 Got a great idea? But maybe you need to give in some other people to great idea? I've got the plan for you. Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. We've all got great ideas, but sometimes you've got to do a little work convincing others that we have a great idea. Today I've got 10 tips for you that are going to help you write a convincing pitch to help get others on board with your ideas. And stay tuned throughout the video and all the way to the end I'm going to have some links for you where you can download our pitch worksheet that you can use while you're going through this video or after this video to put together your ideas for your 10 steps to pitch your great idea and some other bonus downloads that will have for you at the end of the video. As we grow as leaders we start to see that there's more good that we want to do in the world. We get more ambitious about the things we want to achieve and we can't do these things all by ourselves so we need to build teams around them to do us. And to do that we often have to convince people that our ideas really are great ideas. Not everyone goes in automatically believing that. So whether you're going to your boss to get approval for a change you want to make in the workplace, an improvement you want to make for your team, or you're building a new team around a new idea that you're really excited about, or you're trying to make a big change to your existing team, how successful you are in making those changes and convincing the people that you need to convince to get on board with your plan depends on how much preparation work, how much you do your homework going into those conversations and those pitches that you're going to make. And that's what today's video is going to be about. It's not going to be about so much how you make a presentation, make a pitch. We're going to talk about that next week, the communication that goes on. That'll be for next week's video. But this week we're going to talk about the preparation work you can do to really get yourself ready and make a convincing pitch before you go in and make the pitch. Tip number one is to recognize that people don't like change. If you take away nothing else from this video today, remember that people don't like change and use that as you're working with the other nine tips from this video. Keep that in mind as you're working through the rest of these tips and steps. You don't have to be happy about it. You don't have to like it, but just recognize that people don't like change and whatever it is that you're pitching is probably going to be a big change for somebody and you're going to have to find a way to bring them on board. Now, everybody's different. Everyone has a different degree to which they are tolerant of change. Everyone has some things that they really aren't that upset about if it changes and people have things that are very close to them that they will resist very strongly if you try to bring about a change. So you're going to have to get to know the people involved, but just recognize that people don't like change, that you're going to have to combat, you're going to have to fight that human nature, that resistance that all humans have to change. Keep that in mind as we talk about the rest of these tips. Next, you've got to identify the problem. Now, if you're getting ready to make a pitch or thinking about making a pitch to people, you probably already have a solution in mind and that's great. That's okay, but you may have to do some convincing that there's even a problem in the first place that people you're pitching to may not either understand that there's a problem or believe that what you're talking about is a problem that needs to be solved. And to do that, it helps to be really clear and objective about what the problem is and really clearly defining it. And you don't want to do this just in terms of what the problem is, but you want to get into who the problem is for. Who does this impact? Is it just you? Is it your team? Is it your organization as a whole? When does this problem occur? Is it every day? Is it once a year? Is it once every couple of years? Is it coming up again really quickly and you're going to have to deal with it? Or is it something that maybe you don't need to make a decision to write a way on? Where does this problem occur? Is it localized or is it widespread? You know, go through that whole who, what, when, where, why framework we talk about, those 5W framework that we talk about sometimes and use that to really clearly define the problem. Next step, brainstorm potential solutions. Like I said, you probably already have an idea of a solution in mind and it probably is the right way to go, but what's really helpful is to brainstorm some possible solutions that could be applied besides the one you've already gotten in mind and it helps to pull a team around you to do this. But what this does is it lets you look at the problem from alternate perspectives, look at it from alternate angles. At the end of the day, does it matter if your solution is the one picked or that you just get one that solves the problem and these alternate solutions may turn out to be more elegant. They may turn out to use less resources. They may turn out to be a quicker solution. So take a look at what the options are for the solution, not just the one you have in mind and be ready to talk about what those options are when you do go make your pitch later on. Once you've got your solutions identified, your multiple options for solutions identified, take a look at what the impacts of a positive and negative R of each of those solutions and not just the what but the who again. You may have a really positive impact for your team, but the solution you've chosen or one of your preferred solutions might have a really negative impact on another team and that might be a hard decision for a decision maker to get on board with. So just take a look at what the impacts are but who they're going to affect and how much they're going to impact them and it's always important. Remember you've got to go back and tie this to the problem that's trying to be solved. You've got to look at which solutions have the most payoff in terms of impact and factor that into your decision space as well. Step number five is to identify any risks with your potential solution. So these could be safety risks, they could be security risks, they could be financial risks, they could be administrative risks, personnel risks. There's all kinds of risks and you know better than I do what the risks are in your organization, but it's really important to identify those risks, highlight those risks and take a sit down and take a really hard look at how you can mitigate those risks, what additional steps can you take to mitigate those risks and make it easier for a decision maker to get on board with picking your solution. All right we're halfway through with our 10 tips on how to write a great pitch. The next step, step number six is go and actively solicit the views of others about your solution. You're going to find people who are really going to like your solution, you're going to find people who really don't like your solution and you're going to find people who are on the fence and you want to collect all of their opinions and all their thoughts before you go pitch to the decision maker. So try sit down with the people who really love your solution, sit down with them and find out what they really love about it and get them to kind of go on the record saying this is what I really love about this and this is how it helps me. For the people who really don't like it, find out what's bothering them about that and again like going back to the risk see what you can do to mitigate that, see what you can do to solve their problem and incorporate their needs and their desires into the solution. And for the people on the fence they