Show Me The Money (Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1 of Show Me the Money, we discussed the importance of telling a story, delivering the rationale for making an investment or a change. We also reviewed the importance of being entirely transparent with your business case. If you’ve hidden something for sake of simplicity or brevity, you may be creating skepticism which will only slow you down or make your task more difficult to succeed at.

Assuming you tackle those two items well, there are still two more which often get overlooked by those when creating business cases. Without these, you may be shown the door instead of showing them the money.

1.    Don’t make too many assumptions

I’ve had business cases and ROIs presented to me over the years and some of them fail to get me to believe because they have too many assumptions. “If it’s sunny tomorrow and the Red Sox win and there’s more than 4 inches of snow in the Andes and CNN reports a conspiracy theory, then…”. I think you get the picture. When you put too many assumptions into your scenario, you will likely lose credibility and your audience will tune out, not believing your case, seeing it as too theorhetical. In the end, I recommend 1 or 2 assumptions be made, ones that are reasonable and hopefully backed up with real world examples – customers who have achieved the same benefit and have stated it publicly. We do this at my company today by benchmarking thousands of customers and using the average benefit achieved across them. This is very reasonable and helps a new customer feel comfortable about the benefits that are possible and how we arrived at the assumption that we will reduce their critical incident frequency by 15-45%.  We also provide them with specific customer stories to back it up. They believe the case. Keeping it simple will help you succeed.

2.    Socialize your case

Coming up with a great idea that no one supports will lead to failure to gain traction. The way to get people to make change is to be sure that they are part of the process of creation and analysis, that they have had a chance to review and modify the case, and get their fingerprints on it. Another natural behavior is present here. “If you want to make a change and do not consult me, I will challenge it. If you include me, allow me to understand it, make me feel part of the process and factor in my feedback, you are far more likely to get me on board with the case for change.”  And then, when the proposal is placed in front of the ultimate buying authority and that person asks, “Who else supports this?”, you can provide that list of names or even have them accompany you to that meeting sharing their support live. I am not recommending doing this by committee, but I am saying that it can’t be just your idea. Socialize your business case with credible people who have influence to ensure your success.

Remember, when you’re asked to show the money, tell a story and don’t ignore the details. Being complete, transparent, and reasonable with the support of others will ensure you get people on board and get your “kwan” (another Jerry Maguire movie reference).

Doug May has 20+ years’ experience working with disruptive technologies fueling high growth businesses by accelerating sales performance, ramp, and overall productivity. A key success factor in his journey has been focusing on the quantification and realization of the business value that new technology and processes bring, mapping their value to customer adoption and success.