Avoiding word salad

This week I was working with a team who put one of their 'big' actions for this week as sending an email to some CEOs about their project. At first I was confused. How can writing an email be a big team action? Why does it need everyone? But it turned out it wasn't really an email, they were actually trying to put a pitch together to 'sell' their project and get backing and ideally funding from these CEOs.

And so we spent some time working through this and how to write a short and succinct 'elevator' pitch that would form the body of the email. It was quite a tough session as the team were incredibly passionate about what they were doing and wanted to share EVERYTHING about the project. Key to getting the pitch right was to get them to imagine they were the CEO themselves. Someone incredibly busy, who gets lots of pitches, who needs to know what they need to know quickly to allow them to make a decision, to not have to wade through 'waffle' or word salad as we like to call it (you know those sentences full of words like transparency, benefits, efficiency without giving any data or quantitative evidence). A quick and easy way to do this is to use the #PET SocRatiq.

First get everyone to write down the questions stakeholders might have about the project. Then, picking the stakeholder you are trying to communicate with move the stickies to right to determine what you need to answer upfront to get their attention. If they're the finance director they want to know how much it will cost or save on page one or in the top line. If they're the governance director they need to know how it will reduce risk or comply with a new policy up front. If they have to wade through pages and pages or scroll through a long email to get this data they are likely scanning through this and miss all the good stuff, or just not bother. If, up front, you answer/remove any worries they may have about your project while giving them some facts to peak their interest (facts that will make their life easier!) then they are much more likely to be interested enough to read the detail and come back to you with a positive response.

Once the team had agreed the right questions to answer from the CEO perspective we then used the 5Ps #PET (Purpose, Principles, People, Process, Performance) to structure the email content around these key questions. A short, succinct, fact based and without emotion or word salad email that clearly demonstrated 'what's in it for me' from the CEO perspective. The detail can then go as an attachment, which if you've got it right, they'll open and read with interest or, even better, agree to your ask without even needing the detail. I've asked the team to feedback on the responses they get. Fingers crossed they'll get the funding they are after.

I'm curious. How often do you think about the 2 or 3 key questions a stakeholder will have and answer them up front in your emails, reports, presentation or business case compared to to selling your project based on all the benefits you've come up with that you think are 'sure' to sell it?

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