What moves consumers to action? Emotion. It’s not much different than with executives and managers…you just use data to create those emotions!
In my experience, there are three emotions I’ve seen drive executive action:
Fear – show the competition is having success with a strategy that you are not. I’m putting this first because fear is the biggest motivator in the human psyche. And the first reaction for executives when they see a competitor doing something successful is to react. I’m not suggesting this is always right, but it’s reality. It’s a call to action event. If a competitor is launching an emerging channel strategy, your executives have to decide to do something or nothing. Use this time to drive a recommended strategy.
Excitement – show and prove the revenue impact from such a strategy. Changne resistance is typically due to prioritization and predictability. Corporations, and management in them, have a need to drive predictable growth and mitigate risk. Priorities are driven based on familiarity of strategies that drive confident results. Something that can be proved to drive better results and meet or beat forecast excites executives.
Pride – most forward-thinking executives want to be first to market, forward thinking, innovative and cutting edge. Some want this because it is right for the company, and some want it because it’s right for their career. Which one are you dealing with?
Use data to drive emotion, emotion to drive action, and perseverance to sustain the change!