Nov. 3, 2025
Four Simple Checks to Tell You if Your Message is Built for Maximum Impact
There is nothing more exciting than talking with a money or policy decisionmaker who's all in on the conversation. They're leaning in, they're asking good questions. Their gears are turning as they think about how you can work together. That's awesome when that happens. And then, there are the times where you've got the opposite. They're not engaged. Their body language and their relative silence tell you so. They're listening politely enough, but it feels like they're just waiting for you ...
There is nothing more exciting than talking with a money or policy decisionmaker who's all in on the conversation. They're leaning in, they're asking good questions. Their gears are turning as they think about how you can work together. That's awesome when that happens.
And then, there are the times where you've got the opposite. They're not engaged. Their body language and their relative silence tell you so. They're listening politely enough, but it feels like they're just waiting for you to be done so they can move on.
When that's happening in real time, it is super stressful. You can tell your messaging's not landing. You can feel them slipping further and further away.
But how to tell what's wrong? And what to do to fix it?
Today I'm sharing with you the four engagement must haves – and how to make sure they're built into all of your messaging. So that you can have the engagement you want and need from your most critical decisionmakers.
In this episode, we share:
- Why it’s harder now to engage decisionmakers than it has even been
- How to pull the decisionmaker in in the first one or two minutes of interaction
- Two key ingredients to grabbing and holding a decisionmaker’s attention
- The real purpose of data and information in the engagement process (it’s not what you’ve been taught)
- How to share ROI data in a way that will get the decisionmaker as excited about it as you are
- Why vivid storytelling is such a powerful engagement tool, and how to use it
- What to focus on first to vastly increase the impact of your message
Help spread the word! If you found value in this episode, I’d be grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Your reviews help other nonprofit leaders find the podcast. Thanks!!
WEBVTT
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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share four simple checks to tell you if your message is built for maximum impact.
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So stay tuned.
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If you wanna 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, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.
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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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There is nothing more exciting than talking with a money or policy decision maker who's all in on the conversation.
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They're leaning in, they're asking good questions.
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Their gears are turning as they think about how you can work together.
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That's awesome when that happens like that.
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And then, there's the times where you've got the opposite.
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They're not engaged.
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Their body language tells you so, their relative silence tells you so.
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They're listening politely enough, but it feels like they're just waiting for you to be done so they can move on.
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When that's happening in real time, it is super stressful.
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You can tell your messaging's not landing.
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The decision maker's not leaning in, they're not engaging.
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You can feel them slipping further and further away.
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But how to tell what's wrong?
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And what to do to fix it.
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Today I'm gonna share with you the four engagement must haves.
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And how to make sure they're built into all of your messaging.
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So that you can have the engagement you want and need from your most critical decision makers.
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Here's the ugly truth.
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Okay messaging no longer works.
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Your messaging has to do way more work than it did in even the recent past.
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And I'm pretty sure that you've noticed this, that it's not as easy anymore.
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It's not as easy to grab and hold a decision maker's attention.
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It's harder to get them engaged.
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There's just, there's something different.
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Well, here's what's going on.
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The truth is everybody, including decision makers, have never been more distracted, have never had shorter attention spans.
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It's affecting everybody.
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But that means our messaging has to be engaging from the first few words, all the way through.
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We can't get away anymore with a long preamble in a conversation with a decision maker where it takes us five or 10 minutes to say something that's gonna be truly engaging.
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If it's somebody brand new, you still have to do some introductions and stuff like that, but that's it.
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Once everybody knows who's in the room, you're done with the preliminaries, and you gotta go to something that's gonna grab their attention.
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So I'm gonna give you these four engagement must haves for your messaging and then talk a little bit about how you can weave them into your messaging.
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Number one on the checklist, does it pull them in immediately?
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This is critical.
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You've got maybe the first one or two minutes to grab and hold the decision maker's attention.
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If you miss that window, you can still get'em back, but you're gonna be fighting uphill the whole time.
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And I'm sure you've experienced this.
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So let's not make it hard on ourselves.
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Let's make sure that our opening is designed, it is built for engagement, it's built for grabbing their attention.
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That means, unless you're already doing this, we gotta change the way we do our openings.
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We can't do the background on the organization and the history and how many people we serve, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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The stuff that we've done for a long time.
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And you know, if you've been in this game for more than a minute, you've probably developed kind of a, a spiel that you explain who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help'em, how many people you serve.
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The little package that gives your organization in a nutshell.
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And it's descriptive.
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And you know, in the past that was okay, that worked.
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People were willing to listen through that and maybe even pay enough attention that they actually grasped some of it.
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But we're not in that world anymore.
