Persuasion takes time

You and your team know that forward motion always matters, even if you’re not entirely sure where you’re going. We are all at work on creating whatever our “new normal” or “never normal” might look like. Want to convince people (your team, your customers, your investors, potential employees) that your new vision is the one to embrace? Do these three things:

1. Repeat yourself. Way more than you think is necessary.

That presentation you slaved over for two weeks? It’s just the beginning. Share that deck with everybody. Ask for more conversations, send more emails, encourage more dialogue. Keep sharing your idea until everyone tells you to stop either because they’ve adopted it or rejected it completely. This can take months. Embrace the slog.

2. Prove your point

Gut feelings are great, but you need data to make a business argument. You need internal and external data, market trends, customer stories. Even if you see a trend that’s not yet documented by analysts, your inkling is based on something. Show everyone the dots and how you see them connecting.

3. Get other people to tell your story

It’s easy to discount one person’s opinion. It’s not easy to discount an idea you’re hearing from a dozen people, a hundred people. Convert allies and get them talking up your idea too. They’ll reach people you can’t and add weight to your argument. And, better still, the whole idea will become better when more heads are working on it. It’ll become our argument.

Getting to the right strategy is a huge achievement. Yay! Congratulations on your insight. You’re nowhere near done - convincing other people to see what you see is an entirely different workstream. That’s where the real work begins - because an innovation that no one adopts isn’t an innovation at all. Good luck!