Communication & Collaboration

An idea is just the first step. Then you’ve got to sell it.

Whether it’s a new vision for collaborating with the marketing team or a better way to

work with suppliers, your idea’s value is determined by your ability to get others to buy into it and execute it.

The biggest obstacle to persuasion? Focusing too much on what you see as the idea’s value, says Mario Moussa, codirector of the Wharton School’s Strategic Persuasion Workshop and coauthor, with G. Richard Shell, of The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio, 2007). “What’s convincing to you is not necessarily convincing to others,” he says.

From their work helping executives and managers handle complex negotiations and gain buy-in on change, Moussa and Shell have developed a strategic approach to persuasion. Its four steps are:

1. Targeting the right person.

2. Removing the barriers to being heard.

3. Making your pitch.

4. Securing commitments.

This article will focus on steps 2 and 3: removing barriers and making your pitch.

Turn PoTenTiAl BArrierS inTo BridgeS

Effective persuasion is not about aiming a firehose of data and arguments and testimonials at someone. The more you push, the more likely it is that the other person will push back. If you have power over that person, he probably won’t come right out and say he doesn’t buy into your plan. His disagreement will be tacit, his resistance covert. But the impact on execution will be plain as day.

Instead, think of persuasion as making it easy and obvious for the other person to agree with you.

These five barriers can come between you and the person whose yes you seek: (1) credibility, (2) relationships, (3) beliefs or values, (4) interests, (5) communication.

But each one of these barriers can also serve as a bridge, helping you connect with the other person and move them to your side.

Credibility. It all begins with credibility. If the people you are trying

to persuade don’t find you credible, you’ve got little chance of persuading them. Credibility isn’t about you and your credentials; it’s about how other people think about you and your credentials. Establishing credibility means demonstrating that you possess competence and expertise, and that you’re trustworthy. Don’t wait until you have an idea to sell; everything you say and do should build credibility for the day you’ll need it to sell an idea.

relationships. When people know you, like you, and trust that you’ll reciprocate any favors they do for you, they are much more likely to listen to your ideas and to go along with them. Conversely, when they don’t know you, they have little reason to trust you or your ideas.

“in the end, people persuade themselves.

so don’t push your idea on others; instead,

create pull—remove the barriers to yes.”

So when someone’s support matters, work to establish rapport with her before pitching your idea. Face-to-face meetings work best for this, but a carefully composed, personalized e-mail can also be effective if an in- person meeting is out of the question. Obviously, the more relationships you cultivate and nurture, the better positioned you’ll be to sell your ideas in the future.

Beliefs and values. Selling an idea requires that you position it as supporting or furthering a core belief or value held by your audience. In their book, Shell and Moussa tell the story of how Bono, the Irish rock superstar and left-wing activist, was able to persuade Jesse Helms, the arch-conservative U.S. senator, to support forgiving African debt so that local funds could be devoted to treating AIDS in Africa. Their different belief systems initially stood between them, but then Bono got Helms on his side by appealing to a deeper value they shared: their commitment, as born-again Christians, to helping the poor and the sick.

You’re not going to change someone’s mind about a deeply held belief. But you can “reposition your idea so people see it as consistent with an underlying value that runs deeper than the belief,” write Shell and Moussa.

Copyright © 2008 by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Take a Strategic Approach to Persuasion by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay

strategic Persuasion continued

As another example, this time from the business world, the authors point to how Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler, two HR executives at retailer Best Buy, got buy-in for their ROWE—Results-Oriented Work Environment— initiative.

Best Buy had an entrenched face-time culture. If you weren’t at your desk, with your boss, or in a meeting, you weren’t working. Thompson and Ressler believed that focusing on results rather than hours would relieve some of the burnout they saw around them and boost productivity. Recognizing that going straight to CEO Brad Anderson with their plan wouldn’t work, they first got the support of two unit managers who quietly rolled out the ROWE initiative in their units. As the program caught on and spread to other parts of the organization, Thompson and Ressler gathered data on its effectiveness.

When, two years later, they presented their idea to Anderson, they were able to show that ROWE improved

productivity and execution—values underlying the company’s focus on face time. Anderson embraced the idea and gave his OK to roll it out throughout the company.

interests. Self-interest is an incredibly powerful motivator, so frame your idea in terms of how it will meet the other party’s interests and needs. When you encounter a barrier built of one interest, appeal to another. That one might be the one that wins the other person’s agreement.