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You're basically, if you think about this, pretend you're on TikTok or Instagram.
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Your goal here is to stop the scroll.
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And if you're talking about those generic things in descriptive mode, about your organization and the work you do.
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In effect they are scrolling on by you.
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And we can't have that.
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We gotta grab their attention right away and then hold it.
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We gotta have a hook.
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And I'll talk more about what that is and how we do it.
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That's checklist item number one.
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If that is not currently in your standard opening.
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That is the number one thing to change.
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Checklist item number two, does your messaging spark emotion?
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And let me be super clear that that doesn't mean just the usual client story, that's designed to evoke empathy and understanding.
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That's cool.
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There is a place for that.
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But I'm sure you already know and have experienced that there is a non-zero percentage of decision makers out there who don't actually feel all that much empathy and understanding for the people you serve.
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And they're not going to.
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That is not their philosophical bent.
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But we still have to grab and hold their attention and we still have to engage their emotions.
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So we gotta find other emotions beyond empathy and understanding.
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The good news is that two of your best friends here are curiosity and surprise.
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And those work on anybody.
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But let me tell you why this is so important.
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Even though we all, all us humans, like to pretend that this isn't so, the truth is the way our brains work, about 80% of our decision making process is in the emotional center of the brain, and only about 20% is over in the logic center.
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So if we ignore the emotional center of a decision maker, we are leaving 80% of our potential influence and engagement with them on the table.
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And we sure can't afford that.
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So we must build in messaging that engages emotions.
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Checklist item number three.
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Does your messaging paint a vivid picture of the way things are now, and how they will be after the decision maker does whatever it is you want them to do.
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What's the now and what's the transformation that you're seeking their involvement in?
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What's important about this is the vivid picture.
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Whether you wanna think of it as a painting that is deep and rich and full of color and depth and vivid imagery.
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Or whether you want to think of it as an IMAX movie with total surround sound, a complete immersion in a 3D experience.
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Whatever metaphor works for you.
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That's what you're looking to create with your messaging with the decision maker.
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They need to be in it.
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They need to be in the experience of whatever you're talking about.
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We do that by storytelling primarily.
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But not just telling a story with the facts, the just the facts version.
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You know, we've been taught that you're supposed to provide solid data and information so that decision makers can make their rational decisions and be persuaded.
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We know that facts and data don't persuade anybody of anything.
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What they do is they provide a rational basis for the emotion-based decision that they're gonna make based on other things.
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So it's important to have that.
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You must have your facts and your data and all of that.
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But you will totally miss out on the ability to engage and therefore to influence if you present them as information.
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That does not engage.
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What engages is imagery.
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Vivid imagery that pulls them in and puts them in the experience.
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So you use words that evoke emotion, that engage the senses, that pull them into a sensory experience with your words.
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When you can do that, when you can engage in storytelling that does that, that's very compelling.
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And it lights up parts of human brains that nothing else does.
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It also releases some very helpful brain chemicals.
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We are wired from the days of the cave to be moved and engaged by storytelling.
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But you gotta tell it like you'd tell a story.
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You can't recite the story as if you were reading from a report.
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That's a skill that we have to develop.
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We've gotta have the words, but we also have to have the storytelling ability and the ability to use our voice to engage.
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And then the fourth thing on the checklist is, does your messaging connect the thing that you want or wanna make happen with something the decision maker wants or cares about or wants to make happen?
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I know you already know this basic concept.
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But we wanna make sure that number one, we are finding as many points of alignment, as many aspects of alignment as we can.
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And that means learning as much as possible about all the things that the decision maker cares about and how they think about things.
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Part of that's research, but part of that is just developing relationship over time and learning about them the same way you would if you were dating somebody.
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Right.
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I always hesitate to use that analogy because it can go sideways really fast.
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But generally speaking, this is a lot like dating in a lot of ways.
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You wanna be learning about them as you build the relationship.
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The more you learn, the more you can find those aspects and points of alignment to help them see the mutual benefit of whatever you're talking about.
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Obviously, there's some broad things that are gonna work for you.
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If they are already philosophically aligned with the problem you solve and the work that you do, then finding points of alignment and the specific thing you're asking for is gonna be much easier.
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If there's somebody who is very focused on the dollars, on the budget, on making sure that the return on investment is sound and makes sense, and isn't gonna just cost more money.
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Then that's where you go with all of your ROI data.
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But here's the thing.
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You don't just recite it, you get them to engage with it.
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Because you could tell somebody your brilliant ROI figures, and it might bounce right off'em because you haven't grabbed and held their attention.
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They gotta be fully engaged when you share that ROI or whatever else you're sharing.
