Selling Your Boss on a New Planning & Budgeting Platform

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Sometimes we see a process improvement or tool that could reshape the way our business is run for the better – but our boss doesn’t see it the same way we do. I’ve compiled a list of advice and hard truths that may help you along the way. Enjoy.

1. Don’t Make it About You

This may be difficult to hear, but sometimes your managers don’t actually care how hard you’re working. Burning the midnight oil multiple times per month? So what? You’re salaried after all.

After experiencing thousands of sales cycles in the planning, budgeting, and consolidation software world, I’ve heard many of the same justifications for the purchase. Those justifications that are me-centric never end well. Consider these examples.

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The items in the first column are about the person – not about how it benefits the economic buyer (probably your CFO) or the organization. Reframe your thinking around the benefits of the planning and budgeting system. How will everyone else benefit? Start there.

2. Know What Matters

This dovetails nicely with the section above. Before you can even begin looking at planning, budgeting, and consolidation tools, you must determine what the economic buyers care about. Do they care about a more efficient budget process? Maybe. Speed? Probably. De-risking finance processes? Most definitely.

I’ve been in plenty of sales cycles for planning software where the evaluators knew what mattered – to them. The cycle is about to wrap up and POW, the CFO parachutes into the last demo for 10 minutes with totally different needs. The vendor isn’t prepared to show it, and the evaluators are blindsided. Cycle over!

How do you find out what matters? Try this.

• “What kind of reporting or analysis did you receive in a prior role that you absolutely loved?”
• “If we had a planning tool, what are 5 things you would want out of it that you’re not getting today?” (Don’t say “a few”. Give it a number.)
• “In my last job we used a planning tool to build multiple scenarios per month, in just a few minutes. How could we apply that here?”
• “Last week you mentioned the board was pushing you for more frequent reporting. I know a way to satisfy them without hiring more people.”

3. Short Term Wins

Your execs will be keener on a software purchase if the vendor can present both short term and long-term benefits to the organization. It becomes much more difficult to convince a CFO to buy a planning tool if you tie the entire value proposition to budgeting, which takes place once a year and may be a months out. This approach causes them to delay the decision, or completely blow it off.

The newish CPM vendors are doing a great job focusing on “time to value” which is a software industry catchphrase for “you don’t have to wait 6 months until the implementation is complete to get basic reporting”. Legacy implementations took an eternity to get basic budget vs actual reports. With modern APIs and architectures, some systems can get you something very compelling in a few weeks. For example:

• Load up the Excel budget and run BvA reporting right away
• Start a rolling forecast now instead of waiting for the next budget cycle
• Get that KPI reporting dashboard to the CFO first (they’ll love it)
• Spin up a dimensionalized report in a few minutes that would have taken a week in Excel
• Provide some predictive analytic forecasts for different cuts of your products, going beyond basic Excel formulas

These types of quick wins should be relatively simple for the vendors to get up and running, quickly.

4. Long Term Wins

Got them excited about something they can have right away? Excellent. Now help them understand the long-term impacts on the business. These will be higher level.

Good planning & budgeting software sales teams should be able to help you here. If all you’re getting is “OMG spreadsheets gross!”, just come to us. We’ll help you put together a case.

Some examples of longer term, more strategic justifications for a platform:

• Leading the decision-making process for the entire organization instead of being reactive
• Creating auditable processes that, when the company is valued for purchase, may improve the result
• Preparation for an IPO
• De-risking existing processes
• Making financial well-being an integral part of the company culture
• Modernizing processes before expanding headcount

I’ve avoided things like “get out of Excel” as that is super tactical and probably won’t resonate with management. When thinking about what tools like this can mean, avoid small things that require one person to do in their day-to-day life. Think down the road, maybe 2 years or more, about how the business could fundamentally change as a result.

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Few execs will approve a project that requires months of “data cleansing” before it will start. Being able to articulate to management that you are in fact ready to start, tomorrow, will go a long way in convincing them to allocate budget and your time.

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5. We’ll Look Better

“I love getting reports 3 weeks later” said no one, ever. The perception of competence across the organization matters. Making planning, budgeting and especially reporting faster, more accurate, and more trusted, goes a long way to enhance the standing of the finance team in a business.

This one matters to everyone. We all want to be respected and considered competent. Crushing our day-to-day activities such that we can do even more will get noticed.

6. It Won’t Consume Your Time

This is a core objection to any project, be it implementing a planning system or landscaping your backyard. “It’s going to be a time suck.” “The project will take more time than planned.”

I’ve had plenty of CFOs tell me, towards the end of the purchase process, that their team promised to “handle it” and leave me out of it. This guarantee ultimately won them over.

Boiling it down, what are the concerns here? For one, most executives are working well over 50 hours a week. We might not see it directly, but they are. I hear it all the time…

• “Big pivot coming. Had to work another weekend to plan.”
•  “The board surprised me with a meeting, I need to prep all night.”
• “The new guy can’t figure out my spreadsheet. Guess I’ll do it myself.”

These demands on their schedules are sometimes unexpected, but inevitable. The thought of taking away some of those flex hours is terrifying.

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7. Are We Ready?

This comes up when an organization's current state is perceived as “so bad” that management can’t comprehend where a project would start. Listen for these (in order of frequency):

• Our data is a mess
• The source systems are old and need to be replaced first
• You’re too busy with the monthly reporting packages to be distracted by this
• We don’t have enough competent bodies to manage an implementation
• We have too many competing priorities
• We just lost our IT person

Few execs will approve a project that requires months of “data cleansing” before it will start. Being able to articulate to management that you are in fact ready to start, tomorrow, will go a long way in convincing them to allocate budget and your time.

8. Helping Them Let Go

That exit agreement the CFO signed confirming they did not take any proprietary data with them? Riiiiiight.

Open secret - they do it all the time, and it’s called their Excel model. They don’t care about the data it contains. They care about the report formats, the flow of data, the formulas, but primarily the familiarity. It’s their baby. Telling them “Your model just doesn’t work for this business” is like calling their baby ugly. You won’t get far after that.

In my experience, CFOs who do this are unlikely to buy a planning or consolidation tool that does not have an interactive Excel feature. In other words, the product needs to have a live add-in feature that both pushes and pulls data. Many CPM products can be configured to add a layer of data security and speed on top of an existing Excel file, retaining its formatting. This maintains familiarity and provides the benefits of a centralized, live database.

In other words, if they believe that their model won’t die, they may be more agreeable to a change.

In Conclusion

While meant to assist you in selling a planning and budgeting software project to your boss, these are also the approaches that vendor sales reps will use throughout the sales process…. on you! This is also why these sales reps are going to push to speak with your executives directly – the good ones know that some of the items on this list will come up, and that a non-sales person is unlikely to bring it up.

Why do they think that? Because it’s often true! Sometimes staffers are afraid of their boss. Sometimes asking hard questions, or suggesting change is intimidating when management has a history of being hostile to new ideas.

Either way, give them the benefit of the doubt. They almost certainly see the issues you’re seeing, albeit at a higher level. If you understand those anxieties and fears, you can competently craft a business case to make the changes you seek.

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