Archive for the ‘With personal productivity’ Category
Action and Getting Things to Happen
Posted by: Tom Suddes April 4, 2008
Nick has shared with you some things about an A.F.E. – an ACTION-FORCING EVENT. In my last two COACHING CLINICS it hit me, again, how powerful this really is. Here are 3 quick bullets and a bonus.
- PREDISPOSITION!!! If you’re on the For Impact Platform, you know that this is a big, big deal for us. PREDISPOSITION comes before you call to get a visit… is used to set up the presentation… is even used as part of the follow-up. PREDISPOSITION is definitely an A.F.E. (especially if you tell someone you’re going to call them in the next 48 hours to set up a time for the visit!)
- DEADLINES. Disney uses the term “THE TICKET IS PRINTED” to reinforce this concept of a deadline. (They tell all the contractors, designers, etc. that this new ‘EXPERIENCE’ [RIDE] is opening on such and such a date. ‘THE TICKET IS PRINTED.’ There will be little kids and their families standing in line… on that day!)
Priorities, Projects, Programs need DROP-DEAD DATES/DEADLINES, be they real or artificial. Draw a line in the sand. Put a stake in the ground. Use whatever other cliché you want. Just use DEADLINES as an A.F.E.!
- MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES. Every single MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE becomes a wonderful A.F.E.! You can tell people you’re going to follow-up. You can announce plans, kickoffs, groundbreakings, etc. Think of your MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE as it relates to ACTION! (A literal ACTION-FORCING EVENT.)
Bonus: BOARD MEETINGS. With all due respect, every “not-for-profit” Board Meeting is a disaster. Boring. Information-driven. No engagement. The only real ‘ACTION’ is approving the minutes from the last meeting.
WHAT IF… you could literally use your Board Meeting as an ACTION-FORCING EVENT? Approve the Funding Plan! Create Leadership Consensus around Priorities! Get buy-in at the highest level on your Message and Vision!
A.A.R.
This is a military term for an AFTER-ACTION REPORT. (It has nothing to do with AARP which is a very quiet but powerful organization for old people like me.)
You’ve heard me or read me when I talk about failure… engage then plan… prototype… act now. Every time you actually DO something, it becomes a wonderful lesson…IF you actually take the time to think about what happened, debrief, and get feedback.
AFTER-ACTION REPORTS in the military are the primary means of debrief and feedback. I would encourage you to do your own A.A.R:
- After Every Visit!
- After Every Memorable Experience, Predisposition, etc.
- After Every ‘Lesson’
Special Note: In our For Impact ROADMAP, the EXECUTION component is comprised of PREDISPOSITION, PRESENTATION and FOLLOW-UP.
It this model, the FOLLOW-UP includes a MEMO FOR THE RECORD… in other words, an AFTER-ACTION REPORT! No exceptions. No excuses. There needs to be a written summary of the visit and the required follow-up/action.
There it is.
ACTION-FORCING EVENT and AFTER-ACTION REPORT
Common word?
ACTION!!!
The Only Measurement That Matters Is Money
Posted by: Tom Suddes January 25, 2008
I had a session with a wonderful Sales Team last week. They’re deep into a campaign and doing really well. Then I had a subsequent conversation (as prelude to a two-day Custom Sales Training) with a wonderful, young head of a large development operation that has just completed filling out his Sales Team and ready to begin a strong Sales/Major Gift effort.
In both case, we spent significant time talking about this concept of MEASUREMENT.
Three quick assumptions to help you understand what follows.
- You are in SALES. Great sales teams and great sales people know the need for MEASUREMENT.
- Successful achievement of any GOAL requires MEASUREMENT. MEASUREMENT is the means to determine success, accomplishment, and satisfaction.
- You get what you MEASURE. Cliché, truism, aphorism… don’t know (don’t care). I do know that everybody in the development field and in sales wants and needs to know HOW they are being MEASURED.
Here are some ideas and nuggets that might help you with this whole concept or strategy of MEASUREMENT. It’s a little long. You might want to print it out, read it later or share and discuss with your development staff/sales staff.
I’ve been being ‘measured’ and ‘measuring’ for almost 35 years. Here is the shorthand version of what I’ve learned:
- The only MEASUREMENT that really matters is MONEY (INCOME) raised to FUND THE VISION and SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE YOUR IMPACT. Many of you want to argue/debate this with me. (You may be bringing a knife to a gun fight.) Yes, it’s about relationships. But, it’s about MAXIMIZING the RELATIONSHIP… AT THIS GIVEN MOMENT.I’m becoming more mellow with age, but the word/concept of “cultivation” still makes me gag. Even things like “stewardship” and “donor relations” don’t work as part of your model or strategy IF there is no GIFT… no INVESTMENT… no MONEY/INCOME!!!(And you can’t deliver on your SOLUTION or BUSINESS MODEL or VISION or IMPACT.)
