A pitch meeting is about change. If you're pitching something, chances are you're pitching a change of some sort. It could be to switch copier vendors or to change a policy or procedure. Change is not an easy subject. However, I do know one thing: the better the buy-in, the easier the change.
A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. John Kotter on the topic of organizational change for my blog, HR Bartender. Dr. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at Harvard Business School and author of several books on creating effective change and buy-in. Here are a few excerpts from the interview:
Dr. Kotter, from an organizational perspective, why is getting buy-in so important?
"Buy-in is critical to making any large organizational change effort happens. Unless you win support for your ideas, from people at all levels of your organization, big ideas never seem to take hold or have the impact you want. Our research...