The 3 Biggest Messaging and Engagement Mistakes that Could be Costing You Influence and Results

0:00 You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share the three biggest mistakes in messaging and engagement that could be costing you influence and results. So stay tuned. 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. 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.

0:42 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. Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because I see three major mistakes that get made all the time among Nonprofit leaders when they're engaging decision makers that will invariably cost you influence and results, especially funding results Now more than ever, especially in this environment, you need your existing funders and potential funders both to be investing in your work at the highest level.

1:41 But lately when you go to talk to elected officials or government agency people or foundations, a lot of the times you hear things like, well, there's not really any money right now. We can't afford it. It's not the right time, blah, blah, blah. And you start to feel like all the stuff you came to tell them that explains why they need to invest is falling on deaf ears. They listen politely enough, but you can feel the resistance. And every time you have one of these conversations, your frustration goes up another notch and your worry level goes up another notch too. 'Cause if we can't break through with these people, if we can't get them to get it, where's the money gonna come from?

2:26 And then what? It's tempting to write off those decision makers or get mad at them. But if we really want their investment, we have to find a way in. If they're not getting the most essential pieces of what you do and the problem you solve, and the value that solution has, the impact that it makes, and the level of investment that is necessary in order to buy that impact. If they're not getting all of that. And feeling motivated to find a way to make that investment. Then somewhere your messaging and engagement are not doing as good a job for you as they could. Chances are you may be making one or more of three very common and costly mistakes.

3:14 What I see a lot of the time is that these mistakes tend to happen as a combination of messaging and engagement. And when that's going on, the signs of the mistakes can be subtle at first, but they tend to build on one another during the conversation. And somewhere along the way you realize they're not as engaged as you want them to be, and your best information isn't landing. They're not getting it. And that's our number one test for, is the messaging and engagement working well? It's, are they getting it or aren't they? One of the biggest mistakes that will cost you the most, is really insidious because it doesn't feel like that should be so.

3:57 This mistake could be described in a number of ways. You could call it business as usual. You could call it doing things the way you've always done them. You could call it doing things the way everybody else is doing them. Any or all of those things can apply. It doesn't really matter which one it is, but it's the business as usual problem that can really cost you. The essential mistake is opening with information rather than engagement. How many times have you walked into a meeting with a decision maker and just kind of launched into your normal introductory spiel? Right? Introduce yourself. If you've brought anyone with you, you introduce them. And then you go into kind of the background paragraph or two about what you do, who you help, how many people you serve and so on.

4:43 And that's really comfortable and familiar'cause you've done it a million times. It feels like a good idea because it's helping you relax. It's helping you get into the meeting and kind of get your rhythm going, get in the flow of talking to this particular decision maker. Especially if there's anything about this conversation that's feeling maybe a little stressful going in. It's very natural to wanna focus on some very comfortable and familiar messaging that you've said a million times so you don't have to think too hard about it, and that you can kind of use that opportunity to breathe and relax into the flow of the conversation.

5:23 So that seems like a totally reasonable thing to do. Here's the problem. There's nothing about that that's engaging. How many times have you sat through somebody else's introduction that kind of goes on for a paragraph or two. Hopefully you're focused on trying to remember their name and the organization they're from. But after that, you know, unless it's super interesting, your mind's probably wandering. You're maybe thinking about the next thing you need to say, or wondering where this is going or whatever. But you're not engaged. At the very best, you are politely, but passively listening. Is that really what you want from a decision maker is polite, passive, listening? We want them engaged from the very beginning.

6:06 So if we want that, we can't do business as usual. And you know, we think that it doesn't matter if we start out with the boring basics,'cause like everybody understands that's how it goes. And you have to get through that part before you get to the interesting stuff. I invite you to rethink that. Because think about, what's gonna engage you? If somebody's yammering at you about what their organization does and who they help and blah, blah, blah. And especially if they're doing it in a way that you can tell, they've said this a kabillion times before. How closely are you listening to that quite honestly? I can promise you that decision makers tend not to listen super closely to that. Polite listening, yes. But are they really engaging?

6:46 No. And the problem is that, it actually does matter if we start out with those boring basics, because boring basics create distance. They create disengagement. You've seen this. Decision makers are already somewhat predisposed to be disengaged. So we have to change that. Now, you may not be able to escape introductions. If you've not met with this person before, or if some in your group have not met with them before. They do need to know who's in the room, so you have to go ahead and do that. But even with that simple thing. Which I know it's so tempting to just be rote with that and just be like, yep, i'm Suzy Q. I'm the CEO of X, Y, Z organization, and we do this, that, and the other.

