At Google, I turned a $20M budget into $120M.
I did it with one simple reframe.
Instead of asking: “How much do you want to budget for this initiative?”
I asked: “How much do you want to grow this year?”
Same proposal. Same numbers. Completely different reaction.
When you frame a proposal around cost, people look for ways to shrink it.
When you frame it around growth, people look for ways to fund it.
Framing changes everything.
The $3.5 Million Violin
In 2007, a man stood in a Washington D.C. subway station playing a violin. He played six complex, beautiful pieces from Bach. Over a thousand people walked by.
Seven stopped to listen. He made $32.
The man was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest violinists in the world. The violin he was playing was a Stradivarius worth over $3.5 million. Two nights earlier, he had sold out a concert hall in Boston where seats were selling for hundreds of dollars.
Same musician. Same music. Same instrument.
The only thing that changed was the frame.
In a concert hall, he was a virtuoso. In a subway, he was a distraction.
That’s the point: you can have the best message, the best data. But if you don’t frame it right, it doesn’t land.
How you frame your message can be the difference between success and failure.
So, how did I build the $120 million reframe for my proposal at Google? I followed a 3-step system.
How I Did the Reframe (& How You Can, Too)
Here’s the simple 3-step process I used to shift the conversation from “Can we afford to?” to “Can we afford not to?”.
1) Map the Full Impact
I didn’t sell effort. I sold outcomes. I mapped the total impact my initiative would unlock.
The key is to think beyond first-order impact.
For your initiative, break down the impact as follows:
- Direct Impact: The obvious one. How will your initiative grow the product? (e.g. revenue, user acquisition)
- Second-order impact: The one most PMs miss. How will your initiative help other orgs succeed? (e.g. Does it reduce the load on support? Does it help the sales team hit targets faster?)
- Future Impact: The strategic one. How will your initiative accelerate future initiatives? (e.g. Does it build a new platform we can reuse? Does it unlock a new market we can enter next year?)
2) Quantify the Value
Next, I translated the impact into numbers.
- For direct impact, I measured revenue.
- For indirect impact, I used proxy metrics (e.g. time saved, churn reduced) and translated them into dollar value.
When you quantify indirect impact, your number won’t be precise. And that’s okay.
Just be ready to show the logic and assumptions behind your estimate. That transparency builds trust. It also gives executives an opportunity to tweak your logic or correct an assumption.
Here are examples of converting indirect impact into concrete value:
Example: Quantifying “Time Saved”
Let’s say your initiative will save 20 sales engineers 4 hours a week.
- 20 engineers x 4 hours/week = 80 hours/week
- 80 hours/week x 50 work weeks = 4,000 hours/year
- At a conservative, fully-loaded sales engineer cost of $150/hour, that’s $600,000 in annual efficiency gains.
Example: Quantifying “Churn Reduced”
Let’s say your initiative is projected to reduce customer churn by just 0.5%.
- If your product line has a $50M annual recurring revenue (ARR), a 0.5% reduction in churn is $250,000 in retained revenue.
3) Calculate the ROI
Finally, bundle all that value into one simple, powerful number.
This is your Return on Investment (ROI). You’ve already calculated the Return (your total quantified value) and you know the Investment (your budget ask).
The magic of my $120M plan was that the ROI scaled – the more money we invested, the more value we delivered.
You can do something similar. Calculate the value you would drive with 50%, 100%, and 150% of your budget ask. Then ask – “How much do you want to grow this year?”.
The Power of the Reframe
When you reframe your ask as a growth opportunity, the entire conversation changes.
The discussion shifts from “Can we afford to?” to “Can we afford not to?”.
This is the power of the reframe. Same proposal. Same numbers. But when you stop busking in the subway and start playing in the concert hall, everything changes.
Ready to master the art of reframing?
Take my Persuasive Storytelling course to master the system I used to secure 9-digit budgets & close Fortune 50 deals at Google.
