3 Keys to Getting Projects Approved by Slow Decision-Makers

You have a brilliant idea. It’s going to transform your business. It will help you get a huge leg up on your competitors and drive tons of money to the bottom line. Heck, if you can get this thing implemented you’ll probably get a big fat bonus and it’ll be a great holiday season at your house.

Here’s the catch – this idea is a little risky. It’s not fully proven in the market. There’s a chance of failure and with it, the loss of any investment the business makes. On balance, the risk-adjusted return from the project is astronomical but you have to get past the most difficult gate of all: the senior decision maker who has to approve the idea.

That’s no mean feat. Realize that many of these decision makers are busy and they might not have the same risk appetite you do. They might have a strong financial interest to NOT take on large risks (e.g., they have a large bonus coming if they hit their numbers this year and the risk of losing the investment you’re seeking would torpedo that bonus).

So how can you move the business forward in a climate where senior management is slow or hesitant to make a decision? Here are three things I’ve found to be extremely helpful in those situations.

Key #1: Understand the Decision Maker’s “Button”

People are motivated by different things. For some it’s about building something special. For others, it’s a promotion. And yet others are focused on a bonus or retirement. I refer to this primary motivation as their button. If you push it, things happen. Realize that sometimes you’ll push it in a positive way which will get them to support what you’re doing or you’ll push it in a negative way which leads them to throw up barriers.

Regardless of what the button is, there’s a high likelihood that whatever it is you’re working on might be at odds with that button. At best, the linkage between your idea and their button is somewhat murky.

The work you need to do in this case is reasonably straightforward. First, take a moment to evaluate what that stakeholder PERSONALLY cares about. This means setting aside whatever their job and responsibilities are on paper and really delving into what makes them tick as an individual. If you’re not sure, ask a colleague or even ask the decision maker themselves. You might be surprised how open they’ll be to discussing their objective function.

Second, candidly assess how your idea affects their button. If they’re looking to retire next year and they want to pull cash out of the business to do so, asking them to make a $500,000 investment for a return three years later will offend their sensibilities. Sure the idea makes sense for the business but for that decision maker, it’s a horrible idea.

Third, if your idea will push that button in a positive way, be sure to make your case in a manner that makes that perfectly clear. Show them how your idea will benefit them personally and directly. This key is all about communicating your idea in a manner that will resonate with your stakeholder.

Key #2: Articulate the Cost of Waiting
Time is money. Trite, I know, but true. Many decision makers who are hesitant to make a call will stall or defer that decision by asking for additional information. On the surface this seems like a good idea. The notion that you’ll make a better decision if you have more data and information seems axiomatic.

The problem is the marginal value of that incremental data declines precipitously. It’s a perverse Pareto Principle. Will being able to predict our customers’ exact behavior with 99% accuracy be a good thing? It sounds great. Unfortunately the time, cost, and effort involved with getting to that degree of certainty is extremely costly.

I had a great boss who really crystallized this concept for me. I had an idea I was pursuing and he asked when I’d make a decision on go/no go. I told him I wanted to do some more analysis and I’d have a decision by the end of the week (4 days later). He looked at me and pointedly said “then your business case had better be $5,600 higher when you come back to me.” I looked back at him with surprise and asked why.

“Well, if the case is worth $500,000 per year then that’s about $1,400 per day. If you wait 4 more days that costs me $5,600. Is the incremental analysis worth $5,600?”

“Probably not. I guess we just made a ‘go’ decision.”

This principle can work with your slow decision makers too. Articulate the cost of waiting. Show them how much that “extra certainty” costs in opportunity cost. It might help them get off the dime and take action to capture the value sooner.

Key #3: When All Else Fails, Run a Pilot

I’ve seen too many folks make cases that came across as “all or nothing.” In some cases that’s true – you can’t be half-pregnant on some of the projects you launch. For many projects and ideas, though, you can run a test or pilot.

If your decision maker doesn’t want to make the call to drop a new mail offer to your 50,000 clients because he’s not sure what the results will be, see if he’s open to sending out 5,000 as a test. Then if the test results are positive, drop the other 45,000 pieces of mail. If they’re not positive, you’ve mitigated the risk of the initiative and cut your losses more quickly.

