How to Get Buy-in for Your Projects, Plans and Proposals From the First Pitch to Successful Completion (plus free template)

(This
article was originally published in the MarketingExperiments
email newsletter.)

COVID-19 has
necessitated that many marketing departments quickly pivot their plans, and thus agencies and other
vendors have to quickly adapt right along with their clients.

So the ability to
pitch an idea — that crucial marketing skill set –– is more valuable than ever.

But a successful pivot doesn’t end with the pitch. After getting the sign-off from key business leaders and decision-makers, a successful plan requires execution throughout the company, and also from agencies, distributors, retailers, consultants and vendors.

In other words,
after you pitch to the decision-makers, you have to pitch to each and every individual
involved in executing your plan.

Not in person of
course. At least not for all of them.

To help you do that, we’ve created a simple template that can help simplify and communicate your big idea. While you still might need a full plan in a Word document, a full budget in Excel, an in-depth PowerPoint deck, or a detailed project plan, this template is designed to quickly, clearly and easily communicate the value prop for your IT project, marketing plan, advertising campaign, etc.

Download your free VALUE PROPOSITION OF A PROPOSED PROJECT template

After you download the template, here are four key points to keep in mind to increase your chances for success.

1. Win approval from business leaders by creating a company-level value proposition for your proposal

When working internally, it’s easy to overlook the fundamental value proposition questions that you might naturally seek to answer when marketing to customers.

But those value
proposition questions should be answered for everything you do — internally and
externally — because they are the questions that key decision-makers will also
ask, whether they verbalize the question or not.

I would word the internal proposal value proposition question like this:

“Why should the [company/organization/client/department/etc.] invest [money/time/resources/goodwill/etc.] in this [project/campaign/plan/etc.] instead of in any other way?”

The MECLABS Value Proposition methodology can help you answer that question (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingExperiments). Consider these four factors:

Appeal

Why is your idea
appealing to the company? This is the benefit to your company (or client’s
company) of launching the plan you are proposing. Here are some questions to
spark your thinking.

What’s in it for
the company? Will the company make more money? Or perhaps it will save money?
Will this initiative help the company better deliver on its value proposition?
Or fulfill its mission? Does it support a business transformation that is
taking place? For example, could the proposal help your company better appeal
to your current or new target market? Does it help your company react to
macro-economic and societal changes (for example, COVID-19)? Etc., etc.

Exclusivity

There may be many
possible actions your company could take to get the appealing benefit already
mentioned. What’s so special about your proposal? Here are some questions to spark
your thinking.

Is your idea more
likely to succeed than other options? Easier or less expensive to implement? Is
your company already better positioned to launch this plan than other plans?

If the proposal is
not mutually exclusive from other proposals and plans, you should note that.
Provide an option to roll it out with those proposals, explaining why they will
mutually benefit each other. For example, if your company has the cash to
acquire two potential companies, why is that combination of acquisitions a
better path to take with the company’s cash instead of any other way it can be
spent or held onto for future opportunities.

Note, if you work
for an agency, I’m not talking here about your agency’s exclusive ability to pull
this off. There will come a time for that (see “credibility”), but first,
decision-makers need to understand why they should even launch this initiative
instead of any other initiatives that might be able to bring the company the
same or similar benefits.

Clarity

While you are
trying to convince someone (or a group of people) of something, be wary of hyperbole.
Focus on being clear and letting your idea shine through.

Another element of
that clarity is clearly communicating the project scope and tasks. Is this for
the entire company? A specific business unit, product line, or division? What
does success look like? What is the KPI? How will you (or someone else) audit
the results to ensure they are accurate?

Details like this can make or break your idea’s acceptance and ensure everyone is on the same page. Because the goal isn’t just to get your proposal approved, the goal is to have a successful initiative. One key to success is defining it in the beginning so you don’t get to the end of the project and hit your intended goal only to hear a business leader say, “Oh, that’s all it did? I thought it would do [something more.]”

Credibility

This is a biggie.
How many meetings have you been in where a sales leader or agency account
executive promised that something was going to be huge? “We’re going to get
10%, 20%, 50% increase in sales!” Start hiring now because when I’m done with
this, our biggest challenge is going to be keeping up with demand!”

All that may be
true. But why should key business leaders believe it? This is where credibility
comes in.

