Got a great idea but maybe you need to convince some other people it's great idea?
I've got the plan for you! Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more
step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow!
We've all got great ideas but sometimes we''ve got to do a little work
convincing others that we have a great idea. Today I've got 10 tips for you that
are going to help you write a convincing pitch to help get others on board with your
idea. And stay tuned throughout the video and all the way to the end I'm going to
have some links for you where you can download our pitch worksheet that you
can use while you're going through this video or after this video to put
together your ideas for your 10 steps to pitch your great idea and some other
bonus downloads that we'll have for you at the end of the video. As we grow as
leaders we start to see that there's more good that we want to do in the
world. We get more ambitious about the things we want to achieve and we can't
do these things all by ourselves so we need to build teams around us to do them.
To do that we often have to convince people that our ideas really are great
ideas. Not everyone goes in automatically believing that. So whether you're going
to your boss to get approval for a change you want to
make in the workplace, an improvement you want to make for your team. Or you're
building a new team around a new idea that you're really excited about. Or
you're trying to make a big change your existing team. How successful you are in
making those changes and convincing the people that you need to convince to get
on board with your plan depends on how much preparation work, how much you do
your homework, going into the into those conversations, those pitches that you're
going to make. That's what today's video is going to be about. It's not
anything about so much how you make a presentation, make a pitch, we're going to
talk about that next week the communication that goes on that'll be
for next week's video. But this week we're going to talk about the
preparation work you can do to really get yourself ready and make a convincing
pitch before you go in and make the pitch. Tip number one is to recognize
that people don't like change. If you take away nothing else from this video
today, remember that people don't like change and use that as you're working
with the other nine tips from this video. Keep that in mind as you're working
through the rest of these tips and steps. You don't have to be happy about it. You
don't have to like it, but just recognize that people don't like change and
whatever it is that you're pitching is probably
a big change for somebody and you're going to have to find a way to bring them
on board. Now everybody's different, everyone has a different degree to which
they are tolerant of change everyone has some things that they really aren't that
upset about if it changes and people have things that are very close to them
that they will resist very strongly if you try to bring about a change. So
you're going to have to get to know the people involved but just recognize that
people don't like change, that you're going to have to combat, you're going to
fight that human nature, that resistance that all humans have to
change. Keep that in mind as we talk about the rest of these tips. Next you've
got to identify the problem. Now, if you're getting ready to make a pitch, you're
thinking about making a pitch to people, you probably already have a solution in
mind, and that's great, that's okay. But you may have to do some convincing that
there's even a problem in the first place. The people you're pitching to
may not either understand if there's a problem or believe that what you're
talking about is a problem that needs to be solved. And to do that it helps to be
really clear and objective about what the problem is and really clearly
defining it. And you don't want to do this just in terms of what the problem
is, but you want to get into who the problem is for. Who does this impact? Is
it just you? Is it your team? Is it your organization as a whole?
When does this problem occur? Is it every day? Is it once a year? Is it once every
couple years? Is it coming up again really quickly and you're going to have
to deal with it? Or is it something that maybe you don't need to make a
decision right away on? Where does this problem occur? Is it localized or is it
widespread? And go though that whole who, what, when, where, why framework we talk about,
those five W framework that we talked about some times and use that to really
clearly define the problem. Next step brainstorm potential solutions. Like I
said you probably already have an idea of a solution in mind and it probably is
the right way to go. But what's really helpful is to brainstorm some possible
solutions that could be applied besides the one you've already got in mind and
helps to pull a team around you to do this. But what this does is this lets you
look at the problem from alternate perspectives. Looking from alternate
angles. At the end of the day does it matter if your solution is the one
picked or that you just get one that solves the problem? And these alternate
solutions may turn out to be more elegant. They may turn out to use less
resources. They may turn out to be a quicker solution. So take a look at what
the options are for the solution, not just the one you have in mind, and be
ready to talk about what those options are
when you do go make the pitch later on. Once you've got your solutions
identified, your multiple options for solutions identified, take a look at what the
impacts, both positive and negative, are of each of those solutions. And not just the
what, but the who again. You may have a really positive impact for your team but
the solution you've chosen or one of your preferred solutions might have a
really negative impact on another team and that might be a hard decision for a
decision-maker to get on board with. So don't just take a look at what the impacts are
but who they're going to affect and how much they can impact them. And it's
always important to remember you've got to go back and tie this to the problem
that's trying to be solved. You've got to look at which solutions have the most
payoff in terms of impact and factor that into your decision space as well.
Step number five is to identify any risks with the potential solution. So
these could be safety risks, they could be security risks, it could be financial
risks, they could be administrative risks, personnel risk. There's all kinds of
risks and you know better than I do what the risks are in your organization but
it's really important to identify those risks, highlight those risks and take a
sit down and take a really hard look at how you can mitigate those risks. What
additional steps can you take to mitigate those risks and make it easier
for a decision-maker to get on board with picking your solution?
Alright we're halfway through with our ten tips on how to write a great pitch.
