In Biz, Ya Better Personalize Those Arguments

Ever heard of that there “latitude of acceptance?”

Ted Bauer
5 min readJul 31, 2024

--

To get almost anything off the ground at work, you need a business case. If you have no idea what a ‘business case’ is and can’t figure it out from the words involved in the term, well, here we go: it’s a series of arguments and ideas that describe why your business should undertake this action. In the most traditional business case sense, it takes place in a meeting and there’s typically a PowerPoint of some kind involved — although that’s not necessarily the best idea. There are a million and 19 articles online about how to present better, including some by yours truly, and how persuasive your presentation is certainly becomes one aspect of an effective business case. There’s more to it, though.

Here’s a story to begin, because I think stories are the most powerful thing we have in the world. A few days ago, I met this guy in a sales role. His business is kind-of tanking and there’s a lot of pressure on him to drive sales and leads and all that. Revenue growth, baby! Target-hitting! This guy gets 10–12 new leads in his pipeline in one day. That’s not great, but it’s not bad. If you convert half that list at $50,000 per, that’s $300,000. For one day, that’s not a bad haul for a small business sales dude. Anyway, I’m talking to him about the sales leads and…

--

--

Ted Bauer

Mostly write about work, leadership, friendship, masculinity, male infertility, and some other stuff along the way. It's a pleasure to be here.