If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you’ve identified a need for video content in your organisation, and you want to get approval from key stakeholders. Great! Just one thing… How do you actually sell a video solution to stakeholders?

In this article, we’ll explore how knowing your audience, leveraging reason and emotion in your business case, and anticipating (and overcoming) resistance will move management to adopt your solution. So you can get started with powerful, effective communications that resonate, and drive real results – with video!

* Note: this scenario often involves a business that’s never done video before, or whose experience is one-off, expensive marketing videos, so that’s our starting point.

You’ve got the nuts and bolts for your business case, and it’s feeling pretty solid. Excellent. Now comes the final (and hardest) part – you’re going to poke holes in it, roleplaying as your stakeholder/s. Because to quote Duarte, “to adopt your perspective, the audience has to, at a minimum, abandon what they previously held as true”. So confront potential gaps in your supporting arguments, and come armed with solves. Empathise with personal viewpoints on misgivings, comfort zones, fears, even workplace politics, and stay rational and transparent in the face of any fear of change; ultimately, you need their help to get this thing off the ground, so the onus is on you to really hear and address any stakeholder concerns, in order to secure buy-in and sign-off.