It’s easy to argue not to implement huge projects. It’s much harder to argue against running a test or a pilot. By doing so, you can get to “yes” more quickly (and for an even faster way to get to yes, try a basic sensitivity analysis method like the one described in this article).

Turning the Three Keys

By understanding your key decision maker’s REAL concerns and articulating how your idea helps them achieve their goals you can build a solid base of support. From there, showing them the cost of delays makes making a decision a financially beneficial step. And finally, running a pilot gives you a chance to prove your case while getting over your decision maker’s risk aversion at the same time.

Give these keys a try the next time you’re encountering resistance to implementing an idea. They should help you break through some of your decision maker’s barriers.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC. This article was originally published by my buddies over at The Pursuit Group. You can find the original article here. Hop on over and read their stuff - it's some pretty insightful business thinking.

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

Lessons from Leonidas the Spartan King: Why Shrinking Your Business is Smart

Today's guest post is written by Brian Ahearn (no, that's not his picture at left). Brian's one of the most knowledgeable guys I know on the subject of influencing people (which is why he's been a guest here before). Enjoy!

I conducted a workshop recently called Principles of Persuasion. During a break, one of the students said she’d had a conversation with her five-year-old son and expressed parental surprise over something he said. She told him she was going to a meeting about leadership at work. He told her they had talked about leadership at school and he knew what a leader was. He said leaders were people who had followers. Simple and to the point, his definition was right on. Out of the mouth of babes!

Let’s look at this leader/follower idea as it applies to the online world. If you’re on Twitter then you follow people and people follow you. In a sense, for those who follow you, you’re a leader. You might be a leader by virtue of your expertise in an area or simply because people find you interesting. But, by definition of our young friend, people have chosen to follow you and therefore you’re a leader.

When I first joined Twitter I was amazed that some people had tens of thousands of followers. As I was building my first few hundred it was hard to keep up with them and I wondered how people could do it with thousands of followers.

The longer I’ve been on Twitter and the more I learn from different sources, the less I see the need for tens of thousands followers. In fact, I contend that maybe smaller, relatively speaking, can be better.

Could smaller actually be better? I think so, under the right circumstances.

Just ask the Spartans! Remember the movie The 300, where 300 Spartan warriors held off a several hundred thousand Persians at the battle of Thermopylae? The Spartans positioned themselves strategically so it was always a fair fight because the Persians could not bring all their might to bear in the narrow passage at Thermopylae.

Speaking of 300, how about the biblical account of Gideon going to battle against the Midianites? And you thought Gideon was the guy who wrote the Bible you found in your nightstand at the hotel! Gideon actually was a warrior who started with 22,000 men but God eventually reduced that number down to 300. Nonetheless, Gideon and his little band of warriors defeated an army of 135,000! In case you’re not a math major those odds were 450-1 against Gideon’s army and they still won!

I know you’re not here for a military history lesson so now I’m going to bringing this full circle and get to the point. Too often we get enamored by numbers and sheer size, when in reality there can be a lot of waste with “big.”

Another negative consequence can be that relationships are too impersonal. I’ll bet many of you reading this work for small companies and prefer that because you can get to know people better. Small businesses can feel more like family and they remain the backbone of the American economy.

In the online world, some of your followers are wonderful and others… well, let’s just say, you wouldn’t miss them if they were no longer tracking your Tweets, seeing your Facebook posts or on your LinkedIn contact list.

Maybe you’d be better off with 300 people, or some other relatively small number, following you IF those people were truly advocates for you. I see several benefits coming from this approach:

- You’d probably accomplish more with the same effort or less.
- Managing fewer followers would be easier.
- You’d really get a chance to know your followers as people.
- In turn, you could become more of an advocate for your followers.

How does this concept of “smaller is better” translate offline? In my industry, insurance, quite often I’ve seen agencies that could make more money on the bottom line by representing fewer companies and having fewer clients.

That’s right; fewer customers could mean more money for the bottom line. This is possible because fewer clients who place more business with the agency coupled with the choice to not to represent companies that don’t pay rock bottom commissions would ultimately generate more profit even if overall sales were lower. Ultimately that means the agency gets by with fewer clients but services those customers better because they have more time to do so. Oh yes, and in the process they humanize those people, word spreads and they start growing for all the right reasons.

