Communicating Finance Clearly

Making sure your stakeholders understand your perspective

Finance can get technical.
It’s easy to isolate yourself from stakeholders/clients.
How well do you explain technical ideas to your audience? 👇

The product manager prioritises his products.
You value your budgets or cash management.

Or maybe your client is prioritising their valuation.
But you need to be realistic with expectations.

And so if you want to discuss the financials, you need to be able to speak their language.

We’re going to look at an exercise I like.
It pushes you to 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘺.
And it forces you to 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 to the audience.

Check out the video below for a look. ⬇

A few pointers to watch out for:

🖊 Be clear on what your audience knows (and doesn’t know).
Explain yourself in terms they fully understand.

🖊 Use similes (i.e., using ‘as’, ‘like’ or ‘than’ to describe something)
Machine Learning is 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞…
It’s 𝐚𝐬 𝐢𝐟 we gathered all the financial resources in…

🖊 Give examples they can relate to
E.g., Explain how higher EBITDA margins affect their company valuation.
E.g., Illustrate why they should care about being more effective with their operational spending.

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How do you approach communicating technical ideas ❓

Here is the video:

P.S. Next week we will put this practice into the context of a meeting with stakeholders/clients.

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