Step 2: Frame Your Idea Within a Strong Narrative

Goal: Give your target something to remember-and talk about.

People don't get excited about the facts behind the idea; they embrace the story that surrounds the facts. To be effective, the narrative must be compelling, which means it should make intuitive sense to the idea-buyer according to his or her view of the world. Likewise, it should also make the buyer feel good about the decision to adopt your idea. "When you're trying to sell somebody a new idea, you must persuade them that the idea confirms their own opinions, rather than proves them wrong," says Seth Godin, author of the New York Times bestseller Persuasion Marketing.

The best way to build a narrative is to tie it to current events, especially within your corporate environment. Did your firm just lose a big customer? Chances are the sales manager is worried about a larger exodus—that's her worldview—so your idea should directly address the question of how to win customers back. Similarly, if a competitor just launched a winning product and your company has a history of successful innovation, your idea should show how your firm can leapfrog the competition by returning to its innovative roots.

Case Study

The Sell for the Speak and Spell

When Texas Instruments researcher Gene Frantz and his team invented a computer chip that could synthesize speech in the mid-1970s, computing was still all about big mainframes and number crunching. The idea of a talking computer was seen as science fiction, but talking toys (that used tape loops) were already common. There were also numerous media reports circulating about how television was negatively impacting the reading ability of children.

To sell the idea to TI's management, Frantz positioned the technology as the brains of an educational toy called Speak and Spell. "It looked like a big handheld calculator, which was a big product category for TI at the time," Frantz explains. Positioning his idea as congruent with both the corporate culture and the general concerns of society not only resulted in a high successful product, it supercharged Frantz's career; he's now a highly respected senior fellow.