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The Importance of Follow-Up - Part 6

Avoid trying to sell weak ideas. All you will do is lose your own prestige and undermine whatever confidence other people have in you.

In presenting your idea, and also in preparing the covering report, follow a definite, logical sequence. Here is an example:

State the idea clearly. Assume you are explaining it to a ten-year-old child. You aren't, of course, but this will quickly show up any fuzziness in your own thinking.

State the value of the idea to the company. Tell exactly why the owners of the business should be prepared to risk x number of dollars on your idea. Make sure that your arguments will satisfy the toughest person you can imagine who will have to pass on the idea.

List the advantages of your idea on one side of a sheet of paper. List the disadvantages on the other. Then justify your reasoning that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Be sure to look for "hidden" advantages like public-relations benefits, filling up of slack production periods, effects on company or industry prestige. These can all be "sold" if they are present in your basic concept.

Tell where you fit in. This is a form of recommending the next step on the idea. Are you through with it now? Should you be the person to carry out further exploratory or development or implementation work? It is always a temptation to ask for the opportunity to carry an idea all the way through and thus reap whatever rewards may result from it. But it is a mistake to trap yourself into a position of having to do something that you may not have the training, experience, or temperament to do.

Restate the benefits; recommend the next step. Always make a recommendation of the next thing to be done when you present an idea. This may be to investigate further along specific lines; to check out costs; to conduct a study to determine the effect of the idea or consumer reactions to the idea; or to appoint some­one to activate the idea. But always make a specific recommenda­tion as to what should come next. The aim is to make it easier for the person with authority to keep the idea moving than to put up with the uncomfortable feeling that an idea is hanging in sus­pension while he decides what should be done with it. Tell him what to do.

Related terms include effective small business management and business career.