5 Keys To Effectively Sell IT Projects To The Business- Valutrics

 

Before you can build an IT project, you have to get funding and support from the business side of your organization. Here are five tips that can help you get your plans green-lit by the executive committee.

Business IT is part of the business. That means that, in virtually every case, IT must justify significant expenses (and entire budgets) to the overall business. If you want to be effective in getting the budget you need, you’re going to have to, at some point, do something that most technology-focused people hate to do: You’re going to have to sell.

You’re going to have to sell the IT story to the rest of the business. But the good news is that no one knows the IT story better than you do. The challenge is telling that story in a clear, convincing way.

Now, I’m not talking doing anything unsavory, underhanded, or unethical. Any association you have between this kind of internal sales and the old stereotype of a used-car operation should be severed now. No, this is the kind of selling that every professional has to do in order to work within an organization. If you must do something, you might as well do it right.

The heart of persuasion is storytelling — in this case, storytelling with a very specific purpose. You don’t only want your audience to sit back at the end and congratulate you on telling a good story.

You want them to take a particular set of actions based on the story. That means that it has to be effective at more than entertaining people. It has to convey information, provide a basis for decision, and lead the listener to the conclusion that the decision you want is the very best (and possibly the only logical) choice.

I’ll say, in all modesty, that I have some experience in the storytelling business. I also have some experience in getting people to purchase expensive services — in the language of sales, I’ve “carried a bag.”

Having worked in my share of startups, don’t get me started on the whole “wringing money out of the executive committee” thing. Let’s just say that I’ve told plenty of stories with purpose, and I’m willing to share the results of that experience here.

You’ll notice that there are a lot of “sales” words and techniques that aren’t here. You won’t find me talking about closing or setting people up. When it comes to internal sales, I think it’s all about the story.

If you can build a story around your facts, then you stand a much better chance of having a decision go your way. You must have a basis in facts — but that’s not enough. You have to present the facts properly to get the result you want.

Tell A Story

The hardest thing about teaching someone to write is conveying that a collection of facts does not a story make. You can have a really impressive list of facts, but no matter how long or thorough, it’s still not a story.

For a story, you need a beginning, a middle, and an end. For a story, you need at least one protagonist, an obstacle to overcome, the process of overcoming the obstacle, and a resolution. When you can weave your facts into that framework, then you can start to have a presentation that launches a project.

Let’s look at this from the internal sales perspective. Your protagonist is the population that is currently dealing with an obstacle that must be overcome. Perhaps the obstacle is poor productivity, perhaps it’s a bad customer experience — whatever it is, it lies between your protagonist and a wonderful future. Now, you introduce the idea of how that obstacle will be overcome, and you wrap up the story with a conclusion built around a successful project.

The key is to present your facts in a story framework. Don’t just lay out facts and assume that your audience will draw the conclusion you want. Use the story to guide them through the facts so that your conclusion is the logical end to the story. Do that, and you’ll find your facts more compelling and your story more successful when it comes to getting support for the project at hand.

Tell A Business Story

In the first key, I said you should tell a story. It’s critical that you make that story a business story — and not an IT story. Let me show you the difference.

In a business story, the protagonists, whoever they are, have to overcome a business obstacle. That is, they must overcome something that is preventing them from reaching a business goal. Business goals have to do with increasing revenue and income, reducing costs, or some combination of those. If your facts don’t support a story with one of those destinations, then you need a new story.

Some people think that a business story has to be dry and unexciting, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Your story can be thrilling, and must be compelling, but has to be a story that speaks to the business audience members and hits them in their business hearts. I told you that I would show you how this is different from an IT story — and here it is.

For many of us in IT, “it’s better” is reason enough to move to a new technology or framework. The problem is that you can’t wrap “it’s better” by itself into a business story. You have to define “it’s better” by the way in which it moves you closer to a business goal. Once again, if you can’t do that, then you need a different story — or a new set of facts.

Talk Added Value, Not Justified Cost

For a long time, the biggest benefit IT touted in many organizations was reducing costs. Emphasizing these reductions as a tactic ultimately results in a couple of huge problems for the IT department when it comes to getting approval for new projects. The first is cultural. If you’re seen as the department that always comes to town swinging a budget axe, you ultimately have trouble getting business units excited about working with you.

The second problem is similar. Sooner or later, you run out of costs that can be wrung out of processes. At that point, IT itself becomes the most tempting target for cost-cutters, and the center of those concentric circles can be an awfully uncomfortable place to stand. The best way to keep you and the rest of the business units out of the cost-cutting cross hairs is to change the story — to add value.

While there are absolute limits on how much cost can be cut from a process, there’s really no logical limit to how much value can be added. In the business story, you’re changing your focus from the bottom half of the balance sheet (the expense half) to the top half of the balance sheet (the revenue and value added). It’s not just a change to the number in an equation, it’s a change to the story you’re telling around those numbers. That change not only wins more allies, but puts IT in a position of telling stories around components with few limits, rather than those with hard limits.

Push Value Increase Rather Than Headcount Decrease

Now, we’re going to put a really fine point on the difference between the value-added story and the cost-cutting story. Sooner or later, the cost-cutting story winds its way through the HR department and becomes a tragedy. Since you want your story to be one of triumph instead of tragedy, focus the narrative on building value through increasing value and increasing revenue, rather than on reducing headcount. Those cuts are seen by many organizations as the ultimate source of cost savings.

If you’ll remember, back at the beginning of this article I wrote about a story needing a protagonist, an obstacle in the way of reaching a goal, and a process of overcoming the obstacle. The protagonist will be a business unit or set of business units. Their goal? It’s almost always a better bottom line. The thing is, you get to the bottom line by traveling down an entire balance sheet, including both the top half (the revenue half) and the bottom half (the expense half).

When you build your story around increasing value, you have the option for many sequels. A story that uses growth and increase as the device for overcoming obstacles has far more avenues for expansion. When you can show there is a plot for your story that’s nothing but positive, and involves increased value and an improved bottom line, you’ve begun a story that people want to hear to the end — and become part of the telling.

Tell The Story Of One

Now it’s time for the not-so-obvious tip that’s kind of devious. If you really want to gain sympathy for your story — for your plan involving a new IT project — make at least part of your story about one person.

There’s a strange thing about humans: When we read (or hear) a story about a single person, we tend to be sympathetic. We feel empathy for that person’s story and identify with the struggle and the victory when he or she wins. If we start hearing a story about even two people, we begin to abstract ourselves from the tale — to see it as a story rather than as something we’re part of. By the time we read a story about a cast of hundreds or thousands, we’re just going through the numbers. We can understand those numbers, and even want to do something about them, but we don’t feel the sort of emotional response we have when we read a story about a single person.

So, if you’re creating a story about your project — a story that you’ll use to sell the rest of the organization on the reasons the project should get the green light — make part of the story about a single, model user or beneficiary of the application or system. Show how that one user is going to benefit from the success of the project. It can be amazing how often that one mythical user will be invoked in conversation and debate around the decision.

Back up your single user story with facts, but remember to keep those facts moving within a story. Know the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story. Make sure that the facts support the movement from one act to the next. If you do that, you’ll put IT on a level above most other business units — and IT projects on a much faster track to approval and support.

These are five keys I’ve found in my years of telling stories and getting approval for projects. I’m curious, though. What keys have you found useful for getting approval for IT projects? Are there secrets you use for getting approval for IT and getting more support for IT across the board? I’m happy to share more tales of storytelling in the executive suite. I’d also love to hear more of how you get things done in your part of the IT world.