How can you convince your CEO to invest in a risky new product line?

In my opinion, understanding your CEO's goals and concerns is crucial when pitching a risky new product line. Aligning your proposal with their strategic objectives demonstrates relevance and commitment to overall company success. Addressing their concerns proactively shows thorough planning and mitigates potential risks. This tailored approach enhances trust, increasing the likelihood of securing investment for the innovative venture.

I believe thorough research can be helpful. Based on previous interactions, one can try and understand the thought process of the CEO. One can also look at the trajectory of product development in the company because that can be a good indicator of the company's goals and concerns. Another thing that can help is to understand from seniors what the company is prioritising at the moment - profit, user growth, or something else.

It starts with empathy, continues with preparation and ends with timing: Empathy: What is important to the CEO at in this quarter? Is it revenue or costs? Is it growth or survival? etc. Preparation: Begin pitching with the end in mind that considers what is important to the CEO. Best case, the proposed initiative helps alleviate one of the CEO's current concerns. Timing: Is next week quarterly planning? Good! Is it right before lunch? Not good! Considering when to pitch can help get you buy-in.

There's one goal that we need to focus on to make them understand: the answer to the question, what is the ROI? To accomplish this, it's essential to understand how you measure your product using various KPIs. These metrics should extend beyond just users or usability and include aspects like market recognition and brand awareness. Importantly, ensure you can convert these factors into monetary terms.

Find and demonstrate the competitive advantage that this move will give to your Company’s bottom line What would be the the customers responses and how can you manage and take advantage to the upward and downward disruption it will create

Success hinges on paying close attention to what the end user needs. To truly do well, it's crucial not just to spot opportunities but to see meeting the various needs of the target audience as a must. By understanding the details of what users like, how they behave, and what challenges they face, a product or service can go beyond seizing an opportunity to becoming a necessary solution. This not only builds a stronger connection with the audience but also ensures that what you offer meets a wide range of requirements. In simple terms, focusing on and meeting the many needs of the target audience shifts success from something that might happen to something that has to happen.

When being rejected, doing expectation management helps. Asking: Would information are we yet missing that would increase your confidence to have buy-in? Will you give me chance to run a cheap test on this to test the critical hypothesis?

When trying to influence any senior business leader, you should document the business case - starting with the problem, and have data to quantify the business impact or risk. For example, earlier in my Product career I was asked to do discovery for a very ambiguous product that was outsourced to a vendor. I took several weeks to really dive deep on the capabilities, interviewed current users, and mapped out the process. What I uncovered through this discovery was significant enterprise risk as the current product was nearly obsolete but we didn’t have an alternative. I put to together slides and presented my business case to the CMO & CTO - I was immediately given resources to form a team of engineers to start building my MVP.