What do you think? Can you translate this to your online world? Your business? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this because I realize its counter to the way most people go about their business.

- Brian Ahearn, CPCU, CTM, CMCT is a Senior Sales Consultant with the State Auto Insurance Companies in Columbus, OH. He's one of only two dozen Cialdini Method Certified Trainers in the world. Read more of his perspectives on his blog Influence PEOPLE.

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

Are You Telling Customers You Don't Care if They Die?

If you have kids, you know the nauseating feeling of one of your kids going down for the count and having to rush to the emergency room. I had that wonderful experience very recently. What I learned from that visit to the ER is businesses can make very strong statements about how little they care about their customers simply through the processes they use to run the organization.

I'm betting you have a few standard business processes that leave your customers and prospects feeling like you don't care if they die. First let's understand the ER story then evaluate how it might apply to your organization. Yes, I'm back on the kick of talking about how stupid policies can destroy customer relationships.

My daughter was curled up in a ball on our couch. She was grabbing her stomach and howling in pain. After a quick set of questions, I made the decision to take her to the ER. I've done some consulting work in health care so I understand and appreciate that the ER is also a business.

Once we arrived, she laid down on a couch howling in pain while I was subjected to a barrage of questions to get her registered. Net time: 5 minutes. We then headed to triage. That's when it started getting stupid and infuriating.

The nurse in triage asked a few questions and pecked at her laptop. Then the laptop wasn't working. She rebooted. Howling continued. Nurse pecking. Laptop not working. Call to Tech Support. Howling. Tech support lady arrives. Goes to swap out laptop for a new one. Howling. Reboot. 10 minutes. "Oh gee, I'll just take notes on my notepad instead!" (Nurse = not a genius). New laptop. 5 more minutes of pecking. Wheeled off to a treatment room.

Next nurse. Temperature. BP. Pecking. Laptop version of 20 questions. Pecking. Howling. "Oh I forgot, what was your temp? Did I already take it?" Pecking. Howling.

Now here's the part where I almost snapped. Registration lady wheels in her laptop. 20 questions for dad. Insurance company? Address? Cell phone? Howling. Employer? Mom's occupation? Can I see your insurance card? Oh, I need you to take it out of your wallet so I can scan it. Oh, I can't read it, can you read these numbers? Howling. I also need your driver's license. You know we're out of network so you'll have a $100 copay, right? Howling. How will you be paying? Credit card? Okay. Howling. Can I have your credit card now? *swipes* Here's your receipt. Howling. The doctor will be in in a little while.

HOLY ^%&&$&%^$@^%*&*! YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME! This was an exercise in process run amok. Sure all these things have to happen. I understand having to pay and that you need all my contact info, etc. but let's talk priorities people! You have a kid howling in pain and you're more concerned with getting a scan of my insurance card and swiping my Visa before you call the doctor? That process flow just screams "We don't care about your (the customer's) problem. We just want to fill out our forms and get our required information and money."

I know many of you are reading this and shaking your heads. You've probably had similar experiences in hospitals along the way. Here's the rub - I'll bet customers, prospects, and candidates have had similar experiences with YOUR business too. No? Answer these questions honestly then:

- When candidates apply for a job, do we ask for reams of information before we ask a single question about what they're interested in?

- When a prospect wants to become a customer, is the first thing we shove in their face a 47 page contract or nondisclosure agreement? Do we ask them to fill out a massive credit application or to provide nauseating amounts of background information on their company?

- When a new hire joins our firm, do we spend their first full day having them fill out forms and reading bureaucratic policies?

I'll bet you're shaking your head again. As much as I hate being cliche, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Is the first impression your firm makes a bureaucratic, risk averse, don't care about the other person just care about our paperwork and getting our money impression? What are you doing to demonstrate you understand the customer's perspective and needs?

Sure process has a place. But that place should be AFTER you've established some rapport and relationship with the other party. AFTER you've tried to understand their needs and concerns. AFTER they've become sold on working with you. Then yes, let the paper shuffle begin. But for crying out loud, DON'T send the message that a scan of an insurance card is more important than the pain they're in.