Shell and Moussa cite how Steve Jobs persuaded Steve Wozniak to invest $1,000 so that they could build one hundred printed circuit boards to sell to computer hobbyists. Jobs argued that they could double their money. But Wozniak didn’t believe the boards would sell and refused—his interest was not to lose money. So Jobs appealed to another of Wozniak’s interests: to form a company. Wozniak bit, and Apple was formed.

4 HArvArd mAnAgemenT uPdATe | jUly 2008

define your ideA And idenTify deCiSion mAkerS

n what problem does my idea solve?

n whose input or support do i need?

n what do i need from key people?

q feedback

q Access to others

q Authorization

q endorsement

q resources

q implementation

remove THe BArrierS To yeS

n what is the basis for my credibility with this person? Can i

emphasize this?

n what characterizes my relationship to the person i’m trying

to influence? Can i improve that relationship?

n what beliefs or values does this person hold that could block

or support my case?

n How can i address the person’s interests?

n what communication channels should i use?

q Visionary

q rational

q relational

mAke THe PiTCH

n is my PCAN pitch built on how my audience sees the prob-

lem?

n what evidence will best resonate with the other person?

n How can i personalize the pitch and make it memorable?

n How can i connect my pitch to organizational goals and val-

ues?

SeCure CommiTmenT

n what issues related to turf, resources, credit, or careers

might prevent others from committing to my idea?

n How can i create momentum to generate a snowball effect?

n what alliances or coalitions should i develop to secure

implementation?

Selling your ideA: A CHeCkliST

Adapted with permission from The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas. Portfolio/Penguin. Copyright ©

2007, g. richard shell and mario moussa, All rights reserved.

strategic Persuasion continued

Communication. Barriers created by communication mismatches are very common. Different people favor different communication channels. When you’re trying to persuade someone, it’s important to tune in to that person’s preferred channel, whether it’s visionary, rational, or relational.

“People who have worked together a long

time develop lazy habits; they stop wooing

each other.”

Joanne Bradford learned this when she was hired as head of online advertising for Microsoft’s online network, MSN. In her first weeks and months on the job, she tried to convince CEO Steve Ballmer and her boss to allow her to double her sales team so that MSN could punch up ad sales volumes. But the more she pressed her case, the more resistance she encountered; at one point, her new boss even called her ideas “stupid.”

Looking around, she picked up that at Microsoft, the preferred communication channel was numbers-driven and rational; she’d been communicating in a visionary channel. Once she started using lots of data to pitch ideas— for instance, with charts showing how more salespeople would translate to more revenue—her effectiveness as a persuader took off. She was able to build on small wins to catch the big prize—at the next division-wide event, she got Ballmer’s OK to hire 150 additional salespeople.

Newcomers aren’t the only ones who confront communication barriers. “People who have worked together a long time develop lazy habits; they stop wooing each other. If you’re not remaining sensitive to your colleagues’ preferred communication channels, you’re missing out on opportunities to influence and persuade them,” says Moussa. And the problem doesn’t exist only when a subordinate is trying to convince his boss. An executive in one of Moussa’s workshops volunteered that he realized he’d been using the wrong channel to “woo his CFO”: he’d been speaking to her in the relationship channel, when she was on a data channel.

mAke THe PiTCH SimPle And memorABle

Shell and Moussa cite studies that show approximately 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made around the world every day, and 78% of surveyed executives said they had slept through a presentation in the last month. The authors think these results are related.

To keep your audience awake and engaged, start off

with the “PCAN” pitch:

n Problem: Concisely define the problem—from your audience’s perspective.

n Cause: Identify the cause of this problem.

n Answer: Explain how your idea provides an answer to this problem.

n Net benefits: Detail why your idea, among other options, will yield the most net benefits.

CloSe THe SAle

The PCAN model appeals to the rational mind, but more than rationality enters into decision making. “You really have two audiences in every persuasion event: your audience’s rational calculator and its intuitive decision maker,” the authors write.

As the final step in preparing your pitch, brainstorm ways to make it vivid, memorable, and emotionally appealing. Can you personalize it in some way so that it resonates with your audience? Can you make it more tangible and concrete by using illustrations or analogies? And don’t forget the power of stories to ignite the audience’s imagination and make your idea come alive. u

Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay is the editor of Harvard management update. She can be reached at cduvernay@ harvardbusiness.org.

reprint # u0807A: to order a reprint of this article, call 800-668-6705 or 617-783-7474.

HArvArd mAnAgemenT uPdATe | jUly 2008 5

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