So, you are most likely in a position of technological trust within your organization and have spent the better part of half a lifetime learning about technology… security, business process, technology management, reporting…. Seriously, Who cares? All that knowledge won’t mean a hill of beans if you can’t get the C-Suite to OWN your vision (believe me, I’ve tried walking down that road, it’s less painful having your coworker beat you up side the head with a two-by-four). Budgets are tight and executive face time is your opportunity to impact the future of your organization (not to mention yourself). You’ve likely got 10 – 20 minutes to sell your idea and that’s it.

By the way, if you are a techno newbie at your organization, the best way to start climbing the ranks is executing on your projects… faster, better, more reliably than anybody ever thought possible. Under Promise, Over Deliver, that’s it.

Rule # 1

Don’t pitch a ridiculous project. You’d think that this would be common sense… Your credibility is on the line, make sure that your idea is aligned with the company vision and well thought out.

Rule # 2

Craft a compelling vision for the project that you are pitching, an idea that is easy to spread. If you start your pitch by saying the goal of CEBP is to optimize business process by reducing the human latency that exists in a process flow (actual quote). Forgetaboutit.. you might as well start crawling back to your cube.

Follow the law of twitter, your compelling vision should be 140 characters or less. Look to the masters, Jim Collin’s book, “Good to Great” is a fantastic start.

Rule # 3

Don’t use any acronyms, metaphors, or words over 9 letters long.

Acronyms: most likely won’t have a clue or care what a CTI, BSN, WFW or BPA means. Follow the KISS method, Keep IT Simple Stupid

Metaphors: It’s just a fact… business people look at life, sports, work, and fun completely opposite of technology people. Don’t even go there.

Words over 9 letters: Look at the famous quotes of the century, if a majority of Churchill’s famed words are under 9 letters that should tell you something.

Rule # 4

Put together a compelling, Passionate Presentation.

Follow the 10/20/30 rule

10 slides

20 Minutes

30 pt font.

Don’t kill the people in the audience by reading your presentation word for word… please.

Great books on this subject include, Slideology, Presentation Zen, and one that I’m currently reading, Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.

Rule #5

Know the facts cold…

However, first things first, you have to sell the vision before anything else! There is a reason that Rule #5 is Rule #5. It’s critical to know this information, you can’t sell a project without it, but don’t lead with it.

You have to at least know the following and be able to back them up with hard evidence.

How are business processes improved

End user / IT Productivity Improvements

Performance Targets how are you going to specifically measure project success

Who in the IT department is going to own this project

What are the Risks associated with this project and how are you going to mitigate them

Understand what other major projects are currently going on at your organization and how this new one might impact them

What type of competitive advantages will this give your organization

Cost / Benefit Questions… You need to know what the payback / NPV / IRR / ROI or whatever language your CEO / CFO speaks.

Are you going to hire internal talent or outsource the project

Be the change

Tags: change management, it, leadership