Pitch without making it all about the money

Ever tried pitching a new initiative at work, but couldn’t get people on board? If so, you’re not alone. Transferring an idea from your mind to others is one of the hardest tasks, especially when the business world often demands numbers like ROI or savings as justification. Are there other options?

No matter what position you hold, I believe that most decisions we make at work become business cases. It doesn't matter if you're a developer, team leader, project manager, or salesperson. A business case can be a 5-page document, a 5-sentence message in Teams, or a 5-minute call (or even a 55-minute one). The bigger the case, the more important it is to align the guns (the people) in the right direction. And this is surprisingly hard! Part of the challenge is due to a lack of engagement. The basic step to start improving this is to make sure everyone involved understands why you support a particular decision.

If you don’t explain why it matters, you don’t share a reason to support you

How will that make money?

In almost all cases while working in for-profit company all decisions can be boiled down to a simple metric how much will they help company make or save money. That’s what business are for, to make money by creating value for customers. The clearer and stronger connection between your initiative and correlation with company cashflow - the easier it is to push that idea further. If you can make this link quickly and easily, you’re on good track.

Reframing the question

How does this make our customer’s life better? - A customer-centric approach is one of the easiest perspective changes. Happier customers will stay around and continue buying from you, which means growing the business. For you though, making customers happy, make your leaders happy. Talking about ease of use, comfort, efficiency, keeping standards high is a good start.

What will happen if we don’t do this? - Good or bad. It plays a bit on emotions. Some people are more compelled by fear of loss and want to mitigate downside risk, while others care more about new gains and upside. The great thing about this framework is it addresses both, so you’re covered regardless.

Why now? - Every single business is just a big backlog of problems. This means that decisions to be made is not if your initiative was worth doing, but if your initiative is the best one to address now. There is always a resource game to play.

How does this get us closer to our company goal? - Particularly effective at bigger companies or those who adopt any sort of OKR procedures. Frame your idea as a means to an end for achieving the growth goals. That is handy as this proves we already agreed on the goal and you are now just trying to execute it, right?

How does this make us more competitive than XYZ? - No company exists in vacuum, competitors are always there. Depending on the market you’re in, it may bo more winner takes it all or equal opportunistic one, but the race is one nevertheless. Having an edge, monetary, functional, UX-one etc., is always a strong point for consideration.

What would our employees think? - Not every move is considered with customer only in mind. How would throwing a company Christmas Eve benefit customers for example? A lot of activity revolts around internal processes and structures. Chipping off a few minutes at the time from average day of our colleagues is a massive gain. Using tools that make onboarding newcomers faster or the ones that enable easier cooperation - same story.

Next time you pitch an idea, try these questions. They might just help you shape your business case more convincingly and get the support you need 🫡