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One of the most powerful ways to do that, from your opening all through your messaging, is with questions.
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And we'll talk about how you can apply that in different settings.
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If you can put together these four essential elements of engagement in your messaging, and make sure that it's in every piece of messaging aimed at decision makers.
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Whether it's actual conversations you're having with them, or whether it's written communication.
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You want to use these same techniques as much as possible.
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Now, I will tell you that it is vastly easier to engage another human being through conversation, even if it's on Zoom or whatever, than it is to do it via the written word.
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You can still do it, but obviously all the things I just talked about, it's harder to do that in writing than it is to do it with your voice and in person.
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So whenever possible, you wanna be doing this in person.
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So the first thing you want to do is take a look at all of your existing messaging, and particularly the way you approach your conversations.
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If you have kind of a standard spiel that you've been using for a while, give that a really hard look and especially look at your opening.
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What you're aiming for is an initial hook that will pull them in right away.
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And if you can manage to engage emotion in that same process, you've got a double bonus.
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The easiest way, and one of my favorite ways to do this is to use curiosity and surprise in your opening.
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And this is gonna depend on how well you already know the decision maker.
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Obviously, if you have a longstanding relationship with them and you're buddies at this point, then all these aspects are less critical.
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The opening is less critical because if they see you as their friend, they're happy to see you and they want to talk and they will engage.
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But even then, it's always helpful to make sure that you're doing the other pieces of engaging the senses and emotion and doing good storytelling and all of that to keep it as exciting and engaging for them as possible.
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Because the more you make the experience of engaging with you a positive thing that they look forward to, that means you get more meetings.
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That means you get more opportunities to talk with them.
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And that really matters.
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It also helps you deepen the relationship, so that's a virtuous cycle.
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But let's say this is a decision maker that you don't know well, or maybe you're meeting them for the first time.
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Now obviously if you're meeting them for the first time, you do have to take care of the preliminary introductions.
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They do need to know who's in the room.
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That's important.
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But as soon as that's done, you go straight to some kind of engagement inducing hook.
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What it should do is basically create a reason for them to think.
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So no matter how well you know them or not, you can always open with a question.
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So let's say you're not sure how well they understand the problem you solve, or perhaps you're not sure how well they understand or are aware of the level of impact that your work makes, that your services have.
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So let's just even have those two categories.
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If you're not sure where they are on that, you can ask a couple of questions.
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You could say something like, so before we get started, did you see the amazing news that came out a couple of days ago about X, Y, Z aspect of this problem, where they talked about the number of people in this community who experienced this problem.
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What did you think about that?
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And then let them talk.
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Or you could say, we help people who have X problem get X transformation.
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One sentence.
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And then say, how many people would you guess experience this problem in our city, county, state, whatever.
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And then they give an answer, and maybe it's pretty close to accurate or maybe it's wildly off.
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If it's close to accurate, you can then ask'em another question.
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If it's wildly off, you can say, well, would it surprise you to learn that the number is actually closer to, and then you give the number.
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Typically they will underestimate the amount of people with the problem.
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So you can say, would it surprise you to know that it's actually three times that number.
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You could ask, what would you guess is the average cost to the system, to the community, to whatever context you're talking about.
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For each person who has this problem, say, if they're in that problem for six months or a year.
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What do you imagine the cost is for that?
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And then they can say whatever they have to say.
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Maybe they have no idea.
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They might say that.
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Usually they'll try to guess and give a number.
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Usually it'll be wrong.
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And you can say, well, would you be surprised to learn that it's closer to this much money?
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And you can combine those two and then say, so let's think about this for a second.
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If we've got, I'm totally making up these numbers here.
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If we've got a thousand people with each of them with a$5,000 problem.
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Well, real fast by back of the envelope math, that's a$5 million problem right there.
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That is costing this community, this company, the state budget, whatever context you're in, it's costing this entity$5 million a year to have this problem go unsolved.
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But I have good news.
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The work that we do, the impact that we make, we reduce that cost by X number, X percent.
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We cut that cost by 80%.
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Every person we can help, we can cut that back by at least 80%.
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So right there, that's going from a$5 million problem and taking 4 million off the top.
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Now it's only a$1 million problem.
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That's what we do.
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But here's the kicker.
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What do you think it costs us to do that?
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And then you say, we can achieve that result with an investment of 2 million.
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So if you can invest 2 million and get rid of 4 million in costs, that's a heck of a return.
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Does that sound like an investment worth making to you?
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I'm making up these numbers, but you get the idea.
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You engage them, you make them think.
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And if they're all about ROI, that's a really good conversation to have to set it up that way.
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Instead of just telling them your ROI percentages or dollar figures or whatever.
