How to Build a Business Case Executives Will Approve | Finding Brave #335

You don't go into a hospital and say, fix me, and expect somebody to start operating. There's diagnostic questions that the seller or the founder have to ask. There's discovery questions. And through that dialogue, we can identify how is an organization currently addressing this issue. What is the cost to the business of doing it this way? And how do we collaborate on a business case that shows that the cost of inaction is more than the cost of change? That's justification to invest money. And as long as the I in ROI is smaller than they are, that's a business case. You give me $100,000, I give you a million dollars in savings or increased revenue. That's good business. When we help an individual who's not a decision owner, when we equip them with the language, the tools to go show the executives, this is a good business decision. They're doing their job, increasing their contribution to the bottom line. Now, you asked a really, really insightful question. How do we equip them? What do we give them? Well, it's not a bunch of brochures. It's not a 40-page presentation. It's not a bunch of ROI analyses and a bunch of data sheets and all the things that they're supposed to be doing in their job to narrow down the offerings that are available. It's what I would call either a decision memo or an executive investment recommendation. Maybe it's 2 pages, 1 or 2, maybe 3 pages, worst case, that summarize, this is how we're currently doing things. This is the— this is where there's friction. Cost, time, labor. This is the solution that we're recommending. This is the investment. This is how we plan to get there with a go-live plan with actions, owners, dates. So this is treated as an accountable project, and this is the decision we would recommend that we make.