How To Get Senior Level Support For Your Projects

Almost every person in charge of a team has had a similar experience. With only a few minutes to present to senior management, you must communicate a proposed project on behalf of your team. You labor until you perfect the delivery, only to see that the executives were unmoved by your proposal. Why?

I have found some excellent techniques to help gain senior level support through my work with change leaders over the past ten years. I have also seen more than one attempt flop. I decided to talk directly with several senior level leaders both in corporate and public organizations in order to discover best practices in presentations to senior management.

One thing nearly every executive noted was that team leaders eager to pitch a proposal for support, be it money or otherwise have a consistent tendency to offer far too much information in their presentations. Many proposals never make it past the proposal stage because the executives were too busy and consumed with their current projects to learn every detail of a new proposal. Most senior managers dont care to be involved in every detail that makes up the project your team is working on. They trust you to a number of decisions related to that proposal and dont want to have to be part of that process.

The following are three best practices for making a case to the senior leadership team.

1. Use PowerPoint to summarize your main points.

A PowerPoint deck is a great briefing tool because it requires you to summarize your points into brief bullets. Keep your points at a high level and mentally prepare stories, anecdotes, and illustrations to bring depth to the words on the page. Plan to spend no more than 3 minutes per page during your pitch. Bring backup information with you, but pull it out only in response to questions about the details.

2. Organize your main objectives and goals into relevant groups.

I recently saw one team leader list every activity his team planned to work on in 2009 in his pitch to executives. Instead of strengthening his case, all of the details turned off the executives he was trying to influence. One leader even spoke up to tell the team leader that they didnt want to know all of the team's tasks. They just wanted to know the priorities.

Separating goals and tasks into related groups is a helpful technique. One example of this might be to state in your introduction that in the coming year, your groups goal is to focus on cost savings, making processes more efficient and creating a stronger bottom line. Then, your presentation would consist of giving examples of how you intend to be successful in each of these three areas. Using this approach will help senior management to focus on how the proposals you suggest for your team will impact the entire company, and allow them to decide if these are the areas that they want to stress in the coming year.

3. Summarize in a few words what you would like senior management to provide to move your initiative forward.

A great number of presentations to senior management take on an informational tone. The team leader will update the executives on status of the project and then ask for questions. Their expectation is that senior management will take the initiative and suggest a plan for funding and support of the project, which unfortunately is rarely the case.

Instead, conclude your pitch with a slide that summarizes specifically what you need. This might be money, a decision, or dedicated resources. Yes, there is a risk that your request will be turned down, but it's better to know that now, than to keep spinning your wheels.

In the 1990s a team of external consultants worked with General Electric to develop a change acceleration process. The team came up with a four-step formula for effective elevator speeches:

* Our project or initiative is about . . . * It is critical to the company because . . . * What this means for you is . . . . * Heres how you can help . . .

This approach will work both in informal individual conversations with senior management staff as well as in your formal group presentations. And, as you become more proficient at answering those four key questions, your ability to get your proposals approve will increase.

Streamlining your sales presentations so that they are short and to the point, you will be much more successful at communicating your goals and not your tasks. Being very specific and clear about what you need will help senior management to know right away what you are proposing, what you would like from them to help you succeed, and, most important, how it will positively impact the entire organization.