If you want to compel people to take action, find out what already compels them. What is already motivating them to act is the sweet spot for getting things done. But there are some natural assumptions you make about what compels people.
C-Level Executives care deeply about driving their business into the future. They care about creating a competitive advantage. Leaders are responsible for producing better results. They fear not knowing something that they need to know. C-Level Executives care about strategy, initiatives that drive big results, metrics that need improvement, and how they should think about the future.
You are not compelling when you talk about your product, your service, or your solution unless or until you tie it to bigger themes.
Management stakeholders care about executing and delivering results. They need to produce results, and the things that allow them to produce better results now are what compels them. Management stakeholders are compelled by metrics like revenue, costs, and profitability. But they are also compelled by the factors that drive those bigger categories, like productivity and throughput.
When you talk about your product, service, or solution outside of the impact it will have on the results they need, you are not compelling. You are compelling when you focus on how to drive metrics like profitability when you tie them to other metrics like productivity.
End user stakeholders, the people who use your product, service, or solution care deeply that it works. They need to execute, and their company measures them on things like productivity and throughput. They are compelled by things that help them do their job better, faster, and more easily. They care about the problems that prevent them from being able to do their work. They fear someone will sell their company something that makes it more difficult to produce the results for which they are responsible.
You aren’t compelling to end-users when you talk about strategy, even though the C-Level executives in their company care deeply about how what you help serves their strategic needs. You aren’t compelling to end-user stakeholders when you talk to them about metrics on which they aren’t measured or don’t understand. You are compelling when you share how what you sell will help them, and that includes the features and benefits that differentiate you from your competitors.
If you want to compel people to act and change, help them with what is already compelling them. You can make some pretty good assumptions about what they find compelling.
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