What to Do When You Aren't Presenting to the Decision Maker
Jackie and Shadow. All photos are screenshots from the Friends of Big Bear Valley web camera www.bigbearvalley.org
“I’m frequently presenting to people who aren’t the decision maker. I need to get them to buy in and take the message to the decision maker to sell it. You talk about how stories and communications start with audiences, but how do I communicate when the decision maker isn’t in the room?”
This happens all the time.
You’re pitching a client, but the person who approves the work isn’t there. You’re presenting an idea to a leadership team, but someone else has the final say. You’re sharing a recommendation with someone who will take it to their boss.
It’s challenging when the person you most need to influence isn’t in the meeting. Your message has to do two things:
Influence the people in the meeting.
Survive the journey to the person who isn’t.
That requires thinking about communication differently.
Don’t Assume You Know Where the Power Is
Don’t treat the person in front of you as an intermediary between you and the person you really want to reach. They may not be the final decision maker, but they still play a role. They may be evaluating your idea and deciding whether to recommend it. They may be a gatekeeper who determines whether it moves forward. Or they may be the one responsible for implementing the decision and living with the consequences the final decision maker will never experience.
Sometimes the lines between influencer and decision maker aren’t as clear as they appear.
When I worked in corporate, I was developing a new leadership development course that was going to roll out company wide. I held a pilot and was debriefing the experience with the vendor over dinner. My boss happened to join us, seated next to me.
The vendor asked how we had found them. My boss explained that I was the one who found them and was responsible for the work.
The vendor missed every cue. He turned away from me and squared his body toward my boss. He directed the entire conversation to my boss and ignored me. He had decided my boss was the path to more work and an important account for his business.
I held the budget. I was the one who decided whether we would continue working together.
We didn’t.
Don’t assume that an org chart tells you exactly where influence and decision-making power sit.
You Have Two Audiences To Consider
When the decision maker isn’t in the room, plan for two audiences:
1) The person in the meeting.
2) The decision maker who will hear about it afterward.
Don’t ignore one in favor of the other, or you risk talking past the person in front of you, whose concerns and stakes in the outcome matter.
Start with what the people in the meeting need:
Why does this matter to them?
How will this affect them?
What concerns might they have?
What would they need to understand before supporting the recommendation?
Then consider what the eventual decision maker will need:
What problem does this solve?
What evidence supports it?
What are the risks and tradeoffs?
What questions are they likely to ask?
Your communication needs to work for both.
Designing a Message That Can Travel
Once you leave the meeting, you lose control of how your message is communicated. The person who heard you may summarize your presentation in a few minutes, remember a few points, or explain the idea differently than you intended. Your message will be filtered through what they understood, remembered, agreed with, and considered important.
Prepare for this by asking: If I weren’t there to explain this, what would I want someone to say?
Your message needs to be easily understood, memorable, repeatable, and give people a reason to care. This is similar to preparing for a talk that gets unexpectedly cut from thirty minutes to five. You have to know what cannot be lost.
Start with the one sentence takeaway.
What is the central idea you want someone to repeat? Think of it like a logline. If asked, “What was the recommendation?”, what do you want them to say?
Identify the two or three points that must survive the handoff.
Not everything you say deserves equal weight. Find what’s essential and tighten it into simple, memorable sentences.
Prepare the evidence they will need.
What supports those points? What proof will they need if the decision maker asks, “Why should we do this?”
Prepare them for the questions they’ll face.
What is the decision maker likely to challenge or want to know?
Then ask: If only 15% of this message survives, what needs to be in that 15%?
Get The Person In The Meeting Involved
Don’t treat the person in the meeting as a messenger waiting to receive your information. Ask them:
What do you think will matter most in making this decision?
What concerns do you have about this approach?
What questions still need to be answered?
What do you anticipate others will want to know?
Their responses give you useful information, but they also get the person thinking about the decision themselves. They may share their own perspective or help you understand what the decision maker cares about. As they consider questions that could come up later, they’re already thinking about how they’ll frame the message when they carry it forward.
Make The Takeaway Impossible To Miss
Don’t make your audience guess what matters most. Use clear cues.
The thing I want you to take away from this is…
The recommendation I’m making is…
If you remember one thing from this conversation, it should be….
These are brain friendly nudges that help people distinguish what they heard from what you want them to carry forward.
Give Them Something They Can Use
A presentation deck isn’t always the best tool for the conversation that happens after your meeting. Think about what the person will actually need:
A simple story they can easily repeat
Headlines that capture the key ideas
A one-page summary of the recommendation
An executive summary that frames the decision before supporting material
Answers to likely questions.
The easier you make it for someone to accurately explain your idea, the more likely the important parts survive.
Test Whether Your Message Can Survive
When I was a kid, one of my favorite party games was telephone. One person whispered a sentence to the next, who whispered it to the next, until the last person said it out loud. We would cackle at how distorted it became.
Before the actual presentation, try it with someone. Explain your recommendation, then ask them to explain it back to you. Notice what they remembered, left out, and misunderstood. Ask what they felt was most important. If they can’t explain the message after hearing it, don’t expect someone outside your organization to do it.
The person in the meeting isn’t an obstacle between you and the decision.
They determine whether your idea makes it there at all.
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Karen Eber is an award-winning author, TED speaker, and storytelling keynote speaker. She is the author of The Perfect Story and her TED Talk on how the brain responds to stories has been viewed more than 2.25 million times. As CEO and Chief Storyteller of Eber Leadership Group, she helps leaders communicate ideas that inform, influence, and inspire.
