Settlers
- Show other ‘heritage’ organisations that they trust which are doing interesting digital work.
- Illustrate the risk that competitors who are digitally enabled pose to the organisation.
- Use examples of companies they know that didn’t see change coming and got swallowed whole (like Blockbuster).
- Talk about doing the same things you’ve always done, but with greater efficiency.
- Wherever possible draw parallels between new channels, technologies or ways of working and traditional methods.
Prospectors
- Show the growth which could be achieved once you’ve improved the effectiveness of your organisation digitally.
- Illustrate what competitors that have a greater Digital set-up are able to achieve that you are not.
- Show celebrities, cool or ‘well known’ brands which are doing digital well.
- Sell the exciting dream of where you could be in 3 years time.
- Illustrate the specific outcomes that you’ll be able to achieve once you reach digital maturity.
Pioneers
- Link the change to the organisation’s cause and what digital transformation will do for your mission.
- Make the argument in terms of people and what they will get that they don’t have now — whether they are supporters or beneficiaries.
- Excite them with the idea of working in the unknown.
- Let them brainstorm ideas for what could be done with new tools, ways of working or skills.
Charismatics
- Boil the benefits down to their simplest form — such as an increase in efficiency or the ability to test new ideas quicker
- Illustrate new features and benefits through visual aids wherever possible
- Tell the story of a supporter / customer experience as it is now and what it could be in the future
- Don’t get carried away or too involved in your own story — these people won’t respect a perceived emotional bias
- Leave them with much more detailed information that they can use to go away and make a decision with
Thinkers
- Use data to show the growth of digital both within your organisation and outside of it.
- Bring supporter quotes to illustrate their needs and trends.
- Conduct cost-benefit analysis of the routes, structures or strategies that you are proposing.
- Use a model such as a Digital Maturity Matrix to illustrate the need that the organisation has to grow digitally.
- Bring data and proposals about the alternatives that you’ve discounted — including their benefits and why you’ve decided on your route over these.
- Show case studies of organisations which have followed similar digital transformation, but only if you can prove that they have been successful with bullet proof data. Agency or conference sales fodder won’t work — you’ll need to talk about the negatives they’ve encountered as well as the positives to gain credibility.
Skeptics
- Gain credibility long before you try and get this person to sign something off. Help them or their team on a project that meets their goals and improves their measures of efficiency / quality. Something highly demonstrable like a PPC audit or email strategy can work well.
- Send through articles, blog posts or research on digital transformation before you try and get them to support it. If you can peak their interest and get them to ask you for your recommendations then you’re off to a good start.
- Build an ally in someone that this person trusts and get them to support you in your proposal.
- Expect to be challenged on every data point that you present and have real arguments for why they support your point.
- Don’t go in with incomplete Google Analytics insights — make sure you can take the metrics all the way through to what they mean for your users and organisation.
Followers
- If you do nothing else, illustrate how other organisations that they respect have evolved Digitally and the benefits that has brought them. Sell the story of these improvements rather than focussing on the detail, although have it to hand. Speak to people internally at these other organisations to get first hand insights.
- If possible, use other examples from the teams which they have managed in the past, where they’ve been a part of change or transformation. Draw parallels for what you want to achieve with Digital. This is often particularly useful when it comes to team structure and roles.
- Get these leaders to go to conferences or meetups where they can see success stories for themselves.
Controllers
- Bring in external experts to present the details of your argument.
- Focus your proposals on logic, minute details and the power that it will give the team or organisation.
- Be prepared to chase down detailed information that they’ll ask you to go away and find, quite possibly to ignore at a later stage.
- Avoid any buzzwords at all.
- You’re more than likely to feel unsupported, even if given the go ahead, knowing that if things go wrong, it’ll be on your head and not theirs.
- Give lots of time for decisions to be made.
https://hbr.org/2002/05/change-the-way-you-persuade
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