Advocating user-centred design to your company

Bertie writes: "I'm a UI designer at a small company who has recently found himself sidelined on certain projects. It seems that they've been sold without enough consideration given to providing a good user experience, because the deals were done on the cheap. From my point of view, providing a satisfying user experience is not an optional luxury, it should underpin every other aspect of the project. If you were me, and you had a couple of hours to promote the importance of what you do to various people — execs, sales, developers, project managers, whoever — how would you use the time?"