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You're listening to the nonprofit power podcast.
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In today's episode, we share why money and policy decision makers rarely receive your intended message.
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And what you can do about it.
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So stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I'm Kath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are.
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To have them seeking you out as an equal partner.
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And to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast.
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I'm your host Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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Because there's a really big problem out there that chances are you're experiencing.
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And that is the too many money and policy decision-makers just aren't getting your core message.
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What I want to help you do today is shift what you're doing just a little bit so that you can start to change that.
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You probably already know from painful experience that getting the attention of, and engaging and building a relationship with a money or policy decision maker that's new to you or relatively new, is tougher than ever.
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And there are some real reasons for that.
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The biggest one is that attention spans are shorter than ever.
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You already know that from your own personal experience, that everything's a fire hose.
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There's so much input coming at you all the time that you can't possibly deal with it all.
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You've got to filter out as much as you can so that you don't get overwhelmed and so that you can stay focused on the stuff you really need to pay attention to.
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Our filtration system is in overdrive to try to stay functional.
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What we sometimes don't realize is that while we're all doing that, the decision makers are doing that, too.
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They have to.
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We all have to out of survival.
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So more than ever it becomes essential that we engage them from the very beginning.
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Because if we don't, they're already filtering us out.
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So that's daunting.
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What do we do about that?
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Well, relationship building is always a process.
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That hasn't changed.
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But how we go about that and how we begin the relationship has changed.
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And I notice, in a lot of the nonprofit leaders that I work with, that a lot of times, we really haven't caught up to the new reality.
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We haven't shifted our practices and our methods to respond to that.
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That's what I really want to focus on in this conversation is, how do we do that?
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The first thing we have to understand is what's going on underneath and mostly it's that attention span issue, the bandwidth issue, the focus issue.
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For the longest time, the standard practice when you're beginning a relationship with a decision maker was to take the time to explain what your organization does and who you help and how you help them and how many people you serve and all the transformational things that happen when you do that work and all of that.
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That is all really important information.
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But what we can't do anymore is lead with that.
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Because I hate to be the one to break this to you.
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But none of that stuff is inherently engaging.
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For a decision-maker who's not already bought in at a pretty high level with the work that you do and the problem that you solve.
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If they're not already bought in on that, why would those basic pieces of information about your work and the organization and all of that.
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Why would that be engaging?
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It wouldn't.
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And so what I see far too often is leaders going in and trying to engage a decision maker in a relatively new relationship.
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And leading with the same old stuff.
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And they're getting really frustrated because the decisionmaker's not engaging.
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It leads to all sorts of things.
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It leads to you having wasted your time, to the decision maker kind of feeling like you wasted their time.
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And most importantly, you haven't moved the relationship forward at all.
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Maybe you have failed to even gain enough traction to even start a relationship.
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So there's a lot going on here and there's a lot at stake..
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One of the challenges that we're working with is that, for those of us who've been in the game for a while, and have been doing advocacy work and have been engaging decision makers over time.
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We've kind of developed stuff that works, and that's good.
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But whether you're noticing it or not, some of those standard methods aren't working as well anymore.
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In some cases they're not working at all.
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And in worst case scenario, they're actually impeding your ability to build a relationship.
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So if we want to make sure that we're really reaching those decision makers and getting them to grasp our core message.
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We've got to change a key piece of how we're interacting with them.
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The good news is that the principles underlying that shift are quite simple.
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First we have to engage them right out of the gate.
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That is it.
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Unless this is a long standing relationship with a champion who's already totally bought in.
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That's different.
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Those are totally different conversations.
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But I'm talking about when you're in a relatively new phase in the relationship, or maybe it's brand new.
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In those scenarios we got to engage them right away.
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In a lot of cases you might have only a minute or two to pull them in and engage them enough that they stay with you mentally.
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For you to get anywhere else with the conversation.
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That's kind of sobering.
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A minute or two?
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So what you do with those first couple of minutes becomes really critical.
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And I'm saying that not to freak you out.
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Not to apply a ton of pressure.
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But to help you focus.
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And say, whoa, if my first couple of minutes are that important, I better be really intentional about them.
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And that's what I want you to take from this.
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Is that there is no longer room for you to begin with, I'm so-and-so, this is my title.
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This is my role.
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This is our organization.
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This is how long we've been in business.
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This is what we do and who we help.
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Da da da dah.
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Here's maybe a couple of key data points about how many people we serve or the impact that we have or whatever.
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I repeat.
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None of that is inherently engaging.
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It's really interesting to us.
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Of course it is.
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And it's really interesting to people who are already on board with our stuff.
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But for the person who's not yet there.
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Who's not on board.