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Whenever we can pull them through a thought process with questions and some story and some imagery, versus telling them information.
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The more we are able to keep them engaged.
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Humans simply don't engage with passively received information.
00:18:04.769 --> 00:18:06.089
We don't do that very well.
00:18:06.807 --> 00:18:09.538
We are built to engage with story.
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We are wired for it.
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From days of the cave and before that is just how we're wired.
00:18:16.067 --> 00:18:18.198
It lights up all the parts of our brain.
00:18:18.468 --> 00:18:25.996
It releases all sorts of wonderful brain chemicals that make us happy It's very powerful as an engagement tool.
00:18:27.009 --> 00:18:31.662
if we can pull them in, spark curiosity initially, or surprise.
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And then weave story and imagery that evokes senses and additional emotions and gets them in the middle of it.
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And then share with them how things are aligned.
00:18:45.551 --> 00:18:48.148
That is some powerful engagement right there.
00:18:48.628 --> 00:18:51.778
That has them engaged from beginning to end.
00:18:52.278 --> 00:19:00.743
When you do that, the chances of them wanting to work with you, wanting to find a way to get to yes with you, goes way up.
00:19:01.676 --> 00:19:05.727
This is probably gonna be a little bit uncomfortable, especially the opening.
00:19:06.298 --> 00:19:09.627
So that's the part that I'm gonna encourage you to focus on the most.
00:19:10.077 --> 00:19:15.747
That's the part that's gonna feel the weirdest and the least normal to change that up.
00:19:16.115 --> 00:19:18.999
But it is the absolute most important ingredient.
00:19:19.673 --> 00:19:25.568
Because if we don't hook'em in the first few minutes, we might not have their engagement at all for the rest of the conversation.
00:19:26.229 --> 00:19:29.449
Or if we do, it's gonna be a lot more work to accomplish that.
00:19:30.276 --> 00:19:32.455
So focus on the intro.
00:19:32.980 --> 00:19:33.851
Think of a hook.
00:19:34.101 --> 00:19:36.050
Think of several hooks actually.
00:19:36.050 --> 00:19:39.141
Because you may use different hooks with different decision makers.
00:19:39.641 --> 00:19:42.310
Think of how you can frame them in the form of a question.
00:19:42.810 --> 00:19:46.530
Think of a couple of follow-up questions that you can ask based on whatever they tell you.
00:19:46.830 --> 00:19:48.300
So you get in the habit of this.
00:19:49.020 --> 00:19:53.371
Once you get in practice with it, you won't have to plan so much in advance.
00:19:53.730 --> 00:20:00.961
But you always wanna know going into a conversation what the one or two hooks are that you're gonna use to pull them in and grab their attention.
00:20:01.861 --> 00:20:04.471
It can be something from the news of the day.
00:20:04.471 --> 00:20:07.711
It could be something that you just learned yourself, that's surprising.
00:20:07.921 --> 00:20:12.451
Or it could be something that you've known for a long time, but they probably don't know and might be surprised by.
00:20:13.028 --> 00:20:18.470
It could be an aspect of the problem you solve, that if you ask about that, their curiosity will be sparked.
00:20:19.175 --> 00:20:22.661
All kinds of ways to do this, but this is the part to work on the most.
00:20:23.575 --> 00:20:27.829
With practice, this gets much, much easier, but it is essential.
00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:30.250
So one more time.
00:20:30.549 --> 00:20:33.143
Your four checklist items for your messaging.
00:20:33.742 --> 00:20:35.512
Does it pull them in immediately?
00:20:36.143 --> 00:20:37.522
Does it spark emotion?
00:20:38.272 --> 00:20:44.272
Does it paint a vivid picture of the way things are now and how they will be after the decision maker does the thing that you want?
00:20:45.202 --> 00:20:50.002
And does it connect the thing that you want with something the decision maker wants or cares about?
00:20:50.603 --> 00:20:56.758
When you build messaging that checks all four of those boxes and weaves them together.
00:20:57.307 --> 00:21:00.907
That's when you have messaging that truly engages.
00:21:01.117 --> 00:21:06.337
And that's when you get decision makers leaning in and really wanting to work with you.
00:21:07.020 --> 00:21:07.891
Give it a try.
00:21:08.191 --> 00:21:09.060
I know it'll help.
00:21:09.631 --> 00:21:14.130
Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
00:00:00.050 --> 00:00:02.569
You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we share four simple checks to tell you if your message is built for maximum impact.
00:00:09.779 --> 00:00:10.199
So stay tuned.
00:00:17.015 --> 00:00:25.925
If you wanna 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.
00:00:26.524 --> 00:00:39.545
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, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.