- ‘PRODUCTIVITY’ vs. ‘ACTIVITY’. The PRODUCTIVITY of your SALES TEAM, MAJOR GIFT OFFICERS, DEVELOPMENT OFFICERS, SENIOR STAFF or EXECUTIVE TEAM is a simple function of :HOW MUCH MONEY WAS RAISED/COMMITTED?
It is THE MEASURMENT.EVERYTHING else is an ‘ACTIVITY’. Letters. Phone calls. Visits. Presentations. Asks. Proposals. Pending Follow-Ups. - Begin with the end in mind. Covey at his finest. The application is pretty simple.How much MONEY/INCOME do you need to fund your vision and achieve your impact goals???
- MEASURE THE ‘TRIPLE NET’. [The $100,000 GUARANTEE.] I was talking on the phone with Kelly P., a former Suddes Group team member and now a development superstar with a children’s hospital. She reminded me of what I used to tell organizations 20 years ago. I guaranteed them a way to “raise $100,000″. Hire two Major Gift Officers/Development Officers. Pay them $50,000 each. I would train them in 10 minutes and guarantee that they would be able to go out and “raise” $50,000 each over the course of the year.I know this seems kind of silly because the net income is zero. (Actually, it’s a “negative number” since we did not factor in any of the “expenses” by the two development staff.)The point should be pretty obvious.
The goal of every Development Office should be to write a NET, NET, NET CHECK to the IMPACT side of the organization.
***Therefore, you need to MEASURE the entire COST OF FUNDRAISING to really be able to determine your IMPACT.
- DO THE MATH. One of the most important lessons around MEASUREMENT and GOALS, etc. is this concept of doing the MATH.
- How much MONEY (Income) do you need?
- What does your FUNDING PYRAMID (aka Gift Chart) look like?
- How many COMMITMENTS do you need?
- How many VISITS do you need to make?
- How many QUALIFIED PROSPECTS need to be in your pool/portfolio?
Special Note: If you want to look at the way we have MEASURED every campaign we have ever managed and the performance of each of our sales team members, check out the ‘GREEN SHEET’.
You Cannot Screw Up, If You Show Up
Posted by: Tom Suddes January 17, 2008
My partner and President/Leader of For Impact | The Suddes Group is Nick Fellers. (You already know that most likely.)
Nick’s a borderline “genius”. Smart. Action-oriented. Authentic.
He has many great lines, but I heard him say this on the phone yesterday and it just struck me as so freakin’ right on in his role as COACH.
“You can’t SCREW UP… if you just show up!”
While Nick was speaking with one of his coaching clients, I think that message needed to get out to everyone.
Before you can JUST ASK .
Before you can PRESENT THE OPPORTUNITY .
Before you can MAXIMIZE RELATIONSHIPS .
You need to SHOW UP! (JUST VISIT!)
Focus on 33 (top) Prospects
Posted by: Tom Suddes December 12, 2007
Nick and I did a session last Thursday on QUALIFIED PROSPECTS. One of the best comments/feedback was from a wonderful Social Entrepreneur with whom we’ve been working for quite a while.
She said, basically, that while everything she heard/learned in the one-hour teleseminar was good stuff… the most important thing to her was the REMINDER re: FOCUS ON YOUR TOP 33 PROSPECTS!!!
That feedback reminded Nick and me that sometimes we just don’t emphasize this enough. Sooooooo…….
FOCUS every ounce of your ENERGY and TIME on your TOP 33
BEST RELATIONSHIPS/ MOST QUALIFIED PROSPECTS/POTENTIAL INVESTORS!!!
You only need 33 great RELATIONSHIPS to totally TRANSFORM your organization. (Literally, to change the way you do business.)
You will have success beyond your wildest imagination!
ACTION: DETERMINE, very quickly, who are your:
- Your Top 3 Champions
- Your Top 10 Best Prospects
- Your Next 20 Potential Investors
- (total = top 33 prospects)
Then, GO VISIT WITH THEM IMMEDIATELY!!!
BE AUTHENTIC. You can’t screw up. Pull a Nike. Just (go) Do It!