Do you have a track
record of success in this area? Do the colleagues or vendors you’re working
with? Perhaps the project will be delivered on time because you’ve gotten the
company’s most effective project manager to agree to run this project?

What about the
overall marketplace? Is there data that supports this decision? Are there case
studies that show other companies succeeding from similar proposals? (feel free
to search MarketingSherpa case studies)

Does current sales
data, A/B testing or customer feedback indicate this is the right direction?
Could you begin by launching a pilot or experiment to get more data and build
up credibility?

2. Answer the value prop question at many different levels

To get the budget
and other approvals necessary to launch your idea, you need to communicate the
primary (company-level) value proposition.

However, to get through a successful project from start to finish, you need the skill sets of (and even better-impassioned buy-in from) many different people within and from outside your organization. For example, you may need to get the IT department on board, customer service, product development, sales reps, etc. Externally, you may need to work with advertising and marketing agencies, management consultants, freelance copywriters and graphic designers, distribution and sales partners, retailers, contract manufacturers, co-branding partners, investors, and a whole host of other business partners and vendors.

Most people and
organizations will work for money. Sure.

But you get their
highest and best production when they understand why it matters to them.

So … why does it
matter?

For your products and services, you should have different prospect-level value propositions. For example, some customers may be looking for a car that’s economical, some want eco-friendly, others want a safe car, a sporty car, or a luxurious car. Understanding the different motivations of different customer sets helps you create more targeted and compelling value propositions.

The same is true
for your internal projects. Do you need the IT department to build a new tool
for this project? What is the value prop? That they get to build it from the
ground up in-house and assure it is PCI compliant? Or perhaps you’ve secured
enough budget that they get to select three top tools for this field and
integrate them? Or maybe the project requires trying something totally new (AI?
Machine learning? VR?) that they’ve wanted to sink their teeth into but haven’t
gotten a chance to do so yet?

What is the value
prop for your advertising agency? Perhaps this is their chance to burn down the
budget allotted to them? Or perhaps, you’re really going for a creative
implementation they can enter into awards shows? Or both?

Depending on the
size of the team involved, you may want to get as granular as the individual
level. If you know your team well enough, you can hopefully tap into their
individual passions with the way you assign roles for the project, and
therefore create a compelling value prop for them.

3. Keep answering the value prop question throughout the project

There tends to be a
lot of excitement at the beginning of a project or plan. But that excitement
can quickly give way to the drudgery of execution. As a project drags on … six
months, nine months, 18 months, etc., the team and company can forget why
you’re doing it to begin with.

There is a great
leadership maxim — “vision leaks” — that aptly describes this challenge (not
sure who first coined the term, maybe Andy Stanley or Bill Hybels?)

If you don’t remind
your team of the initial vision, it will leak away over time as they shift
their focus to other priorities.

So keep these value
props in front of them. When we’re back in a world of physical closeness, it
could make sense to print out a poster and hang it up in the physical locations
where the teams are working.

If you’re working
with a distributed team or teams, perhaps there is a consistent PowerPoint slide
you use on weekly team Zoom meetings to remind everyone of the value
proposition. Or you could send weekly status update emails to share how the
team is progressing to make the value proposition a reality.

Once the project is
done, follow up with the results metrics you promised, share praise and
appreciation for those who made it possible, and actually show the value
proposition(s) coming to fruition.

After all, you may
want to do this again sometime. And nothing builds credibility better than
coming through on what you promised.

4. Nothing happens without communication

This might seem
like a lot of effort. After all, shouldn’t business leadership understand and
trust in your ideas? Shouldn’t people just do their jobs?

That would be nice.

Of course, it would
also be nice to eat Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream every
night for dinner and stay slim, trim and healthy. It would be very, very nice.

But that is not the
way of the world. Things don’t just happen. The status quo is a tenacious
opponent. Determined people must make things happen. And it all begins with a
clear and compelling value prop.

We didn’t get to
the moon just because 400,000 engineers, technicians, scientists and factory
workers poured their lives into building the technology. And we didn’t get to
the moon because three brave astronauts climbed to the top of an exploding
36-foot tall firecracker.

We got to the moon
because — before any of that — a compelling value proposition was cast and
repeated to spur the passionate use of all those fine individual skills.

Before we could
hear “The Eagle has landed,” we had to hear John F. Kennedy say, “We choose to
go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other
things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal
will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because
that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
postpone, and one which we intend to win.”