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What's going to engage them is not facts.
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It's not information..
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Information does not engage.
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It really doesn't.
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What engages is stuff that provokes an emotional response.
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Of curiosity, of surprise, of uncertainty.
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Those are the kinds of things that when you say something those first couple of minutes that makes the decision maker say to themselves, two things.
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Whoa, this isn't typical.
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Already you're doing better.
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If you're not being typical, if you're not being predictable, you're already ahead of the game.
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They're also saying to themselves, some version of, I didn't know that.
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That sounds important.
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So what we're talking about here is shifting your opening few lines, the focus of your opening, to make it immediately engage.
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Because we might only have those first couple of minutes to engage them enough that they stay engaged for the next five or 10 minutes.
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If we don't engage them in those first couple of minutes, they may be mentally checked out by the time we get to the stuff that would engage them.
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And that's the hazard.
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Typically what we've done is we've front-loaded our conversations with decision makers, with information.
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And then eventually we get to the stuff that's really engaging.
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But we feel like we have to lay the information out first.
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And nothing could be further from the truth.
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If you want their engagement, which you must have if you're going to build a relationship and get them on board with your stuff.
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You got to have them leaning in.
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You've got to have them asking questions, sharing opinions, even if you don't agree with them necessarily.
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If they're talking with you, if there's a two way conversation and they're asking for more information or they're asking for clarification.
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Or they're saying, oh my gosh, that sounds problematic.
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Are you sure about that?
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I don't know, that doesn't sound right.
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All of that.
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All of those kinds of comments and reactions are indicators that they are not only paying attention and listening, but they're mentally engaging with what you're saying.
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And that's huge.
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That is the key.
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The most effective way to do this is to change your opening couple of minutes.
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Basically remove 95% of the information that you've been starting with.
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And instead start with something that's going to elicit an engaged response.
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And the best way to do that is to engage an emotion.
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Now that doesn't mean make them mad or make them sad or make them happy.
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It means engage emotions like surprise, curiosity, uncertainty, questioning.
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Anything like that is all good because it means their brain is engaging.
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It's very difficult for a person who experiences an emotional reaction to something that you say, to not follow up.
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If you surprise the heck out of them with something you tell them.
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Or you, now, this is kind of next level skill.
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If you confound them with a new way of looking at something that really turns their perspective on its head.
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Now that's more advanced, but all of those kinds of things.
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At a more basic level, surprise, curiosity, uncertainty are all good emotions to elicit early on.
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Because it will cause them to follow up.
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To ask you a question, to get clarification, perhaps to challenge you.
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Those are all signs of engagement.
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Once you have them engaged, you're going to have teed up the two or three most important things you need them to understand, to grasp, to get, and you will reveal those in the conversation as it makes sense to, based on where the conversation is going.
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You want to be in charge enough of the conversation that you're making sure you're getting in the key pieces that you have decided ahead of time, they need to comprehend in order to say yes to the thing that eventually you want them to say yes to.
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You have those in your hip pocket.
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But you integrate them into the conversation within the conversational flow.
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So, for example, if you've led with something surprising.
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And they said, really?
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I didn't know that.
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Or maybe they said, really?
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Are you sure about that?
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That doesn't sound right.
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Either way you've got them.
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It doesn't matter.
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It doesn't matter whether they frame it positively or negatively.
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Which by the way could just be their personality.
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If they're a little bit contrarian by nature, they're probably frame it in that latter more negative way.
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If they're more prone to positive engagement all the time, then they're more likely to ask it in that more open, inquisitive way.
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It doesn't matter.
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You almost don't care which emotional response you provoke as long as it's there.
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Now, you don't want to enrage them, but I don't think that you're going to go do that.
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You don't want to make them so sad that they're overcome with grief and they can't continue the conversation.
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I'm not worried about you eliciting those kinds of emotional extremes from decision makers.
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I really don't think that's at issue.
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If we rule out those kinds of extremes, any engagement is good engagement.
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Even if it appears, if it sounds like a challenge.
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Are you sure?
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I don't know.
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That doesn't sound right.
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That is just another way of saying, that doesn't fit into what I thought I already knew.
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You're going to have to help me understand that.
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And then that is essentially an invitation for you to tell them a little bit more.
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But at no point in this conversation, because it's a conversation, do you go into presentation mode.
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Do you go into, well, let me tell you the five facts about blahbity blah.
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No.
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If they say, I don't know Ah, that doesn't sound right to me.
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You sure about that?
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Ah, I kind of doubt that.
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Your response wants to be something along the lines of, I know! You'd think that.
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That's a totally reasonable thing to think.
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But here's what we learned.
