Strategies for Buy-In: How to present ideas that stakeholders love

The ability to align your ideas with commercial objectives and convince stakeholders is one of the most critical skills for every professional. Whether you are in development, design, marketing, or product management, you need to be able to translate the niches of your domain into something that anyone with any level of experience can understand the value of.

We recently spoke about this on a podcast episode and it reminded me that nobody necessarily teaches you these skills but you're expected to have them and be good at them. Your ability to pitch ideas well is something that improves over time and if I look back on my earlier career there are many things I would have pitched differently if I knew how to get a better outcome.

Understand the Business Context

Before pitching any idea, you need to understand the context you are pitching in. You can't align your ideas to business goals if you don't know what they are. This feels like an obvious one but I promise that unless you intentionally make time to research what factors are happening inside the business you can never assume that the problems of yesterday are the same as today. Revalidate exactly what the business goals are today. You don't want to do a disservice to your ideas because you simply didn't do your homework.

When we say business context, what is that? Your company mission and vision? Not necessarily. Go a little deeper, are there OKR's or KPI's that business leaders are currently striving for? How can your idea support those? The more you can reference specific targets the more relatable your pitch is to your business leaders. Your idea might help to "Increase Profit" but that's too vague for any executive to sink their teeth into. Try being specific with a statement like "reducing the cost of customer acquisition by 10% to hit our annual target profit margin". It doesn't quite roll off the tongue but it's measurable and relates to a business goal showing that you are not only aware of what they are but are actively seeking opportunities to achieve them. You might be able to see the dotted line between your idea and business objectives but if your pitch doesn't clearly articulate it in a measurable way, there's no way that dotted line is visible to any stakeholder.

Support the Broader Business

Pitching an idea that just serves the marketing team is fine if you're only taking resources only from marketing. If your idea takes even the smallest amount of time, energy or budget from another team you need to find a way to relate it to 2 or more other departments in the business. I hear you - that's sounds hard - but it might be easier than you think. Something like a high cost customer onboarding would impact sales, finance and customer facing teams. Take time to understeand how that problem impacts each of the relevant teams and try to tie this back to some existing initaitves they have on the go. More often than not they already have other initaitves in the works solving the problem a different way. Try to look for opportunities to tie it to those existing initatives so they are supporting each other, not competing. P.S If you are pitching your idea with a business case or presentation, being able to include direct quotes or references from other teams always gets you bonus points.

If you work in person, coffee catchups are my favourite for building the confidence and rapport to be an expert at this. Or if online, find a way to connect casually to learn what people are up to. I'm talking about the classic 'water cooler' chats where you can learn whats going on in others' worlds that wouldn't organically come up in a meeting. I'm always surprised what I learn from improving my relationships with those in other teams, plus gaining their trust is never a bad thing. Organically finding opportunities to align with other teams can happen when you make the space. You might even find new ideas or new inspiration strikes when you engage with other teams simply to stay in alignment and not to have them only support your idea.

Expect Objections

You can't effectively pitch your idea if you haven't considered what could go wrong (for those of us prone to anxiety - use your powers for good this time). Anticipate and Address Risks Before presenting your idea, think through potential objections and challenges.

This sounds like a rhetorical question but I'm genuinely asking: What could go wrong? Sit down with yourself and list all possible risks associated with your idea. My favourite way to do this is brainstorming every possible objection with sticky notes in Miro. Then once I've gotten everything laid out in front of me, I can start working on some classic card sorting of themes and assign them to a priority matrix of probability and severity. Classic Product Manager move. But it works. Once you see all of the risks laid out in front of you it's easier to see common themes and you could identify opportunities to introduce mitigations as a part of your pitch. The risks also seem less intimidating when they are colour-coordinated on a nice chart. Pink sticky notes are approachable and you can work with those risks.

Here's how I might break down the risks. Let's say you're proposing a new content strategy that makes all previously gated online content resources freely available to download. Before pitching, you might identify risks such as:

a) Loss of lead generation opportunities

b) Competitors accessing proprietary information

c) Increased website hosting costs

d) Potential for outdated content to remain accessible

Note that the risk isn't necessarily "the idea didn't work". These risks are possible risks if the idea does go well. What could be the cost of success and how are you prepared for it in your pitch?

If the benefits outweight the risk you'll have a stronger case. For this example, things like enhanced website analytics and how this will increase our conversion rate could help reduce the risk of point A if backed with enough research and data. Other than mitigating specific risks, proving that you've investigated what could go wrong demonstrates your ability to think critically about the proposal and your commitment to the company's overall success in the long term, not just the success of your idea.

If you've done all of this

If you've done all of this and are still looking for ways to "sweeten the deal" or prepare your big pitch, try some of these:

• Include market research regarding the problem space

• Include industry trends or things happening around you

• Include stats or metrics that quantify the problem

• Peer review with other teams before you pitch for feedback

• Incorporate their feedback into your presentation

• Peer review with someone who isn't from your company with fresh eyes

• Research if there are budget cycles that need to be taken into account

• Present multiple ideas or solutions to the problem so it feels as though they are choosing which solution they like more not whether or not they want the solution

If you are interested in more advice on how to present ideas that stakeholders love, there are a couple of resources I'd recommend. As a designer in a past life, the book Articulating Design Decisions always is a #1 for me and I recommend it to every creative. Whilst it is specific to design decisions at the end of the day it's a book about communication and how to convey creative concepts in a business setting and the advice still applies in this circumstance. Alternatively, below is the full episode link to our podcast episode if you want to immerse yourself in the discussion further. Happy pitching!