How to sell your idea or product to a group of people (aka committee)

When you sell a SaaS product to a company, you are selling to a group of people, composed of the person in charge of the purchase process, budget owner, IT, finance, legal, etc.

When you pitch to an investor, you are pitching to the partner and their investment committee.

When you ask for a budget to build a product, you are pitching to a group of decision-makers (VP of product, founders, CEO, CFO, etc.) at your company.

When you advocate a major strategic move (e.g. M&A) for your company, you are advocating in front of the company’s board.

So how to sell an idea or product to a group of people:

1, Understand who is on the committee and what are their mission and interests
Never go directly to the committee at the beginning (most of the time, you won’t be able to get to them either)

2, Identify an ally, at best find a champion who can promote your idea or product.

3, You should do this offline and build a relationship with your ally or champion.

4, Build a case together on the value of the idea or product and how it fits into the committee’s mission and interests

5, Do your best to help this person win over others in the committee by removing the potential blockers.

6, An individual might not be the decision maker in the committee but sometimes he/she can block the process. It is important to remove his/her blocker.

7, Win the committee one by one

Sometimes a committee is formal and perpetual such as a leadership team, board, etc. Sometimes a committee is informal and temporal and exists only for a project.

A committee is almost always more conservative facing decision-making than individuals. This is our group behavior. It takes time to win over a committee and a bit of persistence and intelligence.