Selling top down and bottoms up (Part III)

Selling Online Community plan to Sr. Mgmt. Part III

 It was important to address any concerns privacy and security had about employees sharing any company secrets. So, we would eventually take a page from their internal training program and use it on our training program.  In working with legal and privacy, we developed training program for employees, an employee policy, a process for monitoring what ‘people’ said about our products and services on thee web, and contingency plans about what we would do if there was an issue.  Then we met with CEO and his direct reports. We basically had 20 minutes to sell the idea of online communities. It had come to the point, where we need management’s sign off. It was time to go from being a skunk works project to something the company would fully support. Our presentation covered the following areas:  

·       Indicate what the Community would solve for (again, be clear about the ‘WHAT’ ) The importance of speaking ‘their language’ and/or the company’s language can not be overemphasized·       Demonstrate that legal, privacy, finance had signed off

·       Explain proposed changes in the employment policy (we wanted to move from a ‘no participation in an Internet chat room strategy’ to a more open policy (will add link to actual policy shortly)

·       Outline a proposed opt-in training program training policy (there was a lot of discussion about whether or not employees should be required to participate in a training program. After several minutes of discussion, Steve Bennett, boiled everything down to “we hired these employees because we trust them, so why can’t we trust them to participate responsibly on the web and to decide whether or not they needed training. Ironically, it was the employees who were asking for the training program. We shared some emails from staff who wanted some advice on how to participate in the community when they learned about it. Their emails basically stated ‘I don’t want to post anything that would hurt the company or make them look stupid. A key point here: Intuit is not like a lot of
Silicon Valley companies. There is an incredible energy around doing what is right for the customer and doing it as a member of a team. While the word ‘team’ is not often used and the word ‘matrix’d is used to describe the culture, there exists very few office politics.

·       Provide examples of what users are already saying about Intuit on the Web ·       Define value to company, especially for the ecosystem (see Ecosystem chapter) and as a strategic advantage over competitors

·       Define criteria for success (ROI, etc.) 

·       Describe how they senior management would be part of the process — and how there would be few surprises

·       Present an internal communications plan

·       Present a plan on how you plan to work with individual business unit leaders  We also presented the desire for the community team to sit with the product development team and for it to be a separate line item in the budget (more)

The next step was to talk to the business line leaders…

More on this next time..