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Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
00:00:58.744 --> 00:01:01.774
Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
00:01:07.344 --> 00:01:08.064
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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There is nothing more exciting than talking with a money or policy decision maker who's all in on the conversation.
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They're leaning in, they're asking good questions.
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Their gears are turning as they think about how you can work together.
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That's awesome when that happens like that.
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And then, there's the times where you've got the opposite.
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They're not engaged.
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Their body language tells you so, their relative silence tells you so.
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They're listening politely enough, but it feels like they're just waiting for you to be done so they can move on.
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When that's happening in real time, it is super stressful.
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You can tell your messaging's not landing.
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The decision maker's not leaning in, they're not engaging.
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You can feel them slipping further and further away.
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But how to tell what's wrong?
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And what to do to fix it.
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Today I'm gonna share with you the four engagement must haves.
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And how to make sure they're built into all of your messaging.
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So that you can have the engagement you want and need from your most critical decision makers.
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Here's the ugly truth.
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Okay messaging no longer works.
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Your messaging has to do way more work than it did in even the recent past.
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And I'm pretty sure that you've noticed this, that it's not as easy anymore.
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It's not as easy to grab and hold a decision maker's attention.
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It's harder to get them engaged.
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There's just, there's something different.
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Well, here's what's going on.
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The truth is everybody, including decision makers, have never been more distracted, have never had shorter attention spans.
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It's affecting everybody.
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But that means our messaging has to be engaging from the first few words, all the way through.
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We can't get away anymore with a long preamble in a conversation with a decision maker where it takes us five or 10 minutes to say something that's gonna be truly engaging.
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If it's somebody brand new, you still have to do some introductions and stuff like that, but that's it.
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Once everybody knows who's in the room, you're done with the preliminaries, and you gotta go to something that's gonna grab their attention.
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So I'm gonna give you these four engagement must haves for your messaging and then talk a little bit about how you can weave them into your messaging.
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Number one on the checklist, does it pull them in immediately?
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This is critical.
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You've got maybe the first one or two minutes to grab and hold the decision maker's attention.
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If you miss that window, you can still get'em back, but you're gonna be fighting uphill the whole time.
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And I'm sure you've experienced this.
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So let's not make it hard on ourselves.
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Let's make sure that our opening is designed, it is built for engagement, it's built for grabbing their attention.
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That means, unless you're already doing this, we gotta change the way we do our openings.
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We can't do the background on the organization and the history and how many people we serve, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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The stuff that we've done for a long time.
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And you know, if you've been in this game for more than a minute, you've probably developed kind of a, a spiel that you explain who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help'em, how many people you serve.
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The little package that gives your organization in a nutshell.
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And it's descriptive.
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And you know, in the past that was okay, that worked.
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People were willing to listen through that and maybe even pay enough attention that they actually grasped some of it.
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But we're not in that world anymore.
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You're basically, if you think about this, pretend you're on TikTok or Instagram.
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Your goal here is to stop the scroll.
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And if you're talking about those generic things in descriptive mode, about your organization and the work you do.
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In effect they are scrolling on by you.
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And we can't have that.
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We gotta grab their attention right away and then hold it.
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We gotta have a hook.
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And I'll talk more about what that is and how we do it.
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That's checklist item number one.
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If that is not currently in your standard opening.
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That is the number one thing to change.
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Checklist item number two, does your messaging spark emotion?
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And let me be super clear that that doesn't mean just the usual client story, that's designed to evoke empathy and understanding.
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That's cool.
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There is a place for that.
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But I'm sure you already know and have experienced that there is a non-zero percentage of decision makers out there who don't actually feel all that much empathy and understanding for the people you serve.
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And they're not going to.
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That is not their philosophical bent.
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But we still have to grab and hold their attention and we still have to engage their emotions.
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So we gotta find other emotions beyond empathy and understanding.
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The good news is that two of your best friends here are curiosity and surprise.
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And those work on anybody.
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But let me tell you why this is so important.
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Even though we all, all us humans, like to pretend that this isn't so, the truth is the way our brains work, about 80% of our decision making process is in the emotional center of the brain, and only about 20% is over in the logic center.
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So if we ignore the emotional center of a decision maker, we are leaving 80% of our potential influence and engagement with them on the table.
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And we sure can't afford that.
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So we must build in messaging that engages emotions.
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Checklist item number three.
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Does your messaging paint a vivid picture of the way things are now, and how they will be after the decision maker does whatever it is you want them to do.
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What's the now and what's the transformation that you're seeking their involvement in?
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What's important about this is the vivid picture.
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Whether you wanna think of it as a painting that is deep and rich and full of color and depth and vivid imagery.
