It's a process that I struggle with, but I truly want to improve. Do you have any suggestions or resources?
Nerds often have a tendency to be hyper focused on the details of the solution because that's the most fun part and the part they have directly thought about intensely.
Many people "up the chain", or in general who don't have intimate details of the problem space may not grasp why such a solution is needed. So starting off with it doesn't resonate with them.
I've found its better to first tell the story of "what got us here", that led to this solution. If you do it right, you'll see the "a ha" moment go off in people's faces and they're right with you.
This gives a logical framework for presenting people with new information - starting with a 10,000 foot view of how ‘the world has changed’ and gradually going into more detail about how this change will impact them before providing a solution. [1]
Where it really excels is enabling you to ‘bundle’ ideas into a larger trend, which others may not have seen as connected in the past. Depending on your background, using a sales framework may seem ‘icky’ but it’s a fairly tried and true method of presenting information.
In terms of books, other than Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer I can recommend To Sell is Human by Dan Pink, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and How to Deliver a Ted Talk.
An area where you can get a huge leg up over others is in use of PowerPoint / Google Slides. Most people are terrible at it, so if you can deliver a presentation which is 15% better than most you will be at a huge advantage also. The key here is not to see PowerPoint as a tool for conveying information, but as a tool for creating pitches. If you treat every new idea you present as a ‘pitch’ it will transform your effectiveness.
In the same way as gift wrapping a gift ‘elevates’ the gift, wrapping an idea or proposal in a presentation means it’s automatically taken more seriously.
[1] https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/insight-selling-better-pitch
- What is the problem?
- Why is it a problem? (Eg, Business impact, impact on customers, etc.)
- What are we doing about it?
- What consequences do we expect (or do we already see)?
Depending on the medium, do a sentence, a paragraph, or a page for each.