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And then you add a couple more pieces in that give shape and background to what you've just told them that surprised them.
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Then you see how they take that in.
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And then you take it from there and you keep adding little pieces of your information that you want them to have, so that they comprehend the full thing you need them to comprehend.
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But you feed it to them based on the questions they're asking or the responses they're giving.
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Even if they're challenging you, that is actually a request for more information, for more clarity.
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It's not an argument.
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It's you're leading them somewhere.
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And so the best way to lead in a conversation is to listen really well.
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And then take the cues you're being given to lead them to the next piece that they need to get.
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But be careful here not to slip into old habits as you feed them bits of your information.
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You want to avoid going into presentation mode where you're just presenting facts as facts.
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You always want to give them context.
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You always want to frame them in the context of what they've already asked about or what they're showing confusion or inquisitiveness or skepticism or whatever about.
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You use that as the context for the next thing you feed them.
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And in general with your facts, to the extent that you can isolate one or two key pieces of information that are particularly surprising or alarming or exciting.
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Or something that engages some other emotional response.
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Those are the ones you want to have at the ready.
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Now, there's one kind of exception to all of this.
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Which is a category of fact that elected officials tend to particularly care about, that is on its face just information.
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Which is how many people you serve in their district.
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Because they are all about serving their constituents.
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So they want to know, particularly if you are in a fairly large metropolitan area and you cover multiple city council or state legislative districts in your service area.
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You want to be able to say to each one of those elected officials, how many people you serve in the area that they serve.
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So that you can break it out that way.
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And I know you already know that.
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But even when you do that, you want to give that life.
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You want to be able to talk about what maybe are the biggest and most surprising pieces of information about the people who receive your services in that district.
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What about their experience might this decisionmaker not yet understand or comprehend that would be instrumental in them ultimately saying yes to the thing you care about?
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When you talk about how many people you serve, you want to weave that piece in as well.
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So for a really simple example.
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Let's say it's a state legislator.
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And let's say you work on hunger issues.
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And they're not paying attention to that.
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That's not on their radar.
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They're focused on other things.
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You want something from them, a money or a policy action or a decision from them around something that you work on.
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But first you got to build a relationship and get them on board.
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Well if hunger issues aren't on their radar at all, telling them that you do whatever you do to address hunger issues.
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And you serve 500 people in their district.
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That may or may not mean much to them.
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That on its own may not get their attention or engage them at all.
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But if you led with a question.
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This is the other highly underrated opening is to lead with questions.
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I mean, obviously if you've never met before, introduce yourself.
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But you might walk in and say, I'm Susie Q.
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I'm the CEO of XYZ organization.
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And I'm here to talk to you about something really surprising that we just learned that's going on in ABC district.
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If you had to guess, how prevalent do you think hunger is in this district?
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We recently discovered that two out of every five families in the district.
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Who are receiving SNAP benefits, food stamps.
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Still don't have enough food at the end of the month and can't get dinner on the table for their families.
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Now, of course, we knew that hunger was an issue in the community.
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That's the focus of our work.
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But we did not understand until we just did this new research exactly how prevalent this is, how serious the problem is right here in the district.
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That might get their attention.
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Wait a minute.
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What, two out of every five?
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That can't be right.
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I meet with my constituents all the time.
00:19:18.299 --> 00:19:20.519
They don't come up to me and tell me they can't put food on the table.
00:19:21.349 --> 00:19:22.609
And you're off to the races now.
00:19:23.210 --> 00:19:24.000
They've engaged.
00:19:24.546 --> 00:19:26.165
They've challenged what you said.
00:19:26.613 --> 00:19:30.182
But now in the back of their mind, they're worrying about, well, what if that really is true?
00:19:30.212 --> 00:19:31.113
What does that mean?
00:19:31.952 --> 00:19:35.343
So you've got all kinds of ways to engage them from that point forward.
00:19:36.073 --> 00:19:42.435
And you can say, here's what we know for sure is that we're already serving one out of five families that desperately need the help.
00:19:43.009 --> 00:19:44.329
And we have a waiting list.
00:19:44.836 --> 00:19:51.000
So we already knew that the need was substantially greater than we were able to meet with our current resources.
00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:56.309
So part of our process was to do a needs assessment and to find out exactly how big the need was.
00:19:56.549 --> 00:20:01.650
And we were stunned to discover that it's actually two out of five families.
00:20:02.309 --> 00:20:04.740
So there's two really important pieces of information here.
00:20:05.039 --> 00:20:07.049
One, the need is that great.
00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:16.715
It's kind of shocking to realize that if you walk down an average street in this community, just about every third house is having this problem.
00:20:17.390 --> 00:20:18.829
That's incredible enough.