The next step, step number six is go and actively solicit the views of others
about your solution. You're going to find people who are really going to like your
solution you're going to find people who really don't like your solution and you're
to find people who are on the fence. And you want to collect all of their
opinions and all their thoughts before you go pitch to the decision-maker. So
try to sit down with the people who really love your solution sit down let's
find out what they really love about it and get them to kind of go on the record
saying this is what I really love about this and this is how it helps me. For the
people who really don't like it, find out what's bothering them about that and
again like going back to the risk see what you can do to mitigate that. See
what you can do to solve their problem and incorporate their needs and their
desires into the solution. And for the people on the fence, they may just be
resistant to change in that's okay but that's all part of this is you've got to
figure out how to get past that resistance to change because the
decision makers are probably going to feel a little bit bit of that resistance
to change. Those people are on the fence they may, you know, a lot of times I've
heard in the Air Force "I don't hate it but I don't love it" and so it
really helps to pull that thread with the people who are on the fence and get
there back and how you can make the solution
better before you go to the decision-maker. Now that you've got a lot
of information to work with you've probably got a preferred solution and
maybe an alternative in mind or a couple alternatives in mind which you're going
to pitch the decision-maker, now it's time to brainstorm what the unintended
consequences will be. And this takes a little bit of creativity because
these are unintended consequences. They are things that you aren't planning on
happening. So this is where some of that feedback you got in the last step, the
people who weren't so thrilled about your idea, the people who are on the
fence, you can use some of this feedback to incorporate some of those think about
what some of those unintended consequences are. In the military we called
these second and third-order effects. They weren't what we were trying to do, but they
come as a result of what we did. And at least go into this exercise, even if you
don't come up with anything solid, going through this exercise will help you
because when the decision-maker asks starts to ask certain questions about
what about these things you can at least say, "Sir we took a look at that and we
gave this some thought and we think that these will be the
consequences that would come of that" So now we have at least some idea of what
might happen. What some of the risks might be as we implement this solution.
All right! Now we're getting into the nuts and bolts of it.
Step number 8 is to identify the resources you need and a lot of times this is what
makes or breaks a pitch. How much is it going to cost? Whether that's in terms of
dollars, money, or even time or effort. And this is something you've got to really be
able to clearly state to the decision-maker. How much is it going to
cost them? Again, whether it's in terms of money or effort or people's time, to go
implement the solution and how does it tie back to the problem a lot of times
what you're going to hear a decision-maker say is is the juice
really worth the squeeze on this. So you've got to have really solid evidence
and really clear, detailed understanding of how many, how much and how many
resources that I need to go into solving this problem and implementing your
solution. Without that level of detail, without that level of confidence that
you can stick to your projection then you, then a decision maker is going to have a really
hard time signing off on this plan. Again whether this is your boss approving your idea
or even if you're trying to convince your team that you're going to go in a
new direction, you're telling your team this is a new direction we're going to go in
and how we're going to do business in a new way, these are some of the points of
resistance. And resources, especially money are going to be one of the main
points resistance. "It's going to cost too much." So you need to be able to show in great
detail that you understand the costs and if the costs are worth it to solve the
problem. We're almost there I promise! We're on to step number nine and that's
to show the path to implementation. It's really important to show that time line.
If we start today or when we start on day zero or day 1 or whatever day you
choose to call it, how many days is it going to take? What are the milestones we're
going to achieve? Where are we going to report back in? How are we going to know
that we're successful on the path to solution? It's important to show this
path implementation. Again, just like with the resources, just like with the money
or effort, you're showing that you understand how much effort this is going
to take how much time it's going to take and you are showing those points where
you going to self-evaluate and that you're going to reconfigure or retool or
readjust the solution based on what you're learning. All right the last tip,
the last step is to offer multiple options. Sometimes the preferred solution
you have those resources just may be too much, that timeline may just be too long
to solve that problem. The effort, the juice may not be worth the squeeze for
the solution the perfect solution you have in mind. So it's great to go back to
where you brainstorm those other other possibilities earlier in these steps and
look at some of those and see if there's some other options you can offer. In the
military we called them courses of action. We almost always tried to offer at least
three courses of action to a decision maker. So you said, "Sir here's the, here's
the, you know, number one top solution we recommend but here are some alternatives
as well." And you want to flesh out those alternatives and and all of the steps
you talked about with your preferred solution, identifying those risks,
identifying the resources, the opinions of others, the impact of second and third
order effects, make sure you do that for all the other other options that you're
considering and all the other options you're presenting. But if you give a
decision-maker a yes-or-no all-or-nothing option sometimes if the
juice isn't worth the squeeze, especially if the resources that are too
much to handle, you might get that no decision and you won't get that problem
solved. So you may want to have a couple of options in your hip pocket where
that's part of your planned presentation or they're just some options if the
decision-maker asks what other options you have. You may want to have
some of those options in your hip pocket so that you can say "Sir, we've taken a
look at all these things and here the options we're presenting you
and we recommend this one, but these options would also solve the
problem we're talking about." So there are your ten tips for writing a convincing
pitch. Next week we're going to talk about the communication aspect, the
presentation aspect of making a pitch and we've got some tips for you there.
But really this week was about doing that prep work and I hope you're hanging
with all 10 of those tips and you're able to go down and look in the
description here. Get that worksheet. So take that worksheet and use that to fill
in your ideas it'll walk you through all the steps we talked about today all 10
steps are in that worksheet. So take a look at that. I know if you put the work in,
all that work will pay off and then come back and see us next week. We'll talk
about the presentation tips when you go make that pitch to whoever's making the
decision for you. If you found this helpful please like, comment and share
click on that link below we've got for you we've got that worksheet that we
talked about in this video and we've got our free leadership development worksheet and that
will help you set your career goals so that's 2 5 and 10 years and build a plan
of action to achieve them. So we've got a couple links for you this week. If you
have any business or leadership questions leave us a comment below we'd
love to answer that for you we'd love to hear from all of you. Or email us at info@evilgeniusleadership.com. evilgeniusleadership.com is also where you genius leadership calm is also where you
can find about all of our training and coaching programs. So whether you're
looking for doing a group workshop or maybe some group coaching or even some
one-on-one work with a coach for your leadership style and your professional
career goals check us out at evilgeniusleadership.com
We'd love to do a free consultation with you and see if we can help you meet
your goals. Thanks for watching today, I really appreciate it. And remember, the
future is out there, lead the way!
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