Let’s lay out advantages and disadvantages for them clearly. And, yes, tell them about disadvantages as well as advantages. By doing so, we’ll increase our credibility. We might even learn something by writing advantages on one side of a page and disadvantages on other.

After we’ve made our case, we’ll try to stimulate feedback. Try to get a sense of how our message was received and what response it got. Did they respond way we expected? Did a consensus begin to emerge?

If not, we need to start process over again, with a new diagnosis. And, we’ll basically reiterate process. But, this time, put even more time into, and emphasis on, their assumptions and expectations. If process doesn’t work, it’s because they didn’t find enough benefits in our earlier communication.

In end, consensus is always about them. And, to get them to go along with our plans for change, we need to be as conscious of their needs as we are of our own.

Summarizing, think of consensus as end point of a process, rather than something we can immediately organize. That process starts with analysis and listening, then responds to what we heard in listening phase.

Robert F. Abbott writes and publishes Abbott's Communication Letter. Learn how you can use communication to help achieve your goals, by reading articles or by subscribing to this newsletter. An excellent resource for leaders and managers, at: http://www.communication-newsletter.com

Well, we’d probably start in much same way that we start with external customers: by finding out what they wanted. By identifying benefits that they consider most important, and communicating about those benefits.

As we articulate our reasons for internal marketing (setting objectives), as we figure out goals of employees, and identify best medium, we’re setting out a communication strategy.

Once we have a strategy we can go on to tactics, which outline how we will implement strategy: what will we discuss, how often we’ll discuss it, and what presentation style we’ll use.

What we’ll discuss refers to our subject matter; how often refers to number of times in a specified time period that we will communicate subject matter, and presentation style refers to tone we’ll take in sending our messages.

Once both strategy and tactics are in place, we act. We implement plan. And good internal marketing, like external marketing, would involve gathering feedback afterward.

In case of external customers, feedback is immediate and obvious; they buy or they don’t buy. When we turn to internal customers, though, feedback will be less obvious. In general, though, we will have set objectives based on having employees do certain things; in feedback phase we can ask whether they did it, and how well, and how often.