Create an Action Forcing Event
Posted by: Nick Fellers December 11, 2007
I’ve never worked for the State Department but I know someone who has. Last week I was on the road and spent an afternoon with a campaign champion in California. He introduced a piece of State Department lexicon: ‘The Action Forcing Event’.
The organization I’m working with has a number of pending commitments. We’re using the executive director’s scheduled retirement (March 2008) as a reason for investors to finalize their commitments. This reason, he explained to me, is called an Action Forcing Event (AFE).
He went on to explain that in the government you sometimes have to make up an AFE just to get stuff done.
We can all be using AFE’s as part of our case/rationale for support around WHY we need the commitment NOW. Applied, this could be:
- A ground breaking event
- Campaign timeline
- A symbolic date
Without an AFE you are at the ‘complete’ mercy of the prospect’s timeline. Without an AFE the pending process can (and often does) drag on indefinitely.
I would encourage you to create an Action Forcing Event as part of your strategy for every visit. It’s not often that a visit results in a check on-the-spot so think about ‘timing’ as part of your presentation.
Just Visit
Posted by: Tom Suddes October 31, 2007
Nick and I have been doing some pretty intense training, teleseminars and coaching in the last few weeks. Plus, I just finished up the GUIDE/WORKBOOK called PROSPECTS. Subtitle: How to identify major gift prospects.
I said in the Intro that if you’re not going to go out and make VISITS… you’re wasting a lot of time and energy “worrying” about finding new prospects, rating prospects, figuring how much to ask for, etc.
Familiar followers and fellow evangelists of the For Impact Movement know that our 3rd Insight, battle cry and sales mantra is JUST ASK!!!
Before you can JUST ASK… BE AUTHENTIC… DO DISCOVERY… SHARE THE STORY… PRESENT THE OPPORTUNITY… you must
JUST VISIT!!!
A CHALLENGE:
If it were me, I would schedule VISITS with 3 of my absolute best CHAMPIONS (and current investors) as soon as possible.
On that VISIT, I would
- Say THANK YOU.
- SHARE THE VISION (THE PURPOSE, PRIORITY & PLAN) …
and get their FEEDBACK and COUNSEL. - PRESENT an OPPORTUNITY for them to HELP.
I’m willing to guarantee that ‘GOOD STUFF’ will result!!!
100 Visits in 18 Days
Posted by: Tom Suddes October 31, 2007
Jim Yoder is one of my closest friends (since our days together at Notre Dame) and a former partner of The Suddes Group. Jim has been running/managing large campaigns for over 20 years. He is currently working on a $1.5M Campaign for Economic Development (over 5 years) in a small community in North Carolina.
He has spent 3 DAYS…
EVERY OTHER WEEK…
FOR THE LAST 3 MONTHS
working on this Funding Initiative.
He has made:
100 VISITS!!!
100 VISITS… 100 SHOULDER-TO-SHOULDER, FACE-TO-FACE, EYEBALL-TO-EYEBALL PRESENTATIONS… IN JUST THOSE 18 DAYS!!!
Oh, and by the way, Jim has never met any of those prospects/potential investors personally before he made that visit… AND he Presented the Opportunity for them to make an investment (JUST ASK) in almost every single instance!
I told Jim that 100 visits in those 18 days was more than most Development Officers and Major Gift Officers Make in a year.
HOW MANY VISITS ARE YOU/YOUR ORG MAKING THIS WEEK???
The Simple Idea that Changes Everything
Posted by: Nick Fellers August 11, 2007
Last week Tom and I were with a Benedictine prep school in New Jersey. We were discussing the importance of focusing on top prospects in the development plan when one of the board members asked this question:
“What type of results should we expect if we visit with each of our top 100 prospects?”
Being the ‘helpful outsider’, I gave that wonderfully ambiguous answer: “It depends.”
After thinking for a moment I was able to offer an epiphany that was a bit more insightful…
I’ve never been with an organization which made a commitment to focus on its top 10 prospects that wasn’t completely and totally transformed (in ways beyond funding results).
That’s a long-winded epiphany — I will restate: If you focus on your top 10 prospects it will transform your organization (period).
This is a simple (not easy) idea that changes everything.
The secondary epiphany is that most organizations gloss over their top 10 prospects to make selective visits with prospects 11-100 (if and when they’re making visits).
Why aren’t more organizations transformed by their top 10?
- They don’t stop to ask the question, “Who are our top 10 prospects?”
- It’s easier to focus on prospects 11-100.
- They give up on the top 10 at the first sign of uncertainty. (eg. “The prospect did not return our phone call… she must not be interested.”)
- They have not yet committed to ’sales’ and are therefore not out making asks.
- They have ‘top of the pyramid’ call reluctance because:
- They can’t communicate the vision/mission/message.
- They haven’t been trained to sell and therefore fear messing it up.
Action:
- Make a commitment today to focus your energy on your top 10 prospects.
- Make a commitment to visit with them, share the story, and present the opportunity within the next year.
- Don’t back down from this commitment*.
- E-mail me (nick@forimpact.org) on August 13, 2008 with your transformational success story. I would be equally interested (and very surprised) to hear from you if you truly made this commitment and weren’t wildly successful in your funding efforts.
*If you have encounter any of the challenges above join us at a training camp to remove the challenges [more powerful than a plug; it’s a statement of action].
The Return on Investment, Energy and Relationships
Posted by: Nick Fellers April 12, 2007
Here are some thoughts on this concept of RETURN… RETURN ON INVESTMENT… RETURN ON ENERGY… RETURN ON RELATIONSHIPS…
If you’ve been following the For Impact MESSAGE in any way, you should be familiar with the VOCABULARY CHANGE of ‘donor’ and ‘donation’ to ‘investor’ and ‘investment.’
And, obviously, you would know what every INVESTOR wants from their investment: A RETURN!
And, as a For Impact Leader or Social Entrepreneur, you know that you can DELIVER on that RETURN.
There is another ‘RETURN’ that Nick and I use quite often that seems to really grab people’s attention: RETURN ON ENERGY.
This particular nugget should be pretty self-explanatory. What (exactly) is your RETURN on ENERGY? (In this case, ‘ENERGY’ means both physical and mental TIME and FOCUS.) Is the end result worth the ENERGY? Are you working on your Top 3% or still expending a lot of (wasted) energy at the bottom?
*This concept is explained and expanded wonderfully in a great book by Jim Loehr called The Power of Full Engagement
Loehr’s premise is very simple: It’s all about MANAGING YOUR ENERGY… NOT YOUR TIME.
Special Note: I believe this RETURN ON ENERGY concept applies both to YOU and your INVESTORS / CHAMPIONS. (They are also expecting a return on ENERGY, not just a return on INVESTMENT.)
As I was pulling this together, it hit me that the first return may be the RETURN ON RELATIONSHIPS. I never really heard anyone talk about it this way, but if you think about it, the RETURN on a RELATIONSHIP could be a way to talk about both RETURN ON IVNESTMENT and the RETURN ON ENERGY.
Again, I believe this RETURN ON RELATIONSHIP applies to both YOU and your FOR IMPACT ORGANIZATION, and your STAKEHOLDERS, INVESTORS and CHAMPIONS.
Are you actually maximizing the RETURN ON RELATIONSHIPS? Are your top prospects and potential investors clear about their RETURN ON THE RELATIONSHIP? And, finally, can you use this whole concept of ‘RETURN’… on the RELATIONSHIP… on the INVESTMENT… on ENERGY… as a way for you to get TRULY FOCUSED???
Return on Energy
Posted by: Nick Fellers November 20, 2006
Here is a simple idea you can use to frame your thinking around your funding plan:
.
This seems to be especially big for organizations trapped in a transaction-based system of special events (life-sucking, volunteer-draining) with often and incredibly low RETURN ON ENERGY.
If that describes your organization then think about this rhetorical question: What would happen if you did away with one event. Then, you focused all that energy (time, urgency, people, resources) on building a great relationships with one or two prospects that could invest $1Million in your vision?
Remember:
- Special Events as fundraisers stink- they’re not special.
- Major Gifts: Raise the most money at the least cost.
- 97/3: 97% of the money/investments comes from 3% of your family … focus on the 3%
Story:
Last week I was with a school in Albuquerque. The bulk of the funding strategy revolved around special events … in fact, they were running FIVE events. The board was drained. It made a commitment to CHANGE the way it FUNDED the VISION. In only one week so far, the board has generated more than $80,000 to fund student scholarships by working only a few key phone relationships. To really see the ‘WOW’ you need to know that they these events were consuming hundreds of volunteer hours and netting an average of $30K - $50K each (with a funding cost as high as 70 cents to raise a dollar - yikes).
To me, this is a wonderful example of stopping to think about the RETURN ON ENERGY, making a commitment to change and enjoying IMMEDIATE RESULTS.
Final Note: This applies to EVERYTHING you’re doing. Take a moment this Friday morning to think about your RETURN ON ENERGY.
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Just Added
Tom Suddes Video sharing the For Impact Point of View