may just be resistant to change and that's okay, but that's all part of this is you've got to figure out how to get past that resistance to change because the decision makers are probably going to feel a little bit of that resistance to change. So those people who are on the fence they may you know a lot of times I've heard in the Air Force I don't hate it but I don't love it and so it really helps to pull that thread with the people who are on the fence and get their feedback and how you can make the solution better before you go to the decision maker. Now that you've got a lot of information to work with you've probably got a preferred solution and maybe an alternative in mind or a couple alternatives in mind that you're going to pitch to the decision maker. Now it's time to brainstorm what the unintended consequences will be and this takes a little bit of creativity to give these are unintended consequences there are things that you aren't planning on happening. So this is where some of that feedback you got in the last step the people who weren't so thrilled about your idea or the people who are on the fence you can use some of this feedback to incorporate some of those think about what some of those unintended consequences are in the military we call these second and third order effects. They weren't what we were trying to do but they come as a result of what we did and at least going through this exercise even if you don't come up with anything solid going through this exercise will help you because when the decision maker asks starts to ask certain questions about what about these things you can at least say sir we took a look at that and we gave this some thought and we think that these would be the consequences that would come of that so now we have at least some idea of what might happen what some of the risks might be as we implement this solution. All right now we're getting into the nuts and bolts of it step number eight is to identify the resources you need and a lot of times this is what makes or breaks a pitch how much is it going to cost whether that's in terms of dollars money or even time or effort and this is something you've got to really be able to clearly state to the decision maker how much is it going to cost them again whether that's in terms of money or effort or people's time to go implement the solution and how does it tie back to the problem a lot of times what you're going to hear a decision maker say is the juice really worth the squeeze on this so you've got to have really solid evidence and really clear detailed understanding of how many how much and how many resources are going to need to go into solving this problem and implementing your solution without that level of detail without that level of confidence that that you can stick to your projection then you then a decision maker's gonna have a really hard time signing off on this plan again whether this is your boss approving your idea or even if you're trying to convince your team that you're going to go in a new direction you're telling your team this is the new direction we're going to go in and how we're going to do business in a new way these are some of the points of resistance and resources especially money are going to be one of the main points of resistance it's going to cost too much so you need to be able to show in great detail that you understand the costs and that the costs are worth it to solve the problem we're almost there i promise we're on to step number nine and that's to show the path to implementation it's really important to be able to show that timeline if we start today or when we start on day zero or day one or whatever day you choose to call it how many days is it going to take one of the milestones we're going to achieve where are we going to report back in how are we going to know that we're successful on the path to the solution it's important to show this path implementation again just like with the resources just like with the money or effort you're showing that you understand how much effort this is going to take how much time it's going to take and you and you are showing those points where you're going to self evaluate and that you're going to reconfigure a retool or readjust the solution based on what you're learning all right the last tip the last step is to offer multiple options sometimes the preferred solution you have those resources just maybe too much that timeline may just be too long to solve that problem the effort the juice may not be worth the squeeze for the solution the perfect solution you have in mind so it's great to go back to when you brainstorm those other other possibilities earlier in these steps and look at some of those and see if there's some other options you can offer the military called the courses of action we almost always tried to offer at least three courses of action to a decision maker so he said sir here's the here's the you know number one top solution we recommend but here's some alternatives as well and you want to flesh out those alternatives and and all of the steps we talked about with your preferred solution identifying those risks identifying the resources the opinions of others the impacts of second and third order effects make sure you do that for all the other other options that you're considering and all the other options you're presenting but if you give a decision maker a yes or no all or nothing option sometimes if the juice isn't worth the squeeze especially if it's the resources that are that are too much to handle you might get that no decision and you won't get that problem solved so you may want to have a couple of options in your hip pocket whether that's part of your plan presentation or they're just some options if the decision maker asks for one of their options you have you may want to have some of those options in your hip pocket so that you can say sir we've taken a look at all these things and here are the options we're presenting you and we recommend this one but these options would also solve the problem we're talking about so there are 10 tips for ready convincing pitch next week we're going to talk a little about the communication aspect the presentation aspect of making a pitch and we've got some tips for you there but really this week was about doing that prep work and I hope you're able to hang in with all 10 of those tips and you're able to go down and look in the in the description here get that worksheet so take that worksheet and use that to fill in your ideas it'll walk you through all the steps we talked about today all 10 steps are in that worksheet so take a look at that I know if you put the work in all that work will pay off and then come back and see us next week we'll talk about the presentation tips when you go make that pitch to whoever's making the decision for you if you found this helpful please like comment and share click on that link below we've got for you we've got that worksheet that we talked about in this video and we've got our free leadership development and that'll help you set your career goals for the next two five and ten years and build a plan of action-achieving so we've got a couple links for you this week if you have any business or leadership questions leave us a comment below we'd love to answer that for you we'd love to hear from all of you or email us at info at evilgeniusleadership.com evilgeniusleadership.com is also where you can find about all of our training and coaching programs so whether you're looking for doing a group workshop or maybe some group coaching or even some one-on-one work with a coach for your leadership style and your professional career goals check us out at evilgeniusleadership.com we'd love to do a free consultation with you and see if we can help you meet your goals thanks for watching today i really appreciate it and remember the future is out there lead the way