Instead of pitching the abstract value of 'delight,' connect it to concrete business objectives. By asking a founder, 'Are users proud enough to recommend our product?' the focus shifted from a vague concept to a clear driver of word-of-mouth growth, making it easier to get buy-in.

A platform's immediate user is the developer. However, to demonstrate true value, you must also understand and solve for the developer's end customer. This "two-hop" thinking is essential for connecting platform work to tangible business outcomes, not just internal technical improvements.

Not all design impact can be quantified with metrics. When data is unavailable, frame your value by highlighting contributions to competitive parity, internal team efficiency, or bug reduction. This holistic view of business health resonates with leadership beyond just product managers.

Stakeholders will ask "so what?" if you only talk about developer efficiency. This is a weak argument that can get your funding cut. Instead, connect your platform's work directly to downstream business metrics like customer retention or product uptake that your developer-users are targeting.

To get buy-in from skeptical, business-focused stakeholders, avoid jargon about user needs. Instead, frame discovery as a method to protect the company's investment in the product team, ensuring you don't build things nobody uses and burn money. This aligns product work with financial prudence.

To get product management buy-in for technical initiatives like refactoring or scaling, engineering leadership is responsible for translating the work into clear business or customer value. Instead of just stating the technical need, explain how it enables faster feature development or access to a larger customer base.

When driving major organizational change, a data-driven approach from the start is crucial for overcoming emotional resistance to established ways of working. Building a strong business case based on financial and market metrics can depersonalize the discussion and align stakeholders more quickly than relying on vision alone.

Shift your team's language from tracking output (e.g., 'deployed XYZ API') to tracking outcomes. Reframe milestones to focus on the business capability you have 'unlocked' for other teams. This small linguistic change reorients the team toward business impact and clarifies your contribution to metrics like NPS.

When pitching a long-term strategic fix, regional leaders prioritized immediate revenue goals. The product team gained traction not by dismissing these concerns, but by acknowledging their validity. This respect builds the trust necessary to balance short-term needs with long-term investment.