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Or whether you want to think of it as an IMAX movie with total surround sound, a complete immersion in a 3D experience.
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Whatever metaphor works for you.
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That's what you're looking to create with your messaging with the decision maker.
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They need to be in it.
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They need to be in the experience of whatever you're talking about.
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We do that by storytelling primarily.
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But not just telling a story with the facts, the just the facts version.
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You know, we've been taught that you're supposed to provide solid data and information so that decision makers can make their rational decisions and be persuaded.
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We know that facts and data don't persuade anybody of anything.
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What they do is they provide a rational basis for the emotion-based decision that they're gonna make based on other things.
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So it's important to have that.
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You must have your facts and your data and all of that.
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But you will totally miss out on the ability to engage and therefore to influence if you present them as information.
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That does not engage.
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What engages is imagery.
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Vivid imagery that pulls them in and puts them in the experience.
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So you use words that evoke emotion, that engage the senses, that pull them into a sensory experience with your words.
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When you can do that, when you can engage in storytelling that does that, that's very compelling.
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And it lights up parts of human brains that nothing else does.
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It also releases some very helpful brain chemicals.
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We are wired from the days of the cave to be moved and engaged by storytelling.
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But you gotta tell it like you'd tell a story.
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You can't recite the story as if you were reading from a report.
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That's a skill that we have to develop.
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We've gotta have the words, but we also have to have the storytelling ability and the ability to use our voice to engage.
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And then the fourth thing on the checklist is, does your messaging connect the thing that you want or wanna make happen with something the decision maker wants or cares about or wants to make happen?
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I know you already know this basic concept.
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But we wanna make sure that number one, we are finding as many points of alignment, as many aspects of alignment as we can.
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And that means learning as much as possible about all the things that the decision maker cares about and how they think about things.
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Part of that's research, but part of that is just developing relationship over time and learning about them the same way you would if you were dating somebody.
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Right.
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I always hesitate to use that analogy because it can go sideways really fast.
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But generally speaking, this is a lot like dating in a lot of ways.
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You wanna be learning about them as you build the relationship.
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The more you learn, the more you can find those aspects and points of alignment to help them see the mutual benefit of whatever you're talking about.
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Obviously, there's some broad things that are gonna work for you.
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If they are already philosophically aligned with the problem you solve and the work that you do, then finding points of alignment and the specific thing you're asking for is gonna be much easier.
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If there's somebody who is very focused on the dollars, on the budget, on making sure that the return on investment is sound and makes sense, and isn't gonna just cost more money.
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Then that's where you go with all of your ROI data.
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But here's the thing.
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You don't just recite it, you get them to engage with it.
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Because you could tell somebody your brilliant ROI figures, and it might bounce right off'em because you haven't grabbed and held their attention.
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They gotta be fully engaged when you share that ROI or whatever else you're sharing.
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One of the most powerful ways to do that, from your opening all through your messaging, is with questions.
00:11:22.799 --> 00:11:25.440
And we'll talk about how you can apply that in different settings.
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If you can put together these four essential elements of engagement in your messaging, and make sure that it's in every piece of messaging aimed at decision makers.
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Whether it's actual conversations you're having with them, or whether it's written communication.
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You want to use these same techniques as much as possible.
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Now, I will tell you that it is vastly easier to engage another human being through conversation, even if it's on Zoom or whatever, than it is to do it via the written word.
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You can still do it, but obviously all the things I just talked about, it's harder to do that in writing than it is to do it with your voice and in person.
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So whenever possible, you wanna be doing this in person.
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So the first thing you want to do is take a look at all of your existing messaging, and particularly the way you approach your conversations.
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If you have kind of a standard spiel that you've been using for a while, give that a really hard look and especially look at your opening.
00:12:28.317 --> 00:12:33.538
What you're aiming for is an initial hook that will pull them in right away.
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And if you can manage to engage emotion in that same process, you've got a double bonus.
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The easiest way, and one of my favorite ways to do this is to use curiosity and surprise in your opening.
00:12:51.413 --> 00:12:55.014
And this is gonna depend on how well you already know the decision maker.
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Obviously, if you have a longstanding relationship with them and you're buddies at this point, then all these aspects are less critical.
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The opening is less critical because if they see you as their friend, they're happy to see you and they want to talk and they will engage.
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But even then, it's always helpful to make sure that you're doing the other pieces of engaging the senses and emotion and doing good storytelling and all of that to keep it as exciting and engaging for them as possible.
00:13:26.378 --> 00:13:34.679
Because the more you make the experience of engaging with you a positive thing that they look forward to, that means you get more meetings.
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That means you get more opportunities to talk with them.
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And that really matters.
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It also helps you deepen the relationship, so that's a virtuous cycle.
00:13:43.344 --> 00:13:49.014
But let's say this is a decision maker that you don't know well, or maybe you're meeting them for the first time.
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Now obviously if you're meeting them for the first time, you do have to take care of the preliminary introductions.
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They do need to know who's in the room.
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That's important.
00:13:57.484 --> 00:14:04.864
But as soon as that's done, you go straight to some kind of engagement inducing hook.
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What it should do is basically create a reason for them to think.
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So no matter how well you know them or not, you can always open with a question.
00:14:16.572 --> 00:14:29.052
So let's say you're not sure how well they understand the problem you solve, or perhaps you're not sure how well they understand or are aware of the level of impact that your work makes, that your services have.
00:14:29.783 --> 00:14:32.182
So let's just even have those two categories.
00:14:32.452 --> 00:14:36.173
If you're not sure where they are on that, you can ask a couple of questions.
00:14:36.962 --> 00:14:51.629
You could say something like, so before we get started, did you see the amazing news that came out a couple of days ago about X, Y, Z aspect of this problem, where they talked about the number of people in this community who experienced this problem.
00:14:52.110 --> 00:14:53.399
What did you think about that?
00:14:53.899 --> 00:14:55.429
And then let them talk.
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Or you could say, we help people who have X problem get X transformation.
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One sentence.
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And then say, how many people would you guess experience this problem in our city, county, state, whatever.
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And then they give an answer, and maybe it's pretty close to accurate or maybe it's wildly off.
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If it's close to accurate, you can then ask'em another question.
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If it's wildly off, you can say, well, would it surprise you to learn that the number is actually closer to, and then you give the number.
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Typically they will underestimate the amount of people with the problem.
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So you can say, would it surprise you to know that it's actually three times that number.
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You could ask, what would you guess is the average cost to the system, to the community, to whatever context you're talking about.
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For each person who has this problem, say, if they're in that problem for six months or a year.
00:15:53.772 --> 00:15:56.322
What do you imagine the cost is for that?
00:15:56.822 --> 00:15:59.072
And then they can say whatever they have to say.
00:15:59.072 --> 00:16:00.121
Maybe they have no idea.
00:16:00.302 --> 00:16:01.142
They might say that.
00:16:01.672 --> 00:16:03.501
Usually they'll try to guess and give a number.
00:16:04.001 --> 00:16:05.172
Usually it'll be wrong.
00:16:05.922 --> 00:16:10.581
And you can say, well, would you be surprised to learn that it's closer to this much money?
00:16:11.081 --> 00:16:15.131
And you can combine those two and then say, so let's think about this for a second.
00:16:15.731 --> 00:16:18.716
If we've got, I'm totally making up these numbers here.
00:16:19.167 --> 00:16:24.886
If we've got a thousand people with each of them with a$5,000 problem.
00:16:25.495 --> 00:16:31.610
Well, real fast by back of the envelope math, that's a$5 million problem right there.
00:16:32.121 --> 00:16:43.299
That is costing this community, this company, the state budget, whatever context you're in, it's costing this entity$5 million a year to have this problem go unsolved.
00:16:43.799 --> 00:16:45.432
But I have good news.
00:16:45.493 --> 00:16:52.732
The work that we do, the impact that we make, we reduce that cost by X number, X percent.
00:16:52.763 --> 00:16:54.442
We cut that cost by 80%.
00:16:54.692 --> 00:16:58.143
Every person we can help, we can cut that back by at least 80%.
00:16:58.974 --> 00:17:04.998
So right there, that's going from a$5 million problem and taking 4 million off the top.
00:17:05.028 --> 00:17:06.768
Now it's only a$1 million problem.
00:17:07.018 --> 00:17:07.978
That's what we do.
00:17:08.478 --> 00:17:09.347
But here's the kicker.
00:17:09.347 --> 00:17:12.096
What do you think it costs us to do that?
00:17:12.824 --> 00:17:17.134
And then you say, we can achieve that result with an investment of 2 million.
00:17:17.634 --> 00:17:24.429
So if you can invest 2 million and get rid of 4 million in costs, that's a heck of a return.
00:17:24.729 --> 00:17:27.308
Does that sound like an investment worth making to you?
00:17:28.199 --> 00:17:30.509
I'm making up these numbers, but you get the idea.
00:17:31.318 --> 00:17:33.419
You engage them, you make them think.
00:17:33.775 --> 00:17:38.394
And if they're all about ROI, that's a really good conversation to have to set it up that way.
00:17:38.634 --> 00:17:43.285
Instead of just telling them your ROI percentages or dollar figures or whatever.
