Seeking Approval? Answer this Question First

When I work with coaching clients to help them become more effective communicators, they often ask me how to sell an idea internally, perhaps to their boss or to another group within the company whose cooperation they need. My first question is always, “What’s in it for them to agree?”

Almost invariably—after a long pause—the answer comes back, “I haven’t thought about it that way.” That’s because people are so focused on their own reasons for doing things that they neglect the reasons that matter to the people who control whether those things get done.

For a before-and-after example of outside-in thinking, I’m reminded of a presentation one of my students put together for the workshop I was running on internal presentations. He was organizing a presentation to convince the CFO to approve a budget variance in order to purchase new workstations for his veteran engineers. Economic conditions had put the company in a spending freeze, and a request of this sort required special approval.

For his first effort, he justified the need by explaining that newer engineers received new workstations when they came on board, while those with longer tenure were stuck with older models. He said it was causing friction and morale problems, and he wanted to be fair to his more senior staff. I asked him what was the likelihood that the CFO would actually are whether the engineers were happy. He admitted that the probable response would be that everyone has to make sacrifices during this tough period.

I then asked him, what would the CFO care about? After a little brainstorming, he came up with reasoning that the newer workstations would improve productivity of the entire team through their superior performance, which would reduce the risk of delays in launching a new product. The resulting presentation was much more focused on the needs of the person making the decision, and I heard later that the request was approved.

What’s in it for them to agree? It’s such an obvious question that sometimes I’m abashed that I actually get paid to ask it—but it works.