Strategies to Sell an Idea

You have had a hand in the digital transformation of so many activities. When I think about where you are on LinkedIn, you know, how we connect with each other professionally, how we post and find jobs and then Uber, how we get from one place to another and through Uber Eats, even how we consume food, how we get food. That means having to sell a lot of new ideas to others. What’s your process for selling a new idea?

So I look at it in a couple of different ways, so it depends a lot on who I’m selling the idea to. I need to sort of understand what it is that they are going to want to hear or know more about or what would resonate with them?
And one example I’ll share is, I had an idea to build out a brand new team when I was at LinkedIn. And the idea for the team came as a result of just some challenges and gaps we were seeing and some capabilities that were completely missing in the organization.
And so, when I put together sort of an idea of like, “Hey, we need to build out this team that will do sort of XYZ,” there were many, many different stakeholders I had to go to and sort of sell and pitch that idea to.
So, there were a subset of stakeholders who very much focused on sort of data. So, give me the data as to why, what value or benefit is this going to have? What is going to be the ROI? What’s going to be the return that we’re going to get, or the business impact this is going to have?
So, you need to make sure you’re sort of crafting that narrative well. But then there’s a subset of stakeholders who are more concerned around not just the data, but what are some challenges you’re going to face? What are some counter arguments to why this may not work? Have you thought through those? Are you just pitching an idea without thinking through all the ramifications of it? So, you needed to make sure you sort of tightened up that aspect of the story or the ask.
And then the people that might have been impacted by the idea or who needed to work on the idea. There’s a lot of storytelling there. So imagine situations where today we’re doing XYZ, or we go through this experience in a future world, if we had this in place, this is what your experience would look like. Sort of using that storytelling approach to get them to understand how it might impact them and bring them along on the journey.
So, I think to me, it’s a matter of understanding who it is you’re trying to sell that idea to. Understanding a bit of how they receive and process and adapting your pitch to resonate for them, is something that I’ve learned over the years.