How do you sell social business initiatives to the CFO? Given that many marketing initiatives have ROI’s that are hard to quantify, how do you make a pitch to hard numbers executives in a way that gets them on board?
Selling to the CFO is similar to selling the CEO in that money is a primary motivating factor in their decision making. However, where the CEO may be also be concerned with culture, customer service or any other area of the business, the CFO is almost entirely focused on the bottom line. A CFO typically is not concerned with the unicorns and rainbow side of social media. They want to see results.
In order to make the case that social business initiatives are “worth it” you must find a way to quantify your efforts and tie it back to business value. Present your case using numbers and case studies. Then, be sure to have step-by-step plan for how you might get the company up to speed.
A recent study by McKinsey & Company stated that the implementation of social technologies inside of a company can increase productivity by 20-25%. Productivity gains, while not technically dollars, are going to be appealing to most CFOs. Additionally, by having employees utilize social technologies instead of email, companies can often save money on their server costs, or even set aside the money to make that move to the cloud. Remember, that money saved, is money earned.
But it’s more than just productivity, as Social Business software and initiatives can both save and make companies money in a variety of ways. A few simple Google searches will yield hundreds of links to case studies of companies that have saved or made money through the strategic implementation of social media strategies, policies and software.
For example, this graphic comes straight from Jive Software’s website:
At the end of the day, all of the data is there for the taking. A CFO that doesn’t buy into the idea of Social Business either hasn’t been presented with the data, or has chosen to believe, in spite of anything, that social media is simply not that important. So present the data, with a step-by-step plan, with action steps and deliverables and see what happens.
Here’s an infographic for good measure:
