Let’s talk about the second insight, which is ‘Impact Drives Income.’ Let me make this really simple for you. I’m going to encourage you: We need to get out of the transaction business. It’s not about transactions. Those are small gifts, $5, $25 gifts. A transaction is when people come to your special event and they make a gift and then you don’t contact them again until next year for the next special event, whether that’s a Gala or an auction or golf outing. That’s a transactional situation. We need to get out of the transaction business and get into the relationship business. I do that in gold for your purposefully. So the real goal here is to maximize the relationship.

What does ‘relationship’ mean? The two gurus of one-on-one marketing and one-on-one enterprise relationships are Martha Rodgers and Don Peppers. They have this great definition of a relationship: A relationship is a continuing series of collaborative interactions, each one is inherently unique to the participants. So if you could create relationships that were a continuing series of collaborative interactions, and each one inherently unique to them… Wow. That’s a completely different business. I want to encourage you to maximize the relationship … and I’m going to add four letters here. A T G M: At This Given Moment. We’re going ot talk more about that, but the idea is maximize the relationship NOW. If that’s a $1,000 gift now towards a $100,000 later, then get the $1,000. If it’s joining the President’s Circle at $10,000 today and then talking more about a million dollar campaign commitment later, do it. It’s maximizing relationships at this given moment.

A couple other things about relationships, if you will. The financial goal of every development office really should be writing a net net net check to the impact side of the organization. So these people (income) should be supporting these people (impact). That’s why we’re in development and advancement for. If our job is maximizing relationships, really neat stuff happens.

Now here’s something: You talk about CRM and customer relationship management and all that other bull-honky. You can’t manage a relationship that you don’t have. That’s Suddes: “You can’t manage a relationship that you don’t have.” One of the best sales books here in my office is by a guy named Larry Wilson. He has this really good quote where he says: “Sales people are selling products, and customers are buying relationships.” What if you could transfer that sales concept to our impact world? Stop selling products or whatever else you want to call them and start selling relationships. Let’s get into the relationship business.