service is ready to be used, the selling job becomes so much easier. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? Follow me on LinkedIn .

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