7:32 Instead of doing it the way you've always done it and the way everybody else is doing it. Try doing it in a way that helps you stand out, that helps you grab the decision maker's attention from the very first words outta your mouth. So instead of saying, I'm Suzy Q, I'm the CEO of X, Y, Z organization, and we do blah, blah, blah, you could say, i'm Suzy Q and I'm lucky enough to be the CEO of the one organization in this community that transforms, fill in the blank, whatever the impact is you make on the people you serve. And don't be afraid to make your organization distinct in that process.

8:14 The name of your organization doesn't necessarily mean anything to them. Unless they know you really well already, in which case you're not having an introductory conversation. But if they don't know that. Or even if they think they do, even if they think they know what you do, and this happens a lot by the way. Oh yeah, I know. X, Y, Z organization. They work on. And then they'll say something and it's like kind of tangentially related to what you do. But it is so far from understanding the depth of the problems you solve and the depth of the impact you make, that it's kind of horrifying. So even when they think they know your organization, they probably don't unless they've actually worked with you.

8:56 So yeah, you need to say the name of the organization, but you don't need to say it first. Lead with the impact and say, I'm lucky enough to be the CEO of an organization that is unique in this community, in the way that we make a powerful impact on whoever you serve. And we transform their lives in X, Y, Z ways. And you get that in there right at the beginning. Now you're sparking curiosity. Now you're sparking, oh wait, hey, maybe I should pay attention to this. If they're making a big impact in the community and they're unique in some way, I might wanna know about that. What we have to realize is that each time you open your mouth, it's a tiny opportunity to build engagement, to build interest, to build curiosity.

9:43 It's also, each time you open your mouth, an opportunity to have them push away a little bit, to have them disengage just a little bit more. So, of course, the choice we wanna make is, each time we open our mouth, we wanna make sure we're doing the engaging thing. And that we're using the messaging elements that are going to help cause that engagement. Another mistake that I see happen a lot is waiting too long in the conversation to show alignment and relevance to the things that they care about. And a lot of times I'll see Nonprofit leaders give their whole spiel and then at the end they'll say, and this is how that's all aligned with the the stuff that you care about.

10:27 You can imagine that when we do that, we're leaving a big element of influence on the table for most of the conversation when we could be leveraging it at every moment. The thing is that a lot of times, even when we do get around to highlighting alignment and relevance, we tend to do it in kind of dry factual ways. And just like all our other messaging, if we want it to engage, we need to evoke emotion, we need to involve the senses. We need to inspire curiosity and thought. We need to do all the stuff we need to do with all the rest of our messaging. It's not that we do that for part of it, like for the client story, and then we don't do that for all the other.

11:12 We do it for everything. So really, points of alignment and relevance between your stuff and the decision-maker's. Interests, ideally are being woven in from the very beginning of the conversation. And the more you can incorporate points of relevance, the better. It's not just, you know, I'll take a super common example'cause it's really simple and happens a lot. You've got somebody who is very fiscally conservative. Or maybe they're not even fiscally conservative, but they're worried about the budget. And you're asking them to make a bigger investment. So you've already planned, you're gonna come in and you're gonna hit hard on the ROI data. And you're gonna talk to them about the ripple effects you make and how that offsets other costs, other outlays, et cetera.

11:56 You've put together that rationale. Right. So that's good. You want that, you need that. That's the underpinning of the factual part of your messaging. But how we roll that out, how we use that in conversation, really matters. One of the most effective ways to do that is to think of, ideally before the meeting, all the different ways in which any aspect of your stuff is relevant to any aspect of things they care about. And you're pulling up those points of relevance at every opportunity. Let me take that same example and build that out a little bit.

12:37 We need to bring to life for them the full experience of being in the problem that they're in, that is causing there to be alignment. Or being in the experience of not having the thing that they want, that is the ultimate outcome they're after, whatever it is. Or maybe it's a positive experience of, they have a big ambition to make something great happen, and your stuff is aligned in some way. Either way. But a lot of times it's really about them being in a problem. Like there's not enough money in the budget. And they're really stressed. Elected officials right now, at every level of government, but particularly state and local governments are just really stressed out about the fact that revenue is down in a lot of places.

