June 2015 – Page 2 – Management Library

June 11, 2015January 26, 2022

Effective Telephone Solicitation – Part Two

As noted last week, to optimize a caller’s effectiveness, prospects should be prepared for the call. They must know it’s coming, that they will be asked for a specific dollar figure, and what that figure will be. They must understand the need for their support, and they should (hopefully) be made to look forward to receiving that call.

Snail mail should go out so as to arrive the day (two days at most) before the call is to be made. Email should go out early on the day before.

That way, the prospect has the idea fresh in his/her mind. S/he knows you’re going to call in the next 24-48, and s/he has adequate time to consider-and-“accept” the “Ask” amount.

The snail mail should be no more than one-side of one-page. Anything longer and it’ll look like too much effort to read, and an email should be short enough not to require a lot of scrolling.

Mail* should come from someone whose name is recognizable by the recipient, someone whose note the recipient would probably (want to) read – you’ve got to see this from the reader’s perspective. *I’m using “Mail” to refer to both, snail mail and email.)

The note will have four “sections,” and should start with a sentence similar to: “I’ve asked one of our (students, staff members, volunteers) to call you to ask you to join in support of (name of a program or activity).” Don’t use the phrase “annual fund.” In fact, don’t use any wording that references fundraising. And, if you can designate a specific person who will call a specific prospect, the wording can be: “I’ve asked Ralph Kramden” to call you….

The second section (paragraph) should (briefly) address how the program/activity is benefiting the folks that the organization serves – it’s best to address one need, but that need can be a broad one … as long as you don’t get into a long discussion about how wonderful the organization/institution is. Remember the KISS principle.

Next is the “Ask” … something similar to: “I ask that you consider a commitment of $XXX, which you could, if you wish, split into two or more gifts over the next six-to-ten months. Your gift will really help strengthen/maintain the activity/program.”

The last sentence of the mail should say something similar to: “I hope you’ll welcome the (student, staff member, volunteer, or named person) when s/he calls, and take the time to ask any questions you may have about our programs/outreach/etc.”

Paragraphs should be short. In the same way that short chapters in a novel get you to go on to the next chapter, paragraphs of one sentence in a letter are more likely to get read.

If the prospect gets (and reads) the mail before the call, the caller can focus on the purpose of the call … getting the dollar commitment. And, a personal contact, by its nature, is more likely to engender the warm-and-fuzzies.

All of the above is based on the assumptions that you are in regular contact with your constituents, contacts that update them on your progress/activities/successes. If you’re not in regular contact, your pre-call mail may not get the attention it should.

Next week: Part 3 will look at the callers – recruitment and training.

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If you’re reading this on-line, and would like to comment/expand on the above piece, or would just like to offer your thoughts on the subject of this posting, we encourage you to “Leave a Reply.” If you’re reading this as an email, and you want to comment on the above piece, email Comments to offer your thoughts. Your comments, with appropriate attribution, could be the basis of a new posting.

June 10, 2015March 27, 2023

Recovering from a Failure to Deliver

Falling down is inevitable, it’s how you stand back up that matters in the long run

Sometimes you run into unexpected delays or out-of-the-blue issues that make keeping specific promises you’ve made to stakeholders impossible. While it’s inevitable that people will be upset (and rightfully so), there is one thing you absolutely must do if you want the people who believed in you to keep the faith: COMMUNICATE!

The folks who make WiFi hotspot Karma presold a new version of their product last September with promises it would be ready by Christmas, but as of today the kinks are still being ironed out. Customers have been told repeatedly it was about ready, only for the manufacturer to fall silent once again.

Finally, facing major backlash and the likelihood of cancellation en masse, Karma let it all hang out in a blog post detailing exactly what had been happening and how things looked for the near future. Here’s a selection from the post:

We’ve been heads down, and we fixed it

Karma Go progress report

First off, I want to apologize for not communicating to you sooner. We wanted to give you something concrete, and now we have something concrete to share. And to everyone who has pre-ordered a Karma Go: Thank you for sticking with us this long.

We planned to ship Karma Go this month, but we can’t ship Karma Go until it’s perfect. We hit a snag about a month ago that threw our timeline up in the air, and now that snag is finally resolved.

What was the problem?

For a while now we’ve been testing Go with about 20 people at our office. One thing that really puzzled us is that it would somehow lose its connection a few times a day. You’d go into an office, or walk out on the street, and the internet would drop.

We traced this to a problem with the handoff between 4G (high speed LTE) and 3G (medium speed CDMA) networks. Karma Go would connect fine to 4G, and then when it tried to transition from 4G to 3G in a lower coverage area it would say it was connected, but it wasn’t. Then, even if it found 4G again, it couldn’t jump back online.

We knew what was wrong, but we couldn’t figure out the why, and so for the past month we’ve been heads down, trying to figure out the cause.

And now here’s the good news: it’s fixed!

While the tone of the message is great, and the content should buy them a little more time from stakeholders, the lack of compassion – demonstrating the Karma team understands and commiserates with the frustration created by their actions – leaves this post feeling less effective than it could have been.

If they’re able to live up to their most recent timeline, and if they keep up the promise to communicate more frequently and openly, Karma can recover from its failure to deliver. If not, well, let’s just say their company name may gain an unpleasant double meaning.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/06/07/crisis-management-risk-hackers-for-hire/#sthash.j6IqlLNs.dpuf

June 7, 2015February 8, 2023

Crisis Management Risk: Hackers for Hire

A-male-hacker-programmer-working-on-his-laptop-all-night

All it takes is an open wallet to have a target hacked

We all know hackers are out there, but did you realize many are selling their skills openly to anyone who will pay a fee? Earlier this month Business Insider’s Cale Gutrie Weissman spoke with security experts to find out just how easy it is to rent a hacker:

“There are multiple pages on the dark web where you can rent a hacker,” Chris Hadnagy, CEO of the penetration testing firm Social Engineer, told Business Insider. Hadnagy has a vast history of knowing the ins and outs of the nefarious cyber world as his firm has been hired by both huge companies and the government to find hacking vulnerabilities.

“It’s done through covert channels,” he explained, noting that his research had taken him to multiple sites where hackers are both selling their individual exploits as well as selling their expertise as a whole.

For example, some hackers have offered jilted boyfriends’ access to their girlfriends’ Instagram and emails, experts have told Business Insider. These sort of exploits have been around for 20+ years, but they are now becoming easier and easier to find.

Hackers are more than willing to help paying customers target businesses as well. Imagine the damage a competitor, or heck, just someone who doesn’t like what you’re doing, could cause by paying for access to your corporate emails or arranging for critical services to go down at the worst time possible and you see the problems this market can create.

As far as crisis management for these types of situations goes, the number one piece of advice we can give you is to stay knowledgeable and be prepared. You can’t always stop a skilled hacker, but you can be ready to deal with whatever trouble they throw your way.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/05/27/crises-crossing-borders-in-the-digital-age/#sthash.tT5ttUfT.dpuf

June 3, 2015January 26, 2022

Annual Giving and Telephone Solicitation

This posting, and the follow-ups, are all about two concepts that push my buttons. The first, “Annual Giving”, makes me grit my teeth; the second, telephone solicitation, makes me twitch in frustration….

The term “Annual Giving,” and the resulting mind-set, have become accepted as part of the environment of (mostly) educational institutions, without awareness of the phrase’s counterproductive impact on the institution’s staff and constituents.

Administrations, Development Officers, alumni, parents and friends have come to accept/understand/believe that one need only seek/give a single gift in each calendar year.

In that environment, the primary goal for many Annual Giving Offices has been getting that (one) gift, with a secondary emphasis on increasing dollars. The goal becomes increasing the percentage of the constituency that participates, rather than raising as much as possible.

Consistent with this perspective, institutions design Annual Giving Programs around phonathons, mail and special events — all of which do not require Directors of Annual Giving to become involved in solicitation, or even that they have any experience/expertise in development.

An Annual Giving Director with no experience in direct solicitation cannot train or supervise those whose “job” it is to solicit gifts on a one-on-one basis.

Administrations must recognize that telephone fundraising, in addition to focusing on the number of constituent participants, has great income generating potential; but, to realize that potential, an investment must be made — in space, equipment, pre-call mail and caller salaries.

As long as Administrations don’t see the importance, the potential value, in an effective phone program, and demonstrate a belief in the real need for such an effort, the people supervising and working on those programs won’t be able to see that what they are doing is of any great importance/value.

The most effective use of the telephone is in combination with personalized pre-call mail or email. A properly structured Mail-and-Telephone (MATS) or eMail-And-Telephone Solicitation (eMATS) program goes well beyond what the basic phonathon can accomplish. When properly structured, an eMATS program will be able to generate an increasingly greater percentage of “annual fund” income.

The key ingredient of such a program is the person making the phone call. And, btw, with all the (misplaced*) emphasis on the use of social media to raise money, keep in mind that the telephone IS a “social medium.” [*Another pet peeve: the incorrect belief that social media and other mass solicitation methods can raise more dollars than one-on-one solicitation.]

And, to optimize the effectiveness of the caller, prospects should be prepared for the call. They must know it’s coming, that they will be asked for a specific dollar figure, and what that figure will be. They must understand the need for their support, and they should (hopefully) be made to look forward to receiving that call. (More on the content of pre-call mail and email in my next post.)

The purpose/objectives of a telephone program must be clearly defined. Administration, staff and callers must understand and agree on that purpose.

Is your phone program primarily a cultivation tool, a fact-finding tool, a stewardship tool, a means to educate a constituency, or is it a fundraising solicitation tool ??

If the latter, then THE GOAL is not percentage of participation, it is not spreading the warm-and-fuzzies, it is not to amass prospect data, the primary goal is to raise as much money as possible.

The discussion continues next Wednesday.

June 2, 2015June 20, 2022

[Infographic] Workplace Conflict Statistics

A-nervous-business-man-having-a-talk-with-his-workers

Learning more about a potentially dangerous situation

Workplace conflict is unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean it has to put a crimp in business or leave anyone in danger. Part of tackling any major issue is understanding its core, and this infographic from Conflict Tango will get you started:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2015/05/27/crises-crossing-borders-in-the-digital-age/#sthash.mqjNnL8a.dpuf

June 1, 2015February 8, 2023

Set your Intentions for Effective Communication

Have you ever walked into a meeting or joined in on a phone conference that went the wrong direction? Maybe it could have gone better with just a little pre-planning, specifically to set your intentions for that particular communication transaction. The power of setting your intentions before communicating is that it helps you to focus on what you want to have happen instead of being buffeted every which way by feelings, random thoughts, distractions or even the reactions of your listeners.

For example, suppose you need to provide some information to your team about potential layoffs. You start to worry about how they will react. Suddenly you feel anxious and your words don’t flow right. You either become too blunt or too “soft” when sharing the news. Instead of slipping into this downward spiral, next time try setting your intention before you speak. In this case, you might decide your role is to be empathetic but straightforward about the news. This mindset helps you to focus on providing complete information while delivering it in a compassionate way. And it reminds you to stick to that style no matter how listeners react.

In other situations, your intention might be to speak with courtesy to an abrasive customer, or listen with patience to a long-winded relative. Or to listen to feedback without getting defensive. Or to listen logically as the doctor explains treatment options. See how it works? Once you set your intention about the communication, your behavior naturally follows. And if you do find yourself off-course, reminding yourself of your intention might be all you need to get back on track.

How do you set an intention? I simply take a few quiet moments, usually early in my day, to think about how I plan to show up for the commitments, conversations and meetings I have scheduled. A few minutes before each one, I take a moment to remind myself exactly what my intention is. I find I don’t need to script what I am going to say or worry about the words I need, as long as I am clear in my intention. And I definitely notice less confidence and clarity when I am not speaking with a clear intention.

Next time you have a challenging meeting, a difficult conversation or an important communication situation, try setting your intentions and see how it helps make you a more effective communicator.