How to 2FA Everything — Pt 2.

Indirectly build what you want

Last blog I shared a bit of how I help engineers develop a voice so they can advocate for what they want to build within their teams. Those tips work great for small technical teams (<5 engineers).

Large technical teams often have more bureaucracy which makes decision-making a convoluted process. A simple pitch won’t change what’s on the product roadmap. Instead, engineers on large teams have to present a compelling business case for the features they want to ship.

That’s where I typically step in, because most engineers make a critical mistake here: they try and convince people directly. That rarely works. Instead, I teach engineers how to persuade indirectly.

Persuading Indirectly

The objective of indirect persuasion is to help your targets convince themselves of your intended idea. We accomplish this by asking a series of questions that spur guided self-inquiry. Most sales literature builds upon this underlying mechanic with a bunch of different methods. In my experience, engineers tend to have pretty good results with the SPIN model, so we’ll use that as our starting point into indirect persuasion.

The SPIN model

SPIN (Situational, Problem, Implication, Need-Payoff) is a simple framework oriented around 4 key kinds of question.

You pretty much need to casually ask your targets questions from each category, in order. You should know the answer to the question before you ask it, so you might need to do research beforehand. The question should lead your target down the logical direction you’d like them to pursue — that there is a problem with scary implications, but with the right solution, you can reap a bunch of benefits for the business.

When asking your questions, I recommend not diving in through each section in one sitting. Remember, this is not a direct confrontation, this is an indirect workaround. Pepper some questions through Slack, followup with some over meals, ask a couple in between meetings, and take note of the answers.

Once you’ve compiled answers to each theme, simply string together the responses into a coherent presentation. Formally, sales folk call this a scope of work, but you can just call it your full script.

Run through this script with a few teammates to get broad based support. Use their feedback to improve your delivery and questions. After you’ve gathered enough buy in and evidence, run your engineering lead or CPO through the script during a 1-on-1 or lunch.

If you’ve accurately identified a business need, evoked the right responses with thoughtful questions, and proposed (hopefully developed) a strong solution, your team should gladly move in your direction. After all, if you’ve persuaded them indirectly, they’ll think it’s their own!

Example Questions

Situation (these are questions seeking facts)

• Have we experienced any hacked accounts?
• Do we have any user facing security measures in place?
• Are any users asking for 2FA

Problem (ask about the difficulties and dissatisfactions the target is experiencing and focus the target on this pain while clarifying the problem)

• Do we look less trustworthy and reputable without 2FA?
• Why don’t we currently offer 2FA?
• What kind of risk are we exposing ourselves to without 2FA?

Implication (discuss the effects of the problem, and develop the seriousness of the problem to increase the buyer’s motivation to change)

• How many users do we lose by appearing untrustworthy and illegitimate?
• How much would it cost us to recover from a hack?

Need-payoff (these probe for explicit needs and get the buyer to state the benefits)

• If we appeared more reputable, how would that help our business?
• What features would we be able to offer if users trusted us with more of their information?

Darrell leads business development at Clef. If two-factor authentication has been in your backlog for months, but still hasn’t gotten prioritized, check out Clef’s new product Instant2FA.com — it’s two-factor authentication that takes minutes to integrate instead of weeks.