What approach do you take to build internal consensus among stakeholders when you have limited data to prove/disprove an idea?

First of all, I’m super transparent about the genesis of my idea. In my experience you’ll lose credibility quickly if you aren’t upfront about the fact that you don’t have a ton of data to support an idea you’re passionate about. Hopefully, you do have at least some good reason for your instinct. Have competitors successfully done something similar? Do you have research or user feedback that would tangentially suggest your idea will work? Next, be precious about the problem you’re trying to solv ...Read More

I mentioned this in a prior question - treat each stakeholder like one of your “personas”. Understand their role, what their pain points are, what their goals are, what words they use and what’s important to them. Do a 1:1 with them, get to know them, their OKRs, interview them and find out how you can help them and work with them. Once you have a clear idea on how to deliver value to them, incorporate that into how you work with them, message them and position your work to them. You already do ...Read More

A quick thought experiment: Imagine you're launching a new product, and you only have the time and budget to run a quick quantitative round with your customers. Would you do it? In my experience, the product marketers I've worked with would jump at the opportunity. I say this to point out that just because data is limited, it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. For instance, maybe limited means it was only one study, but you had strong sample size and statistically significant differences in answ ...Read More

I always start with positioning ideas as hypotheses (a fancy term for your hunches). This approach is helpful to show stakeholders that you’re open to their input/feedback, and potentially being wrong. When you have hypotheses, you come to the conversation saying “here’s something I have a hunch about, but I don’t have enough data yet to tell me this is a good idea or the right thing, I’d love to hear your thoughts or help me poke holes in this” I think about building consensus in three stages t ...Read More

Start by understanding your stakeholders. What are their overall goals? What are their concerns regarding your proposal? And who in your organization influences the decision makers? Once you know what you need, I would determine if there is a way to have more data to support your idea. It may not be definitive, but even directional data is powerful in making arguments.  For example, if you are advocating a new messaging approach, are there ways you can test it with lower risk? If you are trying ...Read More

Customer feedback and journey mapping. There's always data available, it just may not always be the data your stakeholders want. In those scenarios, I always default to customer feedback. Customer feedback: I find that reviewing messaging & positioning, new webpages, you name it, with customers or potential customers often gives you the vital feedback you need to understand if you're truly solving their problems. There are lots of tools that can give you great customers feedback, like Userte ...Read More