13:24 And their standard playbook for what you do when you have a shortfall in revenue is one of two things. You either raise taxes, you increase the revenue, or you reduce expenses. And there's already a critical flaw in that thinking. There's actually several, but the one that is the most dangerous to you is if you allow them to view investment in your program as an expense, versus an investment. That's a critical reframe that has to happen. Because as long as they think of you as an outlay, like, oh, it's a thing we have to spend money on, and it just sort of goes away. We spend on it and it's gone, and there's not really a return.

14:06 If you have any ROI data or framing at all, which I hope you do. Then you're talking to them about the ways in which this is an investment. But let's just bring this back'cause it's going a little couple different places here. If they're in the problem of from their perspective. The way they would describe the problem is there's not enough money. The revenue we have this year is less than the revenue we had last year. And our commitments to spend money on stuff hasn't gone down. There's still all these things that we need to spend money on. That's a very stressful position for them to be in, especially for elected officials. Because none of that's popular.

14:47 If they have to raise taxes, that will be unpopular. If they have to reduce services, that will be unpopular. They're between a rock and a hard place as far as they can see it. So one thing for you to do is to think about, what does it feel like to be in that problem? How stressful is that? Depending on their general political bent, maybe they're somebody who really cares about the broad array of social services and is really torn up, really upset about the possibility that some of those services might have to be cut. From the way they're thinking right now. At the same time, they're looking at the possibility of trying to raise taxes and realizing how unpopular that would be and how much blowback there would be.

15:33 And that that would be a whole thing. That's a very stressful place to be. So the more you can acknowledge what that feels like to be in that problem, to talk about some of the stress and the distress. If they're worried about possibly having to cut services they really care about and so on. To be able to speak to what that feels like and to show them that you get it, you get what they're going through, you understand them. And then to be able to talk about how there's actually a third way. That it's not just raise more revenue or reduce expenses.

16:13 The third option is to invest wisely. And when you invest wisely in a program or service that actually reduces expenses somewhere else on the ledger, that that becomes a much more productive and interesting investment. That actually starts to not only still be able to carry out the important services, but actually to reduce the outlay in some other places. Because if you solve the problem, then the continuous outlay goes away. So there's a bunch of different ways to talk about that, that are both successful messaging in terms of framing the investment in your work as an investment rather than an expense, which is critical framing always, but especially now.

17:03 But the other piece of it is to not be afraid to spend some time. You don't have to go super deep, but to spend some time acknowledging. Saying, you know, it's gotta be a really stressful situation for you all. You care about social services, if they do. Or you can say you care about being fiscally responsible. Whatever the thing is that they care about. And you've got what feels like an impossible situation. And then you can present your solution to their problem. Which is the wise investment. That's just one example. What would happen if you had that strategy lined up, but you waited to lay it out till the end, when you're making your ask?

17:44 How much opportunity for engagement would've been lost And what would happen if you did something different? How much more predisposed to take in everything you're saying and to wanna help and wanna invest. How much more likely would they be to be saying yes to all of that if you had connected with their emotional experience of the problem very early in the conversation and helped them to see that you've come to help them get out of that very painful problem. This applies to whatever the variables are at hand. That's just one example that's very common.

18:25 But to acknowledge their emotional experience of the thing that they are either struggling with or that they are hoping to achieve but can't see a way to yet. If you just sit with them for a bit and reflect back to them the emotional aspects of that experience, you're gonna connect with them on a whole new level. And they're gonna look at you and hear you in a very different way. And since we're all about engagement, the more engaged they are, the more of your messaging they take in and retain. Now, the third huge super common mistake that I see every single Nonprofit leader do at least once during the time I work with them.

19:09 And that is overreliance on information. And I get why leaders do this. Part of this is the curse of being the expert. We know so much about the work that we do, and the complexity of it and the depth of impact it makes, and the incredible value that that creates and the worth of that investment. We get all of that so deeply that when we're talking with a decision maker and they're not getting it. We tend to think that the reason they're not getting it, is that we didn't explain it enough. We didn't give them enough detail. Oh, well wait. Maybe I left out the part where this is an important thing they need to know, da, da, da.

19:50 And I'll, I'll put that in. I'll give them more data, I'll give them more information, and then they'll get it. Once in a blue moon, the problem is actually that they were missing a piece of information. That does happen. It is possible, and I'm guilty of this on a regular basis, that when we are deeply knowledgeable about something, we'll often make a mental leap and leave others behind when we do that. So we need to structure our messaging in a way that has us not doing that. But usually that's not really why they're not getting it. Usually the reason they're not getting it is that they're not emotionally invested in the stuff.