I'm sure you have analogs in your business. Go reevaluate the processes you use when you're dealing with clients, prospects, new hires, and anyone else your business works with. You might be surprised by the message you're conveying just by having your process steps out of order...

What do you think? How have you seen process take primacy over relationship? What techniques do you use to prevent this from happening?

And yes, my daughter is okay. Thank you for asking. I'm glad you care because Registration Lady clearly didn't.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

4 Ways NOT to Run an Internship Program

An internship program can be great for your company, but don’t do it simply because everyone else is. Just like Mom used to ask, “If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?” Make sure you can provide a mutually beneficial opportunity, and make sure you’re thinking from both perspectives – the employer and the intern – when you’re developing your program.

One of my favorite references of real-life internship nightmares (and how to prevent them) is Krista Reaves’ “Do Interns Take Lunch Breaks, Too?” It’s a pretty candid look at shocking internship debacles, including some of these common mistakes:

Mistake #1: Do you really need an intern?
I’ve worked with companies who act quickly before asking this question. Don’t hire – or even thinking about hiring – an intern if you don’t have realistic, meaningful opportunities to offer. Needing a body to fetch coffee and organize filing cabinets doesn’t count.

Among Reaves’ stories is that of Anne, who interned for a market research firm but ended up doing everything from picking up her boss’ dry cleaning to walking his kids home from school. She was even asked to appear on his behalf in court to ask for an extension for a non-work-related lawsuit. Um, no.

Solution: Don’t substitute an intern for a personal assistant, and don’t only think about it as a chance to help college students. It’s a chance to elevate your business as well. Say you’re a small, consumer products company that wants to target a new demographic but your full-time staff haven’t had time to do the research. This is the type of project where an eager, ambitious intern could help. Additionally, there are definite long-term economic benefits involved with hiring interns. They’re more likely to stick around after graduating from college, meaning your organization may have a work-ready employee who can step right in without much training.

Mistake #2: Lookin’ for interns in all the wrong places
Many companies run into the obligation of hiring a friend or colleague’s child instead of the most deserving candidate. I’ve seen this situation many times. It rarely turns out well for either party. As an employer you’re potentially stuck with unqualified help, and the intern either feels a sense of entitlement or is well aware that they’re not deserving of the position. It’s a negative, bitter situation you want to avoid.

Solution: Start with local colleges and universities. They have career services departments and will be more than happy to spread the word to their students for free. Also check out local chambers of commerce or other organizations that assist with workforce development. Resources like ColumbusInternships.com, a site including both internship opportunities and student resumes, is a good example of what’s happening in central Ohio. The Columbus Chamber of Commerce created this site to make the internship process more effective. In 2009, 5,000 students and 400 employers registered, and 800 internship opportunities were posted.

Mistake #3: Unclear or inconsistent workplace “rules”
Are office guidelines like appropriate workplace attire and acceptable work hours unclear to your full-time employees? Probably not. Then there’s no reason these expectations should be unclear to your interns. Although they’re temporary employees, interns should be a seamless extension of your full-time staff. I’ve heard of companies with summer interns calling in multiple “sick days” after a wild weekend, and expecting payment for time missed. If it wouldn’t fly with your full-time staff, it shouldn’t fly with your intern.

Things can go badly when guidelines aren’t established up front. In “Do Interns Take Lunch Breaks, Too?,” ambitious Lauren bought hundreds of dollars worth of business attire for her summer publishing internship only to show up on day one to a sea of jeans- and flip-flop-wearing co-workers. She was then banished to the basement without knowing when she could take lunch, where the restroom was located, or even what time she could leave the office.

Solution: Avoid these problems by clearly defining start and end dates, office policies, etc. up front. Although interns are not a full-time employees, it’s still important to give them a clear picture of office culture. If there’s a strict dress code – or if it’s a casual environment – make sure that it’s communicated in advance. Discuss attendance policies around academic duties like mid-terms and finals, as the intern will likely be doubling as a student. And, for the love of humanity, point your intern to the nearest restroom and communicate details on lunch breaks and quitting time.

