Part 3: The Single Most Important KM “Sale” You Can Make

The single most important “KM sale” you can make is to your senior leaders. In my first two posts on this topic, I asserted that in my experience, if you get them on board, everything else will be much easier. If you can’t: try, try, and try again. Valuable tools for getting leaders’ sponsorship and support include telling stories, making the business case, and selling the benefits. Please read on to learn about selling the benefits, drawn from my new book Proven Practices for Promoting a Knowledge Management Program.

A few tips for selling the benefits of knowledge management

With any change initiative, all stakeholders want to know what’s in it for them; implementing a knowledge management program is no different. To help leaders understand the benefits for them personally, and for the organization overall, answer the following questions.

1. Why should we implement a KM program? Articulate your vision.
2. What exactly are the benefits? Develop a list of benefits (see the list below) and tie these to your organizational goals.
3. How will a KM program help our organization accomplish its most critical objectives? Tie your Top 3 KM Objectives to the organization’s overall priorities.
4. How will our organization improve as a result? Make the business case.
5. How will our people’s needs, opportunities, and challenges be met? Share compelling use cases from analogous organizations and scenarios.

15 KM Benefits

1. Better and faster decision making
2. Users can easily find relevant information and resources
3. Ideas, documents, and expertise can be reused
4. No duplication of effort
5. Mistakes aren’t repeated
6. Existing expertise and experience can be leveraged
7. Important information gets communicated widely and quickly
8. Processes and procedures can be standardized and repeatable
9. Methods, tools, templates, techniques, and examples are available
10. Unique expertise becomes widely accessible
11. Customers can see exactly how knowledge is used for their benefit
12. Accelerated customer delivery
13. Organizations can leverage scale
14. The best organizational problem-solving experiences are reusable
15. Innovation and growth are stimulated