Marketing Skills

Your ideas are great and you have communicated them well but still nobody wants to follow? Then you probably lack marketing skills.

• Motivate and convince: How do companies convince you of buying a product? They demonstrate its value and benefits. But not just with 5 bullet points. They wrap it nicely and make it as easy as possible to digest.
  • Prototypes: Show a prototype of your idea. There are plenty of tools for creating prototypes. In the context of enterprises who love SAP check out build.me in which you can create nice looking and clickable UI5 apps fast and easy.
  • Show a video: Instead of “boring slides” you can also show a video which demonstrates your idea or at least the direction. But please, don’t overdo marketing: In the long term, content is king. If your words do not come true, this will damage your reputation in the long term.
• Fight for your ideas and be persistent: People sometime do not like your ideas or they are just too lazy to follow them. If you are really convinced by your ideas, you should continuously go after them and “fight”. This is sometimes necessary. Architecture decisions with long term goals are often not the easiest one’s: Developers do not like them, as they are more complex to develop. Managers do not like them, as they are more expensive in the short term. This is your job to be persistent and to negotiate.
• Find allies: Establishing or enforcing your ideas on your own can be hard or even impossible. Try to find allies who can support and help convincing others. Use your network. If you do not have one yet, start building it now. You could start by talking to your (open-minded) peers about your ideas. If they like it, or at least parts of it, it is likely that they support your idea if asked by others (“The idea by X was interesting.”). If they don’t like it, ask for the why: Maybe you have missed something? Or your story is not convincing enough? Next step is to find allies with decision power. Ask for an open-minded discussion. If you fear the discussion, remember that sometimes you need to leave your comfort zone.
• Repeat It, Believe It: “[…] studies show that repeated exposure to an opinion makes people believe the opinion is more prevalent, even if the source of that opinion is only a single person.” (Source: The Financial Brand) If you publish few messages often enough, it can help to convince people more easily. But be aware: From my perspective such a strategy should be used wisely as it could backfire as a lousy marketing trick.