Find the one person inside the client who can already see it, and make them look right.

technique — attributed to Brian Feit

Executives rarely arrive convinced. Feit's pattern is that it takes one internal visionary to push a risky idea past the rest of the leadership team and bring in an outside partner to execute it, after which the others get genuinely enthusiastic. His job is to identify that person, then make sure the result makes them look good to whoever they answer to, sometimes helping them win industry recognition for it. The relationship compounds from there, because an executive he made look brilliant once brings him to the next brand. Finding the champion is the actual sale.

For agencies pitching into a client organization where no one has authorized the idea yet.

client-management, internal-champion, persuasion, credit