The brainstorm is the easy and fun part. The difficult part is keeping alive the excitement you felt at the end of the brainstorm as you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, especially when it comes to selling the ideas to the decision makers.
Like food pulled from the oven, ideas quickly loose their heat outside of the brainstorm. They cool down even further as the ideas are translated into bullet points, paragraphs or executive summaries.
When selling ideas, there are five rules to follow – more or less in order – to ensure your concepts are given the attention they deserve as you move from brainstorming to selling to implementation.
1. Link the idea to its purpose.
Demonstrate why this specific idea will help to achieve the goal and/or eliminate the problem for the client or decision maker. This rule grows in exponential importance to the unusualness of the idea. In other words, the more bizarre the idea, the more you need to anchor it in reality, but still preserve its uniqueness.
2. Engage influential people.
Sooner than later, involve key internal/external stakeholders in the creative process. Does everyone agree on the goal? What are their expectations for the best idea? What criteria will they use to judge the best ideas? Do they have any initial ideas (even if not fully thought through) which might suggest a tone or style? Can they contribute to the creative brief or background? Is it possible for them to join the brainstorm, or at least stop by after it’s finished? Are they willing to help select or judge the ideas? Would they be willing to help sell the idea to others to gain endorsement prior to selling the idea? Can they play constructive devil’s advocates? (By constructive, I mean: Here’s something that’s wrong with the idea, and here’s how I’d suggest to improve it.)
3. Give it time.
Some ideas need to rise, like yeast in bread. Few ideas are perfectly formed at birth, and given the urgency of the situation or the passion of the brainstormer, some ideas are sold too early. They might need (more) research, or an expert needs to be engaged to help adapt an idea to a situation without homogenizing it. Often it’s better to sell an idea to one trusted and influential friend to get an initial reaction than to sell it too early to the widest possible audience.
4. Sell the sizzle, not the meat.
Selling ideas is more than just conveying the words, no matter how eloquent the writer. The very best ideas need to experienced just as the intended audience might see it. Most of us can’t avoid using PowerPoint altogether (and no reason to, if you use it properly), but follow this guideline: use more pictures than words. Use mood boards or hire an artist or cartoonist to show the idea ‘in action.’ Make samples, storyboards or hand-outs to put the idea in the hands of the person buying it.
5. Protect it.
From what? Criticism, politics, internal or personal agendas, inflexibility and assumptions. Or, in a word, negativity. This is an entire topic unto itself, one that you can read more here.
6. Consider How Your Audience Prefers to Receive Information
I can’t speak enough about how important it is to sell ideas through all senses. Clinical research from a variety of areas show that people absorb information in a variety of ways. Two well-known learning styles are VAK, which uses three main sensory receivers – Vision, Auditory and Kinesethetic (tactile), and the other is VARK which adds Reading/Writing as the fourth sensory. You can read about both here. There are other models of course, ranging from Kolb to Honey-Mumfod to Gregorc & Butler.
However, the key point is this: your presentation should cover as many different sensory receivers as possible. No matter who is in your audience, there will be something in it to help them take in the information. Make the presentation visual (some people like pictures, images and diagrams), aural (always speak or deliver the presentation), kinesethetic (give people things to hold or do), and of course, give them things to read.
Any other suggestions to selling ideas? Please add your thoughts and comments below.
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