If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? What about if you have the most brilliant design or idea but nobody wants to hear it, does it make your customers happy? Creating beautiful, brilliant and elegant designs that never get launched doesn’t help our company or our customers. One of the biggest challenges we face is convincing other people that our design, feature and product ideas are great. We can create the most elegant user experience yet totally fail because it never saw the light of day with our customers. Aurelius co-founder and CEO Zack Naylor, covers how we can set our ideas up for success from the very beginning. We discuss how to truly understand and present our ideas to stakeholders so that we can sell our ideas! And deliver a brilliant user experience in our products and services!

1. How to Sell Your Ideas
UXPA Minnesota - January 2018

2. 50% or more of your time at
work is spent selling to others

3. So who is this guy?!…
@AureliusLab @zacknaylor Aurelius
www.aureliuslab.com

4. What’s on the menu
- setting our ideas up for success
- learning (and speaking) “business” language
- 3 relevant stories
- 2 Harrison Ford references
- 2 Star Wars references
- a partridge in a pear tree

5. Hold up
…a few disclaimers before we dive in…

6. Let’s try a fun little exercise

8. Design is a business

9. Treat design like a business
Sell the benefits not “features”
Sell to the right people
Educate first, provide value, then “sell”
What do successful businesses do?
Understand their audience better than anyone

10. Marketing
Sales
Right people, right message, right channel
Giving “qualified buyers” the information they need
to make the best decision for them
…sets you up for a successful “sale”
Market opportunity, messaging, positioning, awareness
A sale is a transaction, a transfer of value

11. You work in sales, whether you accept that or not

12. What makes a good sales-person?

14. em·pa·thy
ˈempəTHē
noun
the ability to understand and share the
feelings of another.

15. “A lot of designers out there with empathy for their users but
almost none for the people they’re working with”
- Christina Wodtke , Aurelius Podcast Episode 11

16. Your job is to sell your
ideas, decisions and
recommendations to
your stakeholders and
your company,
ON BEHALF of your
customers.

17. We are a liaison
between the
organization we
work for and
the people it
serves.

18. How do we develop empathy
for our stakeholders?

19. First, a story…
:(

20. Broken mobile app experience
Frustrated team
Ad hoc process
Opinion/Guess based decisions
Lack of trust in design

21. :
(

22. Creating clear goals for your
product and experience

23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0hAyaCk9I

24. Genuinely talk with and listen to your stakeholders
(you might call this a stakeholder interview)

25. “Excellent goals provide definition for what
a good design or product decision is”

26. “Goals should convey our intentions in a
way that explains the expected benefit to
both our company and our customers”
@AureliusLab @zacknaylor

27. 3 parts to a goal
1. Statement:
Statement of your goal or intention

28. 3 parts to a goal
2. Success Indicators:
What we will see, hear or feel if we’re meeting that goal

29. 3 parts to a goal
3. Metrics:
How you plan to measure success

30. 3 parts to a goal
1. Statement: Statement of your goal or intention
“Encourage more people to start a
free trial”
EXAMPLE:

31. 3 parts to a goal
2. Success Indicators: What we will see, hear or feel if we’re meeting that goal
More visitors to the free trial sign up page
EXAMPLES:
More people filling out the free trial sign up form

32. 3 parts to a goal
3. Metrics: How you plan to measure success
EXAMPLES:
More people filling out the free trial sign up formMore visitors to the free trial sign up page
Page Count
Unique Views
Form submissions

33. OUR EXAMPLE GOAL:
Metrics:
More people filling out the free trial sign up form
More visitors to the free trial sign up page
Page CountUnique Views Form submissions
“Encourage more people to start a free trial”
Statement:
Success Indicators:

34. OUR EXAMPLE GOAL:
Metrics:
More people filling out the free trial sign up form
More visitors to the free trial sign up page
Page CountUnique Views Form submissions
“Encourage more people to start a free trial”
Statement:
Success Indicators:
give metrics meaning
make a goal
statement concrete

35. Keep in mind that you’ll probably have
more than one goal for any project

36. “Learn more about your customers faster
than the competition.”
“Turn what you learn about customers
into action faster than the competition.”
- Jack Welch
@AureliusLab @zacknaylor

37. “Learn more about your customers faster
than the competition.”
“Turn what you learn about customers
into action faster than the competition.”
- Jack Welch
@AureliusLab @zacknaylor
stakeholders

38. “ ...a lot of designers they often have no idea how their
company makes money”
- Christina Wodtke , Aurelius Podcast Episode 11

39. Our job is to understand our stakeholders
better than anyone else so that we know
exactly what to “sell” them
@AureliusLab @zacknaylor

40. Clear goals allow people to
make the connection between your
decisions and recommendations and
the desired outcome

41. Don’t call it a snake call it a rope
https://youtu.be/_ZiFVztmotg?t=87

42. Speak the same language as your business

43. OUR EXAMPLE GOAL:
Metrics:
More people filling out the free trial sign up form
More visitors to the free trial sign up page
Page CountUnique Views Form submissions
“Encourage more people to start a free trial”
Statement:
Success Indicators:

44. Selling User Research

45. OUR EXAMPLE GOAL:
Metrics:
More people filling out the free trial sign up form
More visitors to the free trial sign up page
Page CountUnique Views Form submissions
“Encourage more people to start a free trial”
Statement:
Success Indicators: What do we need to learn
(or have we already
learned) to make these
things happen?

46. “Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found
that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I
didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I
didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a
worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to
have that?" Why not use the same common sense when fishing for
people?”
- Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

47. OUR EXAMPLE GOAL:
Metrics:
More people filling out the free trial sign up form
More visitors to the free trial sign up page
Page CountUnique Views Form submissions
“Encourage more people to start a free trial”
Statement:
Success Indicators:
Sell answers to
these questions

48. You’re
not selling user research
CONFIDENCE
you’re selling

49. Selling Design/Features/Ideas

50. Success Indicators:
OUR EXAMPLE GOAL:
Metrics:
More people filling out the free trial sign up form
More visitors to the free trial sign up page
Page CountUnique Views Form submissions
“Encourage more people to start a free trial”
Statement:
Recommendations should
clearly show how to impact one
or more of these things…

52. Sell cathedrals, not brick walls

53. What
How

54. “Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd.
Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are
eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of
us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.”
- Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

55. What is a winning
design/product/feature
recommendation?

56. - some relevant customer insight
- business goal/success indicator
- recommendation that addresses both
A combination of:

57. Benefit + Confidence + Action
Formula for a solid idea

58. Formula for a solid idea
Benefit + Confidence + Action
business goal
and/or success
indicator
relevant
customer insight(s)
recommendation(s)
that addresses both

59. Selling ideas mad-libs style

60. I recommend we
because we learned
This will help us
so that we can
<insert design or product decision>
<insert supporting research insight(s)>
<insert relevant success indicator(s)>
<insert overall goal statement>

61. Thank you!

63. Zack Naylor
email:
twitter:
www.aureliuslab.com
@zacknaylor
zack@aureliuslab.com
linkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacknaylor/