The Extreme Fundraising Blog

I originally wanted to call this fundraising secret: Don’t be a jerk—business people often don’t have liquid assets.

That seems to get the message across more bluntly.

I’m amazed at how poorly we treat business owners. Especially sole-proprietors. We approach them in ways we wouldn’t dream of approaching our other donors. With entitlement, bordering on a lack of civility.

A few years back, I had two interactions with business owners in the same city. Both were bitterly upset with the presumption shown by the nonprofits that approached them for support. Sheer impudence.

In their minds, the nonprofits seemed to think they had a moral right to the money they imagined these business men had. These men owed it. That was the way both were approached by many local nonprofits. Not on the merits of the cause. But some misguided Robin Hood myth. As though working for a nonprofit was morally “better” than merely running a “for profit.”

Unthinkable.

Business owners have often risked more than most of us would ever imagine. They go without so their employees can eat. They are on the hook for everything. They’re not paid until the bills are. We need men and women like this in all of our communities.

From our perspective, they may seem well off. But much of their assets are tied up in “things”—retail establishments, equipment, loans. They may be asset rich, but are often “cash poor.”
That’s why many prefer to give gifts-in-kind. They often simply don’t have the cash on hand.

So read some books on entrepreneurship. Get to know business owners. Ask them what it’s like to be an employer.

And do ask them for money for your cause. But please don’t be belligerent.

Our communities need both for-profit businesses and nonprofit ones.

Last time we looked at the #1 fundraising secret: ask!

Asking will always be #1. The rest of these fundraising secrets are in no particular order.

That being said, the second secret is: brainstorm objections up front.

Nine times out of ten, when you ask for money the prospect won’t say “yes” or “no.” They’ll give you an objection. In another secret we’ll look at why objections are great. (They really are!)

The comforting news is that objections tend to cluster around 4 or 5 common themes. So, instead of being surprised by them, why not identify them before you ask?

Give this easy “objection exercise” a try. It could be a blast.

1. Get your team together (volunteers or staff) and have them write objections down on post-it notes. Go until there are no more objections. Get out as many as you can. Have fun with this and be sure to laugh!
2. Then put the post-its on a wall and have someone start clustering them into common themes. Chances are, you’ll see only a few common groups forming.
3. Now strategize on ways to answer these objections or respond to them. Don’t become cavalier and abrasive. Use these objections to move yourself to the prospect’s side of the table. Help them solve the “problem” keeping them from saying “yes.”

Once you’ve done this, you’ll feel much more comfortable when you get one in real life!

Better yet, since you’re mind won’t be racing with fear of what the prospect might say, you’ll find you’re able to actually focus on the her more. She’ll sense that. And appreciate it.

Let me know how the “objections exercise” goes with your team!!

Today, I’m giving my Creating Donor Evangelists seminar at the annual conference of the New England Association of Healthcare Philanthropy. Part of that seminar involves posting the pictures of real people that are impacted by your mission. Your organization’s website and publications could always have a place with a powerful testimonial and a picture of the person.

Last week, I read a blog post that took this to a new level. The bloggers at BlogBaud.com recommended checking out MercyShips.org. This link brings you to there “Success Stories.” The first page is pictures of happy people with their name. If you click on their picture, you are brought to a page with before and after pictures. There’s Ali before and after the successful cleft lip surgery. There’s four-year-old Ami before and after a successful eye surgery. And check out Abu. This guy had a tumor the size of a grapefruit in his face before it was successfully removed. And there are dozens more pictures in this area.

With the smiling “after” pictures, Mercy Ships doesn’t even need testimonials. The pictures speak for themselves.

My favorite part? “Success Stories” is very easy to find on their home page. One of the tabs at the top. Genius! Why bury these compelling images?

You know you’re changing the lives of the people you work with. But are you telling the story?

And are you telling it with pictures?

Give it a try. It’ll make the people proud to be supporting you. And it will be an easy answer to a donor’s possible “how do I know you’re still successful at what you do” question.

This past Monday, I had the honor of speaking to the enthusiastic members of the Georgia Independent School Association.

They invited my in to speak on the three topics:

• importance of storytelling,
• how to ask for money, and
• how to handle objections.

In this edition of Extreme Fundraising, I wanted to make the handouts available to all the GISA participants and all EFE subscribers. (I’ve also included some extra freebies on the page!)

To see the links and handouts, go to:
http://fundraisingcoach.com/gisa.htm

Have fun with these tools!

Another great tidbit in Jeffrey Fox’s “How to Become a Rainmaker”:

The Rainmaker always turns a customer objection into a mutual–customer/Rainmaker–objective.

Let’s say a donor says, “Gee, I’d love to make a $25,000 gift to the campaign but both my kids are in college right now.” A rainmaking fundraiser would restate that as, “So our objective is to schedule pledge payments that are smaller for you while your kids are in college, correct?”

Powerful, isn’t it? The tone is no longer adversarial, it’s now positive. Plus, the fundraiser can find out more information about the donor and how to best serve her. And, perhaps most importantly, you’re getting the donors agreement. Fox says “Rainmakers believe that objections are the way customers mask pleas for help and information.”

As I said in 5 Reasons to Love Objections (http://fundraisingcoach.com/blog/2006/05/16/5-reasons-to-like-objections/), objections show interest. So seek out objections. And see how they can become mutual objectives.

We’ve spent the last couple of issues of Extreme Fundraising looking at objections. Before we go further, let’s use what we’ve learned. After reading this, see if you can use it this week.

Those of you who’ve been subscribed for any length of time know that I err on the side of raising serious money by asking for major gifts. (I tend to define that as gifts of at least $1000 a year.)

Think of the brainstorming exercise I talked about a couple of posts ago.

