Influencing Up in a Matrix Organisation

A marketing manager in a technology company faced a regular issue: at various times throughout the year the four Product Managing Directors who operated in her territory would ask her to create bespoke marketing campaigns for their products. Although they already had excellent marketing collateral from the company’s central headquarters, the Managing Directors always wanted something tailored specifically to them.

Working with limited time and resources, the marketing manager preferred to only create new marketing materials where they had not already been provided by the central office. At the same time, she found it hard to say ‘no’ to the powerful and persuasive product MDs.

The delegate went to see all four of the Product MDs and persuaded them to commitment to two principles:

• Where generic marketing frameworks are available, we will use them
• Where possible we will use general communication; we will use specific communication only when absolutely necessary for certain industries

Just days later one of the MDs came to see the marketing manager and asked her to develop a new communication for a particular industry. Central headquarters had already supplied marketing collateral for this particular requirement, so the manager reminded the MD of the principles they had agreed a few days before, and asked how he wanted to proceed. The MD agreed to use the (high quality) general communication from HQ.

Influencing External Decision Makers

A product team in a technology business was asked to brief a government department. The product team manager decided to prepare for this meeting in a different way. Rather than run through the usual slides for half an hour before the meeting, the manager put his team through four hours’ rigorous practice, including running their talk in front of colleagues and incorporating their feedback.

Five minutes into the presentation, some of the audience became distracted by messages they were receiving on their handheld devices – devices which, it was clear to the product team, had been manufactured by the competition! The team had drilled their presentation so thoroughly that they could easily go off script and build this interruption into their talk. They engaged their audience in a discussion about the pros and cons of the competition’s equipment, and adapted their presentation so that it focused squarely on the concerns the audience raised.

Some days later the government department commissioned the product team to create a prototype working environment for them, completely kitted out with the product team’s technology. The manager commented that their ability to turn an unexpected event to their advantage had made a crucial difference.

For examples where managers have influenced outside their organisations to create sales, please see the Greater Financial Returns page.