Win Stakeholder Buy-In by Solving Real Problems
Solve don't sell
This article was inspired by a conversation with Aaron Norris. Aaron helps strategic sales professionals deliver exponential growth sustainably. Aaron explained how top sales practitioners deeply understand their customers' most critical problems and design value-generating solutions that move the needle. It is striking how Aaron's approach can be applied to product management!
The interruption from your stakeholder is polite and firm. "I'm going to stop you right there."
You are making a pitch to invest more resources in your product. Your slide suggests a dip in profits for a few quarters to respond to competition. Your stakeholder urges you to find a better solution or consider if your product can be sustained.
Why did your pitch get rejected so harshly? Is the rejection because you don't have sales skills?
Your rejection has nothing to do with sales skills. You weren't solving your stakeholder's problem - you were trying to grow your stakeholder's problem!
How do you understand your stakeholder's problem? How can your product solve your stakeholder's problem?
These are questions product managers can answer!
Finding Stakeholders' Problems
Your stakeholders' problems aren't hard to find. Senior leaders in product organizations typically have these problems:
Costs are too high for the revenue forecasted
The growth of the organization isn't keeping up with customer demand
Profit needs to be higher before additional investment
The common theme is the financial health of products.
Another way to dig into your stakeholders' problems is by analyzing your product's environment. By looking externally, you can understand:
Competitive announcements
Insights from partners
Business model changes in your market
By reviewing the financial health of your product and your product's environment, you can get a good picture of the problems your stakeholders are facing.
You can also review recent executive communications for insights into your organization's challenges.
Crafting Your Product's Value Proposition
Now that you have information on the problems your stakeholders are handling, you can focus on how your product can solve their problems. How can a single product help solve problems?
Using your discovery skills, you can investigate:
How your product relates to other products
How your product supports your organization's goals
The value of your customers to the organization
The financial standards of your organization
After this discovery, you have a good understanding of what makes a valuable product in your organization. Plus you understand how your product stacks up compared to other products.
With your knowledge about the expectations of products in your organization, is there anything you want to do to improve your product? Any new approaches you can take to solving your stakeholders' problems?
Redo your product presentation with a solution to your stakeholders' problems.
Preparing for Objections
You are going to get objections. To prepare for objections, you have key relationships across your organization that can help you.
Your finance team has a wealth of information about product issues. Work closely with finance to respond to financial concerns on your product. Similarly, your other product team relationships can help too.
Another tactic is to let data speak for you. Showing the trend of sales or characterizing deals in your pipeline provides background to how your solution can help stakeholders. You have numbers and data all around you that you can consolidate to address objections with facts.
Use feedback loops to address some of the objections. You are solving complex problems for your stakeholders. You won't know the details or the follow-up problems until you start working on them. Some objections you won't know how to handle until you start. Use feedback loops for continued support from your stakeholders.
A few follow-up actions are a sign that you are on track to a solution!
Conclusion - Solve Problems Instead of Selling
When you need stakeholder support for your product initiatives, fall back on your problem-solving skills to get your stakeholders onboard. Stakeholders need solutions, not sales presentations.
Instead of selling your product ideas, take these steps:
Understand your stakeholders' problem
Show how your product initiative uniquely solves that problem
Respond to objections with feedback loops
Going to your stakeholders with a solution is more effective than selling an idea.
To learn more about Aaron’s approach, this article has his top 5 tips.
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