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Risk management -
Selling Management on
Prevention.
New Ideas!!! Get 'Em While They're Hot!!!
(Selling management on your new program when you get back to the
office...)
Anyone who has every tried to sell management on preventive
planning knows the uphill battle. Yet, the counter argument, that
"an once of prevention outweighs a pound of cure," doesn't
get you very far in these times of corporate budget crunching. So how
to you convince them to give all your newfound knowledge a try?
How do you get anyone to buy your ideas or you products for that
matter? You sell it...plain and simple, you build a pitch and keep
working on it until you breakdown their resistance to the sale....
The secret is how to make the general discussion specific. Use facts
and current events in your presentation to management. Know their soft
points ahead of time. Are they strictly bottom line, or do they want to
be thought of as the "good guys?" Do they want to be
innovative, or are they the ones who hold back for others to make the
mistakes first? Think about your best sales pitch, take a deep breath
and let out all the stops...
1. Fear. Two things always work when
you're trying to sell something, fear, and greed. (We'll deal with
greed next...) Research some good stories about how large companies
(hopefully your competitors) have been hit with large penalties, law
suits, public relations disasters, crippling systems failures or
government investigations and shutdowns.
(We'll help by giving you some great examples...)
2. Greed. Good preventive management
means a well-run company. Employees stay (and the costs of having to
retrain and recruit are reduced), Oprah focuses on the great things
you are doing for humanity, positive press opportunities abound. It
also means that you can keep running, while your competitors are
hobbled (by the seven plagues we discussed above). Your CEO is named
Man of the Year and your Chairman gets nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize. Find a few success stories, and show them how this kind of
reputation adds to your bottom line. (You might even save on insurance
premiums...)
3. Protect Your Butt. Failure to build
a solid preventive program mean that your company may be ignoring
corporate compliance. Management, and even Board members, do that to
their peril, and may be found personally liable for actions by
corporate agents. Read a few cases, and recite the judges findings of
fact and rulings.
4. Protect Your Reputation.
Your
children and spouse are being interviewed by The National Enquirer,
your parents have moved away and changed their names, your babysitter
is selling an unauthorized biography of you...all because a terrible,
horrible, no good, very bad litigation/investigation/incident occurred
that could have been avoided. Share stories with them about how
corporations have had problems recovering from having their corporate
noncompliance aired in public.
5. Keeping Up with the Jones's. All
your competitors are using similar preventive measures to make sure
that you are the competitor hit with the seven plagues. Like the game
of hot potato, no one wants to be the only one left holding the
failure to comply and plan potato. Besides, who wants their competitor
on Oprah, while they sit there wondering why they never listened to
you? Show them some statistics on how many others are using the
measures and how they are benefiting from doing so. Contrast this with
the costs of your noncompliance.
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Parry
Aftab, Esq., 
Marvel and
all character names and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of
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