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Four Tips on Pitching Supply Chain Initiatives to the C-Suite

By Jeff Bodenstab6 Jul 2016

If you have to sell your ideas about how to strengthen the supply chain to executives that control the purse, here are four tips from experts on pitching supply chain initiatives to the C-Suite.

1.  Play to the C-Suite strategic mindset – “This audience is strategic and financially driven,” says Gartner analyst Pam Fitzpatrick in The Supply Chain Executive’s Playbook for Pitching New Initiatives to the C-Suite. “In publically traded companies, they need to create shareholder value, and they need to see how outcomes will play out in one to three years.”

For instance, demonstrate your initiative as an engine for growth. Most CEOs are focused on growth and taking the company to the next level of performance to support that growth. C-level execs that came up through finance, marketing, or sales may not get the language and concepts of supply chain, but they understand strategic business imperatives—and want to see your presentation in those terms. This fits well with supply chain upgrades that adopt advanced technology to make the supply chain a strategic differentiator.

2.  When describing the problem, pose it in terms the C-suite deals with regularly like profit and loss, capital spending, and customer KPIs. That’s because once people reach the C-suite, “technical and functional expertise matters less than leadership skills and a strong grasp of business fundamentals,” says The New Path to the C-Suite, a Harvard Business Review article. A C-level executive may not intuit the full importance of an accurate demand forecast, but can appreciate the link between forecast accuracy and customer KPIs.

A great example of this technique was illustrated by the supply chain executives at Findus, a frozen foods company. They initially pitched their inventory optimization project to their private equity owners as an opportunity to free up working capital. Once the results made it clear to the board that service didn’t have to come at the expense of capital, Findus’ supply chain team could revert from its goal of freeing up working capital back to prioritizing service levels, resulting in incremental revenue and margin contribution would be significantly larger than the working capital savings alone.

3.  Be succinct and urgently get to the point – Top executives are busy. “The senior executive group has to get tremendous decision volume through their meeting time together,” says former senior vice president at Johnson & Johnson Harold Fethe in the Industry Week article Nine Rules for Pitching Ideas to C-Level Executives. “You need to respect that and get up to that level of urgency.”

Gartner suggests applying the Minto Method to your opener, where you succinctly state the problem and the initiative as follows; Situation, Complication, Implication, Question, and Answer. For example:

Segment Example What’s Happening
Situation Lost revenue in a geographical area due to unsatisfactory customer service You’re explaining the current state and grabbing their attention with data and terms that they easily understand, and getting agreement on the problem.
Complication A key competitor has entered the market, putting more pressure on the firm You’re embedding a sense of urgency by explaining the added factors that make it important to deal with this issue now.
Implication If action isn’t taken to improve service levels, there will be further erosion of revenue and market share You’re explaining the consequences of failing to act.
Question (Unspoken: How are we going to solve this problem?) Without saying a word, you’re implanting this question in their minds.
Answer Open a new distribution center in the region You’re introducing your solution, in terms that they can easily understand.
This concludes your opening. You can now move forward with details about your solution.

Source: Gartner (December 2015)

4. Minimize jargon and acronyms – “CEOs will find your use of supply chain jargon confusing,” Fitzpatrick says. “Concepts or language that is confusing will also be perceived as time-wasting or threatening. They’ll perceive gaps in communication as your shortcoming—not their own.”

So avoid using acronyms. If a supply chain phrase is repeated many times over, then show the phrase and the acronym together on first use, as in Supply Chain Planning (SCP) and then use the acronym afterwards. Avoid more obscure acronyms altogether, such as DF for Demand Forecasting.

Gartner’s executive survey participants suggested as a rule of thumb making concepts clear enough that your grandmother could understand — assuming, of course, that your grandmother isn’t a supply chain expert!


Click below to read the story about how Findus successfully pitched their inventory optimization project to their board.

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