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Selling your ideas: A critical executive skill
by Robert B. Tucker
Chances are you are required, on a regular basis, to sell
ideas. Time and again in my work as an innovation coach, I
see that the ability to build the buy-in for our ideas is
a key determinant of success, both internally and externally.
How can you improve your skills in this vital arena? Here
are six suggestions:
1. Realize that selling ideas
is job one. Far from being a mere
after-thought, or something that, once the idea is ready for
launch, can be thrown over the wall to the marketing and sales
team to handle, successful innovators know that selling is
a constant need and never-ending requirement.
2. Focus on benefits, not features.
Will your new product or service save the customer time, improve
his/her social standing, solve a problem better than existing
solutions? Every effective sales professional knows to concentrate
on such benefits. Prospective buyers don’t care a whit
how your gizmo works, how many toggle switches it has, etc.
or anything else about its features, until they buy the benefits.
3. Emphasize the role of persuasion.
Constantly emphasize the need to win friends and influence
people internally and externally. Work on communication skills
and energizing, creative, briefings, descriptions, boardroom
reports, etc. Focus on crafting messages so that people pay
attention. Make everyone on the team an idea evangelist.
4. Try out ideas on skeptical thinkers
first. Your friends are likely to give you the positive
feedback you want to hear. But before you really decide to
commit all out to an idea, try it out on your toughest critic.
Humbly invite them to tear it apart, find the weaknesses.
Then, see how you feel. If you’re still convinced you’ve
got something, go for it. If not, you probably don’t
have the fire in the belly to see it through to fruition.
5. Speak the language of the people you
are selling to. Effective idea evangelists find out
as much as they can about the thinking styles of those they
are pitching. Are they analytical, quantitative? Then provide
numbers. Emotionally-driven? Come with anecdotes that convey
your message. If “big picture” oriented, don’t
bore them with details.
6. Help others visualize your idea. A
picture is worth a thousand words. And the more others can
feel, taste touch and most of all see your idea represented,
the greater your chances of getting a green light. People
don’t like to admit that they don’t understand,
or that you’ve confused them. But as every champion
knows, people don’t buy what they don’t understand.
Robert B. Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource,
an innovation consulting firm based in Santa Barbara, Calif.
A frequent keynote speaker at conferences, he is the author
of "Driving Growth Through Innovation: How Leading Firms
Are Transforming Their Futures."
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