20:32 They're not listening that hard, so it doesn't matter. So here's a question. If they're already not listening very hard and you give them more data, more facts, more information, what are the chances that they will listen harder because you're giving them more of the thing they're already not listening to? We make the mistake of thinking that decision makers are operating principally from the rational side of the brain, when in fact they're like every other human on the planet and the emotional center is running most of the show Now they will deny that till the cows come home. But it doesn't matter.

21:12 They're humans and that's how our brains are wired. So the fact is, we must engage the emotions. We must engage the whole human. We need to connect. And we can impart information along the way. But even when we're doing that, the best way to do it is to ask questions. To invite them to think for themselves about what's the next thing? What's the next piece of this logic framework or whatever that you're bringing them along with. Ask questions, inspire curiosity, create surprise. You can also inspire other emotions. You can evoke the senses. You can do all the things with different stories, with different pieces of messaging.

21:57 But the deadly mistake is making the assumption that if they're not getting it, that what they need is more information. It's almost never true. So three big mistakes and what to do instead. Let's just recap real briefly. Three big mistakes are opening with information rather than engagement. Waiting too long in the conversation to show alignment and relevance to the things they care about. And relying primarily on information to fill knowledge gaps when the problem is that they're actually just not listening because they're not engaged. If you can pay attention to those three major pitfalls and can stay out of them.

22:40 And can instead deliberately craft your messaging and engagement strategy to fix those three pieces. The level of engagement that you see from decision makers will go up very quickly. And if you're already doing this most of the time, pay attention to where you tend to fall back into the pitfalls. Chances are it's when you're either super pressed for time or you're finding the situation to be stressful in some way. I know this feels a little bit counterintuitive, but when those are the things that are at play, those are the times when we wanna be even more intentional about focusing on the engagement techniques that work, and using the messaging that goes with them.

23:22 Messaging and engagement are skill sets. No question. And the thing about a lot of these kinds of approaches, especially like doing your introductions in a totally different way. And holding back on giving forth a bunch of information and data, cause you know how powerful it is and you want them to get it. But holding back on that and focusing instead on pulling in the emotions, pulling in the engagement, finding those points of alignment. And hitting on points of relevance all throughout the conversation. Being able to do all of that consistently is a huge key to improving your advocacy results. To getting bigger investments from decision makers, to creating better policy.

24:04 Whatever your goals are for working with your decision makers. If you want to get them to yes on a more regular basis, these are the strategies that will do it. And these are the pitfalls you really gotta watch out for. But like I said, they're skills. To get really good at them, especially the ones that may feel a little unfamiliar and not business as usual, they take practice. They take refinement. Most of us don't get it right on the first try, or even the first two or three tries. We work our way to it. And that's where coaching can be incredibly valuable. And on that front I have some news I think you're gonna want to hear. I'm about to start a new coaching program in January.

24:46 And in it we're going to be focusing precisely on these two skill sets that are at the heart of the most successful advocacy results you're ever gonna see. Now let me be clear. The Nonprofit leaders that are drawn to work with me are already doing a lot of things right. And honestly, if you weren't already doing quite a few things right in this environment, particularly, you'd probably be outta business right now. So it's not about having bad results. Your results are good. But there's still a level of frustration about decision makers who don't get it, who aren't all in, who aren't really grasping the true value of your work, and they're not excited to invest at the level that reflects that true value.

25:30 In just a few weeks, it's gonna be 2026, and I know that if you're listening, your results are already good. My question to you is, would you like them to be better? Would you like to move outta the frustration of decision makers not getting it and move into decision makers going all in and getting as excited about your work as you are? There is no better time to start than at the beginning of the new year. That's why I'm kicking off the new year with a new program that's gonna laser focus on these two skill sets and on coaching a small group of founding members to their next level so that you can start getting next level results with your decision makers.

26:13 I'm limiting this to 10 founding members because I wanna make sure that you're getting exactly what you need and that you're getting the amount of coaching time you need to really grow your skills and to own them so thoroughly that you can take them into your conversations with decision makers, with confidence, and start shifting the results, increasing their level of buy-in and increasing their level of investment. The wait list is now open. If you want those next level results, I wanna make sure that you get one of those 10 spots. Message me on LinkedIn or the podcast website. I'll put those in the show notes. And let me know to save a spot for you.

26:55 Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.