• You and your team (paid or volunteer) make a game out of trying to find every single reason people won’t give to your cause.
• Then you narrow it down to that most common 5 or 6.
• Finally, you develop stories that you can use to answer these objections before you even ask the person for money.

Can you see how this could help you in the mundane things as direct mail or (heaven forbid!) phonathons? If you know the most common objections, you can develop copy and scripts that attempt to answer them.

Then you can have fun tweaking the copy and scripts. Each story won’t have equal success. Some will be totally ineffective. So keep monitoring their effectiveness. Dump the ones that don’t work and keep the ones that do.

We’ve spent the last couple issues of EFE looking at objections. If you’re asking at high enough dollar amounts, you know they’re going to come. Objections pop up in just about any walk of life—sales, dating, family…

By now you know that I believe objections are a great sign. It’s a prospect’s way of fogging a mirror. By pushing back a bit, they’re showing that they’re alive. Making objections is a normal part of being a human.

Sales and motivational guru Zig Ziglar says that there are four times to deal with objections:

1. before they happen 
2. as they happen
3. after they happen
4. never

The good news is we can do something about the first three. The bad news is that if we don’t deal with them in the first three times, we can’t do anything about the fourth.

So use the brainstorm talked about in the last issue of EFE and see if you can create compelling answers to the 5 or 6 common objections your team comes up with. Then strategize with how to use these answers during each step of the process.

If we never deal with objections, we never deal with them. (Sounds like something Yogi Berra would say, doesn’t it? *grin*)

Here’s an encouraging note. Even if you deftly deal with every objection, four out of five times the prospect will likely say “no.”

Most good fundraising gift charts recommend having 4 or 5 prospects for each gift. If you’re looking for one person to give $100,000, you’ll need four or five prospects capable of that. If you’re looking for 20 people to give $1000, you’ll need 80-100 people capable of giving that size gift.

So don’t get discouraged if you’re not seeing the gifts come in. A “no” can be a sign that you’re one step closer to finding the prospect that is going to give!

And remember, if you’re not getting any objections, you’re not asking for enough money.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone said “yes” when you asked them for money?

But they don’t, do they?

Often, they come up with a reason they can’t possibly give at the level you’ve requested.

Despite how it feels, objections are actually a very good sign. While a “yes” would be terrific, an objection is at least not a no. (You may need to read that sentence a few times!)

In my 3-hour seminar “Asking for Money 2: How to Handle Objections,” I offer five reasons to like objections:

1. Objections show interest. An objection is often a way for the prospect to say “Tell me more.” 
2. If there were no objections, you’d be out of a job! People would just be giving oodles of money to your cause and you’d be irrelevant!
3. Objections are better than questions. Both are calls for more information but questions can be merely polite–unattached and disinterested. Objections show some level of personal interest and connection with your soliciation.
4. You don’t have to answer them all! Let me repeat that: YOU DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER THEM ALL! You’re a fundraiser, not an objection answering service. I recently had the wonderful experience of asking a prospect, “Is [the issue you just brought up] something that would keep you from making a gift?” It turns out the issue he was bringing up wasn’t really important to his decision making. So we didn’t have to deal with that particular objection at all!
5. In most cases, objections are similar. Sales guru Zig Ziglar says most solicitations are met with 5 or 6 common objections. Figure out these common objections and you’re more than half way to answering them.

Why not get your staff together and brainstorm a huge list of objections? Maybe this could be done in a party like atmosphere or at the local pub. Make this fun. Pretend you’ve just been asked to give to your cause and rattle off all the reasons you couldn’t do that.

Then look at the huge list, and narrow it down to five or six most common objections.

• “My kids are in college.”
• “My businesses isn’t doing that well this year.”
• “There are 17,000 other campaigns in our town.” Etc.

Once you have this list, you’re in power.

See what you can do to restructure your presentation. Perhaps you can incorporate stories of how others that are supporting the cause have overcome one of those objections.

If you know the person has kids in college, you may make an off-hand but strategic comment like: “You know, last week Joe said that this was so important for our community that he’s making a leadership gift even though he’s got 32 kids in college right now.”

You may still get that objection but at least you’ve gone a long way to answering it before it even comes up.

I doubt I’ll convince you to look forward to objections. But hopefully these will help take the sting (or surprise) out of them when they come.

Remember, if you’re not getting any objections, you’re not asking for enough money!

Last issue I said we’d learn to “Live/Love/Like” the person whether they say “yes” or “no.” But asking for money rarely results in a simple “yes” or “no.” Nine times out of ten, people raise objections and tell you why they couldn’t possibly give what you’d asked.

So before we explore how to relate to people after the ask, let’s look at how to handle objections.
Think about your reaction to an objection. Is it an eager, joyous reaction? Or is it more akin to fear and dread?

I think most of us, at some level, take objections personally. This is scary! What if they ask a question I can’t answer?

What if they’re really saying, “I think you’re nuts and don’t have any idea why anyone with half a brain would make a gift to your organization!”

The good news is that they aren’t.

Objections are part of the businesses. None of us want to look to “easy” when it comes to responding to requests. For those of you with kids, are there times you answer them “Maybe” when you know you really intend to do what they’ve requested? There’s just something in us that doesn’t want to look too easy.

As I see it, there are three main reasons for objections:

1. Lack of connection with the cause.
2. Lack of cultivation of the prospect.
3. The improper solicitation technique, either not knowing the donor (research and engage) or not thanking appropriately after the last gift.

The good news? The Get REAL process addresses all those areas!

Over the next few weeks we’ll be diving into objections. Maybe you’ll even learn to love objections.

But if not, at least you’ll learn to feel prepared for them!

This week, think about the most recent set of objections you received. Do they fit one of the three main reasons?