In our recent Breakfast Club for Fundraising Leaders, Ben Swart shared a particular technique that helps you grow High Value fundraising results.
We have found there is one particular success factor common to all very successful Major Donor, Corporate and Community Fundraisers we have studied…
They have more actual conversations / informal coffees / Zoom calls / event attendance with supporters, than other fundraisers do.
And Ben identified a parallel with people who are most successful at selling cars. They spend little energy and creativity worrying about selling cars… but instead get really good at helping people book test drives!
He went on to share that, having studied high achieving fundraisers, though they use a range of strategies to increase their number of conversations / ‘test drives’ with people who care about their cause… the number one Super Habit we’ve noticed is that they have overcome their reticence about the phone.
For instance, this habit is at the heart of how ‘bright spot’ high achievers like Paul Davies and Clio Gressani have achieved their High Value fundraising results.
They have discovered the phone obviously does not solve every fundraising challenge – and of course it is contingent on having GDPR permission and a phone number – but that it is very often the most powerful tool at their disposal.
Ben shared the story of a smart, brave fundraiser name Martha, who shared with the rest of the group during the fundraising team training he delivered, that she really didn’t like making phone calls. She usually avoided it at all costs.
For the last three years, someone at a company had emailed her during Bowel Cancer Awareness week to ask for posters she could put up in her workplace. Each year Martha had responded by email and sent the posters as requested.
Martha had never met this person, but she was curious about why she so consistently requested the resources. Following the training, she decided to take a risk…
She discovered a phone number was at the footer of the email. And you guessed it, she picked up the phone and made a call! In that conversation, she checked the posters had arrived, thanked them for their support, and had a really good chat.
In fact, she found out that this supporter had a personal experience of bowel cancer, which is why she was committed to raising awareness to help other people.
There were several more valuable outcomes from the conversation. For instance, the supporter nominated Bowel Cancer UK to become her companies’ Charity of the Year!
Martha found the conversation so rewarding that she did not stop there. She now has an new understanding of why a fundraiser might choose to call their supporters… and also their colleagues.
Where before her default means to solve internal challenges was email, she now often finds it’s so much easier to solve them with a real conversation.
Ben shared lots of other examples, but Martha’s story was the one that inspired me the most. She went from having negative associations with the phone that most us recognise… to discovering the huge upside to this habit.
In doing so, she discovered what a generous, valuable and confidence-boosting habit this can be.
However hard you find this idea, I’ve shared it here to let you know that making more calls to your supporters and colleagues, is both possible and surprisingly effective.
Four Practical Tips
Ben shared four tips for anyone who agrees in principle with this idea, but struggles in practice.
1. Like Martha, make it feel normal with easy calls. Most calls that successful high value fundraisers make, especially initially, are simply to thank a supporter. To be kind. That’s usually a manageable step. It allows you to build the habit with new positive associations.
If you are struggling with the phone, there is a good chance someone gave you the impression that phone calls are primarily about something that feels more scary, like asking for money.
2. Find a ‘bright spot’. Unless you are a team of one, there is a good chance that one of your colleagues finds this easier than the rest of the team. As I suggest in my blog about searching out ‘bright spots’, one of the best ways to improve a skill is to ‘model’ the recipe (and beliefs about phone calls) of someone who is more successful than you.
3. Get clear why you are calling. It is relatively rare that your objective for the call should be to generate fundraising income. Most likely, it is a generous step in building a warm relationship. Call to make someone feel good and if they wish, ask them for a follow up chat when they have more time (aka ‘test drive’).
4. Call to give not get. Your motivation for calling matters. You are more confident when you are being generous. This is the single most important element of successful conversations with your charity’s (potential) or existing supporters. It’s so much more important than any script we could share here.
The brilliant book The Go Giver shows how all the most successful leaders and salespeople are those who seek to serve.
By all means they receive as well, when appropriate, but their primary reason for doing things is to give, not get. Once you make this switch in your personal reason for calling or seeking any conversation with a supporter, any feeling of fear goes down, and confidence goes up. They may or may not have time to talk to you today (that is up to them), but calling feels easier because your intention was to help them, today and in the future.
Good luck! Do let us know how you get on.
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