17: Step 5 - Sell
Many innovators seem to expect that the brilliance of their ideas will make them appealing to others. Sadly, they are entirely wrong about that. Good ideas, particularly unorthodox ones, are not automatically recognized and adopted, and many languish for lack of support. Whether the innovator did not sell his ideas at all, or merely presented them poorly, they did not gather the steam they needed to move forward.
A person working alone needs only his own confidence and motivation to move him forward. But in a complex organization, the confidence of many others may be needed - anyone whose cooperation is necessary to execute a plan must be on board with it. And that can be difficult.
Stakeholder Map
This chapter focuses on the "stakeholder map," a diagram that shows the key individuals and groups who will need to play a role in supporting an idea, or who have the authority to approve or block others from contributing.
Great influencers seem to know this intuitively, and it is often the reason that employees with long tenure are able to successfully sell an idea to the right people as they have experience interacting with them. For those lacking intuition or an established network of contacts, it requires more effort to sell an idea.
External stakeholders should not be ignored, though they are generally not directly accessible. The investors in the firm, who ultimately authorize major initiatives, are accessible only through the C-suite. The customers outside the firm are not accessible, but there is marketing research as well as internal knowledge in the sales and customer support personnel.
Stakeholder maps are very familiar to those who work in public relations: they have a standing list of the people and groups who will be vocal about anything the company does, either criticizing or defending, which they can review whenever the company makes a move that the public will notice.
Having this map in advance is critical, as the worst position to be in is defensive - waiting to see who reacts and having to deal with their objections as they arise, which means constantly being unprepared for an argument that should have been predicted.
Once this map is assembled, you will need to plan for stakeholder communications, for which the author suggests a four-step process:
- Goal - What do you want to achieve?
- Audience - Who will react, positively or negatively?
- Message - What will you need to say to get their support?
- Expression - What method do you use to deliver the message?
(EN: I notice that this spells out the acronym "game" - which makes me a bit cautious as people who are fond of acronyms tend to exclude or distort things in order to get the letters to work out.)
Your G.A.M.E. Plan
Once this map is assembled, you will need to plan for stakeholder communications, for which the author suggests a four-step process:
- Goal - What do you want to achieve?
- Audience - Who will react, positively or negatively?
- Message - What will you need to say to get their support?
- Expression - What method do you use to deliver the message?
(EN: I am reactively cautious of acronyms, as theorists tend to exclude or distort things in order to get the letters to work out.)
Goal
The goal in this instance is not the goal of your idea, but the goal of selling the idea: to get support from the right people so that you plan can move forward.
First, make sure you understand what role you are going to ask them to play and the attitude they will take toward that proposal: will the accept or reject it, and why will they do so?
Second, do not assume that you can march into their office and declare your plan. You must decide how to approach them, and reach them in a state of mind where they are receptive to listening.
Finally, you will need to convince them that the idea is in their interests. If you are asking them to do something that has no personal benefit, it will be a much harder sell.
Audience
A good persuader realizes that an idea must appeal to his audience, and that what makes the idea attractive to himself does not make it attractive to others. For each stakeholder, ask:
- Are they aware of the issue?
- Do they understand the issue?
- Do they have a strong point of view about the issue?
- What motivates them to have that point of view?
(EN: The author goes no further, but it is often about analyzing their interests. Few people in business, or elsewhere, are so bored and so rich that they will devote resources to any suggestion. They are generally doing things with their resources and any new suggestion poses a threat to their plans - whether it directly interferes or merely saps resources.)
Message
Once you know the audience and what you wish them to do, craft a message that is most likely to achieve your desired outcome.
The author suggests that "studies" have show that logic is a relatively ineffective approach to changing minds, so you must use something "other than logic" to support their decision.
(EN: The author is not a very good rhetorician. Logic (logos) is ultimately what wins their long-term support and must be the basis - but it does not get attention. Using personal appeals (ethos) or emotional ones (pathos) will get attention, but do not sustain support. It's likely too much to cover the entire topic here, but the authors assertion to use smoke and mirrors alone cannot stand uncontested.)
He then puts out a few random ideas:
- Open with a bang to get their attention, then explain the details
- Use the problem-solving approach: describe the situation, tell why it's bad, suggest what needs to be changed, then present your plan to change it.
- Use metaphors to sell complex ideas - make it simple for them to grasp the basic structure before attending to the filigree
- Use stories to sell a plan rather than describing it as a system
Expression
The expression of a message should begin before the writing of the message. Determine whether it should be delivered orally or in writing, who should be present, where the presentation should take place, whether it should be done in mass or broken into smaller groups, etc.
(EN: His consideration of expression stops here.)
The Exercise
(EN: The end-of-chapter exercise adds nothing to the content of the chapter. It suggests that you think about the topics, in the same order they were presented, but does not offer techniques or methodologies for doing so.)