Mistake #4: Closing the line of communication
Don’t think your work is done once the hiring process is over. Interns need day-to-day guidance regarding job tasks and regular follow up to see how things are going. Unfortunately you can’t simply unleash an intern in a new environment and expect them to thrive automatically. Companies I’ve seen take this approach end up with one of two things: an intern who lacks overall productivity and motivation, or an intern who quits and moves on to bigger and better things.

Intern Whitney, who Reaves describes in a case study, is a perfect example. She experiences a roller coaster ride of miscommunication with her interior design boss, ranging from being accused of stealing an expensive fabric sample to being “invited” to a pricey, two-glasses-of-wine lunch (and being asked to foot the $50 bill), and then being asked as a personal guest at the supervisor’s family outing. Not only were her actions confusing for the intern, they were just plain wrong. Standard rules of human contact still apply with interns.

Solution: Assign an employee-mentor to the intern, involve them in external meetings and lunches and evaluate the intern’s experience before parting ways. Be friendly (and consistent) in your communication, and use constructive criticism. These tactics will make your intern feel more engaged and place more value on the tasks at hand. At the end of an internship, it’s important to ask what worked well and what didn’t so you can reevaluate for the next internship position.

For more information about implementing an effective internship in your organization, check out ColumbusInternships.com.

Dave Cofer is an internship consultant with the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, and also the founder of Cofer Consulting Solutions, a full-service provider of entry talent management solutions. You can contact him at David.Cofer@CoferConsulting.com.

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!

How Blowing Up Your Business Can Drive Innovation

Last week I pounded on folks for being wimps and not making decisions. Out of fairness, many of you want to move your organizations forward but might not have all the tools or resources to do so, Given that, I'd like to provide you some explosives.

These are the good kind of explosives. The kind that enable you to blow up your business model and find innovative new ways of doing things. Too many times we get trapped by our routines. Have you ever tried to change your personal routine? Uncomfortable and difficult, right? Now multiply that by the number of people in your organization and you have a sense for why nothing ever changes.

Sometimes the only way to change things is to (mentally) throw away everything you're doing and declare a "do over." In doing so, new opportunities might pop out and innovative ways of doing things can emerge.

Far too often, we wave our arms at innovation. We spew consultospeak like "think outside the box, push the envelope, and break the paradigm" with absolutely no clue what those words mean or how to do pursue those tasks. For those of you who know thoughtLEADERS well, we see it as our charge to provide you practical tools for taking action (shameless plug: we teach classes on this stuff too).

Enough blathering - here's how you can (constructively) blow up your business and find potentially innovative new ideas:

When we talk about blowing up the business, we look at three kinds of explosives: blowing up the business model, blowing up your revenues, and blowing up your costs. The methodology requires you to simply ask yourself some expansive yet difficult questions. The rules of good brainstorming apply (no judging, no holding back ideas, and make the brainstorm time-bound or you'll never stop generating ideas).

At first blush, these questions will look ludicrous. It's deliberate. They're expansive. They're designed to knock you out of the land of incrementalism and into a broader, more innovative space. Here are a few thought starters you can use:

Blow Up the Business Model
- If you had a “do over,” what would you build differently? Why?
- If you moved this business to India or China (both customers and operations), how would you restructure to be more profitable?
- How would you double profits within 2 years?

Blow Up Your Revenues
- Who could create more value with our customer base than we can? Why?
- How would you triple revenues within 5 years?
- What are the 10 products we aren’t offering our customers that we should be?

Blow Up Your Costs
- How would you run this business with 2/3 fewer people?
- How could you eliminate your job?
- What is the most wasteful thing we do and why haven’t we stopped doing it?

We've identified many other questions along this vein. This is only a start. As you answer these questions, new ideas should emerge. Challenges to the status quo should spring forth from these conversations. Those ideas are the heart of innovation.

These questions should make you feel uncomfortable. If you're doing it right, they should feel like crazy talk. The bottom line is, until you start challenging your everyday routines and pushing hard to change them, you'll NEVER make the huge strides you're looking for in innovation.

Every organization needs an occasional hard shove to break out of its comfort zone. Sometimes the market gives you that shove (which is always unpleasant). Sometimes that shove comes from within. Consider this post a good, hard, constructive shove.

What questions have you found useful to ask to drive change in your organization? How do you generate innovative solutions?

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Click HERE to read the rest of this post!