How to combine numbers and narratives to get your idea funded
The leadership team laughed. “There’s no way that number is correct.”
If you’ve ever presented a business case to leadership, you’ve probably heard something like this. Your carefully crafted financial projections get dismissed. Your strategic vision gets questioned. Your credibility hangs in the balance.
I’ve been there. And that’s exactly what happened to Matt Bernier when he presented what seemed like a straightforward proposal about documentation.
But Matt was insistent – improving their public documentation could give the company a huge financial boost. His boss and skip-level thought the number was far higher than possible.
He was presenting a simple concept: their users were struggling with the current documentation, leading to calls into customer support with very basic questions.
If they improved their public documentation, it would free up their customer support to handle more complex customer interactions. They could slow down hiring and improve the customer experience.
He backed it up with data: how many costly customer support calls could be deflected. The numbers came from collaboration with finance. Before this presentation, they cross-referenced calls on basic topics with the cost of answering them. They used that to build up a basic financial projection.
Those in the room still didn’t believe it. “Can you prove this is really the case?” one of them asked.
Matt replied, “I could…if we took down our public documentation for a week. Then we’d see for sure how much we’re currently deflecting.”
The room went quiet. Nobody was willing to do that.
Matt went back to the numbers. “Here’s the thing, the cost of investing in this is low. Even if our estimates are off by 2x, we should see fewer customer support calls and a better customer experience. I think we should give it a try.”
The value ended up being far more than reduced customer support calls – the company’s investment in their documentation became a strategic advantage. It led to strong developer relationships which created strong customer champions to drive adoption.
Building the business case is a core product management responsibility
In the world of all the different things we can do, is this something we should do?
As product managers, one of our most important jobs comes down to the business case: the argument we make about whether or not an idea is worth the investment of company time or money. Whether your company calls it a cost-benefit analysis, feature narrative, strategic memo, or project outline, the goal remains the same: to recommend a next course of action on a specific opportunity.
Building out business cases is a core product management responsibility. The business case is how we drive influence across the organization as a product manager, build trust in our decisions, and create a shared understanding of not just what we’re building, but why it matters to our company’s success. It’s the difference between being seen as someone who builds features and being recognized as a strategic leader who shapes the product’s future.
To be truly effective, our business cases must be compelling. They must convince leadership to follow our idea forward.
Making the business case compelling
Generally, we make business cases for one of two reasons: someone asked us to explore a particular idea, or we came up with an idea that we want to get investment for. Either way, there’s often an incentive to make the business case compelling.
To make the business case compelling:
- Tell a plausible story
- Make the story interesting
- Find the happy ending
No matter how long the business case – a quick 5-minute presentation, a Slack message, or a multi-slide deck – it should always follow these guidelines to be as effective as possible.
Tell a plausible story
For a story to be plausible, it needs to have evidence in the data. The financials of the business case must be sound.
Be ready to share your assumptions and sources of data. Prepare for people to try and poke holes in your argument, to prove that it isn’t plausible.
Matt’s projections were so good that leadership didn’t fully believe his story. What made it plausible was when he pointed out that the numbers could be off by 2x and it was still worth pursuing.
Making a convincing case doesn’t mean fudging the numbers. Making the numbers appear rosier than they are, shipping the business case, and then being wrong is not a great way to advance your career.
Make the story interesting
There are several ways to make the story more interesting to your audience.
First, align it with the company strategy. If your idea matches a stakeholder priority, they’re more likely to want to support it. His leadership team was worried about how to hire enough customer support representatives to handle customer growth, and he brought a scalable solution.
Second, bring the human side. While numbers can tell a story, illustrating those numbers with a quote or an anecdote from user research can go a long way. Matt was able to tell stories of customer support calls that should have been handled by documentation.
Third, keep it as short as possible while still communicating the right information. AI can be a great tool to help you trim out the repeated and unnecessary commentary. He didn’t take the whole presentation to talk at them; he gave them the pitch and then opened the floor to discussion.
Find the happy ending
The convincing business cases have a happy ending. A future in which the company has made money, solved customer problems, and otherwise been a positive force in the world.
If there isn’t a positive outcome to your business case, that’s a sign that it isn’t worth investing in. That’s a good thing – you discovered this while it was still an early idea, not after investing many thousands of dollars. In that case, the happy ending is “by not doing this, we’ll avoid the stress, distraction, and cost of heading in the wrong direction.”
Either way, the business case needs to finish with a clear next step: we should continue to invest in this idea, or we should pursue other options.
Get better at combining numbers and stories
Every compelling business case rests on a foundation of essential skills. Mastering these core competencies transforms good product managers into strategic leaders. Let me walk you through the critical skills and how to develop them.
Financial analysis is the bedrock of any compelling business case. It’s about more than just crunching numbers – it’s about understanding the story those numbers tell. You need to develop a deep understanding of unit economics, become proficient in data analysis, and build comfort with financial modeling.
Numbers alone don’t win hearts and minds – you need to weave them into a compelling narrative. Strategic storytelling is about translating complex data into clear, persuasive arguments that resonate with your audience. Take a spreadsheet full of metrics and transform it into a story that makes executives lean forward in their chairs.
I’ve had solid business cases fail because I didn’t invest time in understanding my leadership’s priorities and concerns. Success requires the ability to anticipate questions, address concerns proactively, and navigate complex relationships with finesse.
These skills don’t exist in isolation – they work together to create business cases that not only convince but inspire action. Let me share how you can develop them both on and off the job.
On-the-job skill building
The best training ground for business case creation is your day-to-day work.
Start by creating micro-cases for feature decisions, even if they’re just for your team’s consumption.
Find a mentor who excels at business cases. Watch how they present, learn their frameworks, and ask for feedback on your work. The best mentors will help you identify blind spots and strengthen your weak points.
Seek out opportunities to interact with executives. Pay attention to their language, decision-making criteria, and what makes them lean in during presentations.
Outside of work
To truly accelerate your skills in building great business cases, invest in your professional development outside of work.
Study market moves and practice reverse-engineering business cases. When Netflix makes a surprising strategic shift or Apple launches a new product category, try to construct the business case they must have used internally.
Invest in structured learning through courses that focus on financial analysis and strategic thinking. Look for programs that offer hands-on practice with real-world scenarios and peer feedback. I teach Data Driven Business Case Creation which is specially designed to double down on the financial underpinnings of a great business case.
There’s a tremendous amount of overlap between building out good business cases and developing your strategy skills. Anything you do to help one category will help the other as well.
You win when the business outcomes and the story come together
Nobody told Matt to go work on product strategy. He didn’t demand to be assigned strategic work and wait for it to come his way.
He saw a market opportunity, ran the numbers, and pushed it forward.
The most strategic product managers I know all share a deep understanding of product finance. They are able to connect their idea to the business outcomes in a clear story.
For product managers who want to become more strategic, my advice is always the same: level up your financial acumen. Learn as much as you can about the ways your business makes money so you can shape where the company is headed.
At the end of the day, the business case is just a medium through which to express your most strategic self.
Thank you to my pre-readers, Michelle Harris, Miriam Karlin, and Adam Kecskes, who showed me that I was trying to communicate too many things at once and forced me to focus better.
Listens & Reads: 5 Resets to Reduce Stress and Burnout with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar | All the Hacks, The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley. (This is a new newsletter section – should I keep it?)