00:20:19.230 --> 00:20:28.920
But even more alarming is the reality that only half of those families are getting the help they need because the resources just aren't there.
00:20:29.536 --> 00:20:30.556
At least not right now.
00:20:31.563 --> 00:20:40.992
And with an elected official in particular, tying the numbers of people in a way that's meaningful to the total population of their district is very important.
00:20:41.742 --> 00:20:44.502
But the way you do it needs to be thought through.
00:20:44.502 --> 00:20:45.792
It needs to be strategic.
00:20:46.212 --> 00:20:49.272
And don't just say we serve 500 people in your district.
00:20:49.813 --> 00:20:50.502
Well, what does that mean?
00:20:50.502 --> 00:20:51.282
I don't know what that means.
00:20:51.313 --> 00:20:51.913
Is that a lot?
00:20:51.913 --> 00:20:52.573
Is that a little?
00:20:53.353 --> 00:20:55.145
Is that a surprising number?
00:20:55.766 --> 00:20:58.945
Is it surprising that 500 people need the service in this district?
00:20:59.875 --> 00:21:01.910
500 people is totally abstract.
00:21:02.059 --> 00:21:04.490
Means nothing until you give it context.
00:21:05.262 --> 00:21:11.113
So you have to frame it in a way and give it context that is most likely to engage.
00:21:11.569 --> 00:21:13.849
Most likely to inspire curiosity.
00:21:14.210 --> 00:21:14.990
Surprise.
00:21:15.413 --> 00:21:16.192
Skepticism.
00:21:16.880 --> 00:21:22.539
Anything that causes them to effectively say in one way or another, I need more information.
00:21:23.002 --> 00:21:26.180
Whether it's, how can that possibly be true?
00:21:26.779 --> 00:21:27.440
Or.
00:21:27.650 --> 00:21:30.920
You got to explain that better cause that doesn't make any sense to me.
00:21:31.670 --> 00:21:32.779
Or, oh my gosh.
00:21:32.809 --> 00:21:33.589
That's really great.
00:21:33.980 --> 00:21:36.349
Or, oh my gosh, that's really horrifying.
00:21:37.112 --> 00:21:41.071
The context you give your facts is what provokes those kinds of engagement.
00:21:42.005 --> 00:21:54.169
We've covered a lot of ground here, but the most important takeaway from this episode that I really want to pull your attention to, is that engagement needs to happen immediately.
00:21:55.249 --> 00:22:06.353
We no longer have the luxury of a long preamble or leading with a bunch of information we think is telling them stuff they need to know.
00:22:06.653 --> 00:22:12.336
But that is actually delaying or even preventing engagement.
00:22:13.179 --> 00:22:25.939
So making this simple shift to leading with any combination of approaches that will cause immediate engagement is the key to hooking their attention.
00:22:25.989 --> 00:22:29.199
To stop the mental scrolling, because that's really kind of what's going on.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:32.863
They're so primed to tune us out.
00:22:33.462 --> 00:22:38.113
Not because they don't care, but because bandwidth, because focus.
00:22:38.942 --> 00:22:41.613
And so we have to stop the mental scroll.
00:22:42.393 --> 00:22:45.992
And disrupt the filters that are keeping our message out.
00:22:46.653 --> 00:22:48.093
And we have to do it right away.
00:22:48.532 --> 00:22:51.173
We might only have a couple of minutes in some situations.
00:22:51.961 --> 00:22:53.701
It's a simple assignment that we have.
00:22:54.211 --> 00:22:56.221
But it's like a lot of simple things.
00:22:56.641 --> 00:22:57.421
Not so easy.
00:22:58.124 --> 00:22:59.054
It'll take some time.
00:22:59.054 --> 00:23:00.193
It'll take some practice.
00:23:00.493 --> 00:23:06.433
And in my coaching programs, we work a lot on this and work on openings.
00:23:06.794 --> 00:23:11.411
So that folks feel really solid about how they're going in to any given encounter.
00:23:11.871 --> 00:23:18.607
And that they've tested their openings before they go in so that they're pretty sure that it's going to trigger engagement right away.
00:23:19.284 --> 00:23:24.124
And they may even have a couple of backup strategies in case the first one doesn't work.
00:23:24.894 --> 00:23:28.221
All of that is stuff that you can start working on immediately.
00:23:28.833 --> 00:23:37.313
And I hope you do because as soon as you start to implement this, you're going to start seeing better results, more engagement, faster.
00:23:37.823 --> 00:23:38.873
And that's really what we want.
00:23:39.853 --> 00:23:40.782
Thanks for listening.
00:23:41.232 --> 00:23:44.923
And I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
