Selling design value to business people

Design as a practice has great value to offer businesses, but too often it fails to reach its full potential as the value gets lost in translation within the myriad of stakeholders initiatives must pass through.

This is literally a translation problem — two people speaking different languages and unable to understand one another.

If we, as designers, want to reach our own full potential we must be able to influence decisions and action outside of our own patch, all the way up to the senior or executive leadership.

So, how might we solve this translation problem?

Well, we can either pay for an interpreter (please watch this Bill Murray scene to understand why this is a bad idea) or one party needs to learn to speak the other’s language.

Designers are the ones pitching value to the business side, so it’s up to us.

Let’s look at how we can go about it.

1. Show empathy for our stakeholder/s

Empathy is one of a designer’s superpowers. It is a skill we use everyday — seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.

This is where we must start. Who are we selling to and what do they want/need to see.

In large organisations, projects will inevitably have objectives, KPIs and metrics attached. Project owners and stakeholders will have their own personal metrics, known as KPIs (key performance indicators), and often their own agendas.

Understanding these levels will help you build empathy and know what really matters

To be able to empathise with our audience we need to understand what is driving their decisions.

These metrics could be financial (sales, costs), marketing-driven (cost of acquisition, conversion), operational (resources required or saved) and will often be linked to an overarching strategy. To understand what these are for your project, why not just ask! If this doesn’t work, you should take an educated guess — doing so, even if it’s not quite right, will show that you are considering your work from their perspective.

2. Take accountability for your work’s performance by testing

Selling value requires designers take accountability for their work.

For some, this might be quite confronting. In days gone by design was more art than science. If we want to start talking about the value of design, we need to be comfortable with the science side.

Scientific studies involve:

• Forming a hypothesis

• Building a test

• Testing with ‘real’ people

• Measuring success

• Repeat until you’re #winning

This is the same for the science of design, but we tend to refer to it as build-measure-learn.

Image from here

Whatever we create, be it a brand identity, a new product, process or service, it is filled with assumptions. Once we start to test these assumptions we also start to create real data that can validate these assumptions (or not) and allow us to extrapolate out an approximated impact for when the solution is scaled.

It is this data, translated into the metrics we identified in stage one, that is the core of your sales pitch.

For example, my team was recently asked to develop a new process and digital tool to enable a manual task to be completed virtually. We eventually developed an MVP to pilot with real users.

Metrics attached to the MVP, for our own use, looked at things like completions, bounce rates and the user experience. But, for our story to be effective to our stakeholders we translated these findings into the man hours that could be reallocated from low-value, manual work to high-value, strategic work. This would both save the organisation a lot of money but also contribute to their results, due to more time spent on high-value work.

3. Establish a baseline

Metrics are only valuable when they are meaningful.

To be meaningful, we need to give them context — being a baseline. Given design is about creating a better future state, we need to understand what the current state is to allow for this comparison.

For the example above, this might be that Task A generally takes 2 hours to complete. Testing our new solution shows an approximated average time for Task A to be 1 hour, which is a reduction of 50%. Without the baseline, this 1 hour would be meaningless and the value of our proposed solution overlooked.

The project owner should have a baseline, as this is how they will be judged on success. If they don’t, here is another chance for you to show your strategic value as a designer with business intelligence.

4. Tell a story with your quant data, but don’t forget the qual

Remember that we are ‘selling’ value.

Every time we talk about our work it is a pitch — never forget that.

A powerful sales tool is storytelling. The quantitative data we have collected and translated above ensure your audience listen, but the qualitative data that you connect to this ensure that people hear what you are saying.

Again referring to the example above, our pitch showed the financial and operational value of our work. But, in one presentation to the tool’s users we had a response saying that what we were doing was a ‘noble venture’ that would have a significant impact on the morale and job satisfaction of the frontline staff.

The numbers ensured they listened. The story is what stuck.

If you want to know how to structure your story, I always refer to the approach of Barbara Minto.

In Summary

There is an incredible opportunity for designers to contribute to business value and, in turn, make ourselves much more valuable and respected. But, to unlock this potential we must make ourselves and our work accountable and learn to translate our work into the language of business — the language of those who make the decisions.

Remember every presentation is a pitch. Take the time to learn and understand the language, learn how to translate your work and finally learn how to tell a great story with both your quant and qual data.

I know you can do it.