Today’s Tips for NGOs & Small Businesses 030915

As an NGO or small business, you are compelled every day to convince someone to join your cause, donate funds or sample your product or service. Sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don’t. The numerous efforts are frustrating.

Charlotte Beers, former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather, observed: “Taking part in the adventure of persuading others, sweeping them up into an idea, an unexpected action or an unproven vision, is a wonderful experience. The ability to create excitement all around you is what leadership is about. Listen to the sound of leadership; it is you being eloquent, powerful, convincing, compelling and forceful. It is not for the faint of heart, but the outcome is inevitable if you care enough to ignite a spark, which will grow into a flame.

“Leading through persuasion is a form of communicating that must be learned. In fact, it has to be learned, for if you can’t persuade or convince others, you cannot lead. It helps to focus on the response you hope to evoke rather than just what you want to say as a way to counter your own reluctance to ask others to change. Of course, laying out the response you want is a central part of good communication, but in the goal of leading others, you are also always after one very specific response: ‘I never thought of it that way.’”

Repeat for yourselves Beers’ remark: “The outcome is inevitable if you care enough to ignite a spark, which will grow into a flame.”

To elicit an enthusiastic “I never thought of it that way” response, Beers encourages nonprofit activists and entrepreneurs to be prepared to express your own excitement, keenness, the leaps you’ve made from logic to an imaginative new proposition, the size of which is yet unknown.

She pointed out that you are not trying to sway people against their will but to present them an opportunity to see things anew, differently, from another angle: “To create change, to invent a new future, you have to be vulnerable, to show passion and belief in an unproven idea, and to risk failure by pursuing it. You, the initiator, have to find a delivery style that allows you to communicate your conviction in a compelling, inescapable way.”

Beers advises that you deflect skepticism, shake away reluctance to embrace a new idea, or break through indifference. In order of ascending artistry, her list of tools that leaders use to carry the flame, includes:

* Threats or consequences

* Passion, pathos

* Humor, wit

* Imperfection

* Surprise

* Wonder

“With every step you take to be clear about your own place at work and in every opportunity you seize to claim that place, you can become clear and communicate memorably and become more of a leader. Such clarity is surprising and often impressive. Speaking passionately from the very center of who you are is compelling, forceful, persuasive: that’s what leadership sounds like,” he said.

Everyone sends out numerous emails every day to people who know us and to unknown people. The subject line of your email is what will entice the addressee to read the email or overlook it. There are specific words, expressions or styles that you should use in the subject line to attract recipient – or to avoid.

Ryan Pinkham wrote: “Those less than ten-word phrases that can often make or break an email marketing campaign that took weeks to put together—aren’t they a joy to create?

“I wish I could tell you that somewhere out there is the perfect subject line, one that could send your open-rates skyrocketing and make opt-outs and spam reports ancient history, but I can’t. I can tell you, however, that creating almost perfect subject lines is possible and it starts with understanding certain truths about your readers—15 truths to be exact.”

1. People won’t act unless told to do so

2. People are skeptical of most emails

3. People do NOT like to have their time wasted

4. People respond to numbers

5. People are more likely to act when they feel a sense of urgency

6. People care more about the sender than the message

7. People hate being misled

8. People want things to be personal, just not too personal

9. People want you to share your expertise

10. PEOPLE DO NOT RESPOND TO CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!

11. People are starting to think much more “socially”

12. People don’t want to be left out of the conversation

13. People actually do like being teased

14. People have needs, questions, and concerns

15. People hate being sold to

These 15 truths are generally intended for recipients that you don’t know.

Interesting Statistics

16% of US charitable donations go to educational organizations; and 10% go to health organizations, according to Giving USA.

58.4% is the retention rate of multi-year donors, according to Reactivating Lapsed Donors, Target Analytics. So if you have a donor for a few years, chances are that you’ll keep him or her.

Contact me for more ideas and guidance.

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