00:17:43.974 --> 00:17:55.798
Whenever we can pull them through a thought process with questions and some story and some imagery, versus telling them information.
00:17:56.185 --> 00:17:59.009
The more we are able to keep them engaged.
00:17:59.880 --> 00:18:04.619
Humans simply don't engage with passively received information.
00:18:04.769 --> 00:18:06.089
We don't do that very well.
00:18:06.807 --> 00:18:09.538
We are built to engage with story.
00:18:10.038 --> 00:18:11.298
We are wired for it.
00:18:11.807 --> 00:18:16.067
From days of the cave and before that is just how we're wired.
00:18:16.067 --> 00:18:18.198
It lights up all the parts of our brain.
00:18:18.468 --> 00:18:25.996
It releases all sorts of wonderful brain chemicals that make us happy It's very powerful as an engagement tool.
00:18:27.009 --> 00:18:31.662
if we can pull them in, spark curiosity initially, or surprise.
00:18:32.348 --> 00:18:41.152
And then weave story and imagery that evokes senses and additional emotions and gets them in the middle of it.
00:18:41.701 --> 00:18:45.051
And then share with them how things are aligned.
00:18:45.551 --> 00:18:48.148
That is some powerful engagement right there.
00:18:48.628 --> 00:18:51.778
That has them engaged from beginning to end.
00:18:52.278 --> 00:19:00.743
When you do that, the chances of them wanting to work with you, wanting to find a way to get to yes with you, goes way up.
00:19:01.676 --> 00:19:05.727
This is probably gonna be a little bit uncomfortable, especially the opening.
00:19:06.298 --> 00:19:09.627
So that's the part that I'm gonna encourage you to focus on the most.
00:19:10.077 --> 00:19:15.747
That's the part that's gonna feel the weirdest and the least normal to change that up.
00:19:16.115 --> 00:19:18.999
But it is the absolute most important ingredient.
00:19:19.673 --> 00:19:25.568
Because if we don't hook'em in the first few minutes, we might not have their engagement at all for the rest of the conversation.
00:19:26.229 --> 00:19:29.449
Or if we do, it's gonna be a lot more work to accomplish that.
00:19:30.276 --> 00:19:32.455
So focus on the intro.
00:19:32.980 --> 00:19:33.851
Think of a hook.
00:19:34.101 --> 00:19:36.050
Think of several hooks actually.
00:19:36.050 --> 00:19:39.141
Because you may use different hooks with different decision makers.
00:19:39.641 --> 00:19:42.310
Think of how you can frame them in the form of a question.
00:19:42.810 --> 00:19:46.530
Think of a couple of follow-up questions that you can ask based on whatever they tell you.
00:19:46.830 --> 00:19:48.300
So you get in the habit of this.
00:19:49.020 --> 00:19:53.371
Once you get in practice with it, you won't have to plan so much in advance.
00:19:53.730 --> 00:20:00.961
But you always wanna know going into a conversation what the one or two hooks are that you're gonna use to pull them in and grab their attention.
00:20:01.861 --> 00:20:04.471
It can be something from the news of the day.
00:20:04.471 --> 00:20:07.711
It could be something that you just learned yourself, that's surprising.
00:20:07.921 --> 00:20:12.451
Or it could be something that you've known for a long time, but they probably don't know and might be surprised by.
00:20:13.028 --> 00:20:18.470
It could be an aspect of the problem you solve, that if you ask about that, their curiosity will be sparked.
00:20:19.175 --> 00:20:22.661
All kinds of ways to do this, but this is the part to work on the most.
00:20:23.575 --> 00:20:27.829
With practice, this gets much, much easier, but it is essential.
00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:30.250
So one more time.
00:20:30.549 --> 00:20:33.143
Your four checklist items for your messaging.
00:20:33.742 --> 00:20:35.512
Does it pull them in immediately?
00:20:36.143 --> 00:20:37.522
Does it spark emotion?
00:20:38.272 --> 00:20:44.272
Does it paint a vivid picture of the way things are now and how they will be after the decision maker does the thing that you want?
00:20:45.202 --> 00:20:50.002
And does it connect the thing that you want with something the decision maker wants or cares about?
00:20:50.603 --> 00:20:56.758
When you build messaging that checks all four of those boxes and weaves them together.
00:20:57.307 --> 00:21:00.907
That's when you have messaging that truly engages.
00:21:01.117 --> 00:21:06.337
And that's when you get decision makers leaning in and really wanting to work with you.
00:21:07.020 --> 00:21:07.891
Give it a try.
00:21:08.191 --> 00:21:09.060
I know it'll help.
00:21:09.631 --> 00:21:14.130
Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
