While data-driven documents are persuasive in tech giants like Amazon, influencing legacy organizations requires a different approach. Building trust through slow, patient, and informal conversations is often more effective than presenting formal, data-heavy business cases, a method likened to visiting for tea rather than just driving a bus by.

Persuading the C-suite requires more than just data; it demands emotional resonance. The CMO must balance facts with feelings, understanding that internal stakeholders, like consumers, are moved by belief and emotion, not just numbers.

Product managers excel at understanding users through empathy. However, they often abandon these core skills when communicating with executives. To be more effective, treat your executive as a key user whose needs, motivations, and context you must first understand.

Don't just ask executives what they want to achieve, as this puts them on the spot. Instead, proactively formulate a hypothesis about their goals and challenges. Presenting this gives them a concrete starting point to react to, confirm, or correct, leading to much faster alignment.

To effectively lead through influence, go beyond aligning on shared business objectives. Understand what personally motivates your cross-functional peers—their career aspirations or personal goals. The most powerful way to gain buy-in is to demonstrate how your initiative helps them achieve their individual ambitions.

Technologists often fail to get project approval by focusing on specs and data. A successful pitch requires a "narrative algorithm" that addresses five key drivers: empathy, engagement, alignment, evidence, and impact. This framework translates technical achievements into a compelling business story for leadership.

Instead of just asking peer CFOs for solutions, Figma's CFO provides deep business context. This transforms the relationship from a simple Q&A into a collaborative thought partnership, creating a personal "internal board" of trusted advisors for nuanced problem-solving.

Structure your final presentation by calling out specific problems you learned from individual contributors by name. Then, immediately pivot to show how solving their problem directly contributes to the high-level business objective owned by the executive decision-maker. This makes every stakeholder feel heard and demonstrates their strategic value.

Figma's CFO measures his team's success not by forecast accuracy, but by whether other departments view them as creative problem-solvers. The goal is to be seen as a business accelerant that others want to involve, rather than a "go/no-go police" to be avoided.