Whole Foos

How to Sell an Idea to your Boss Summary

I think that to be able to sell an idea to your boss, first the boss must be able to trust you within the organization. By trust I mean that he would want you to make a decision based on if it is good for the whole company or just your department. However, some bosses won’t listen to any of their employees because they think that since they are the boss, they obviously are smarter than the other employees, and must have better ideas. I think to make this guys boss “buy in” to his teams interesting ideas, you must give him ideas that maybe he knows a lot about, and that you know he would agree with, this being said if he agrees with something that your telling him, than he is more likely to agree with some other ideas that you may have down the line. Like it said in the article the solution to this problem is to have your boss onboard long before the idea comes up.

You will need to avoid situations in which you have to sell an innovative idea to your boss, you however might succeed, but the outcome will depend on factors that have nothing to do with the merits of your ideas, including the mood that your boss is in that day.

Another idea to help sell your boss is to ask him what he suggests about your idea, maybe let him change up some thing, you never know he might be able to make your teams idea a better idea.