The Two Most Essential Ingredients to Getting a Decisionmaker to Say Yes

0:00 You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share the two most essential ingredients to getting a decision maker to say yes to the things you've come to ask for. 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.

0:43 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 what I suspect is true for you is what I'm hearing from a lot of my clients. Which is that there's just too much noise in the world.

1:24 And what we more and more want to be able to focus on are the essentials of what's going to work. And when we're talking advocacy, there are two essential ingredients that if you don't have'em fully dialed in, your results are gonna be disappointing. You're gonna keep finding yourself in that place where the decision maker doesn't fully get what you do. And because they don't fully get what you do and don't understand the complexity of the problem you solve, they also can't correctly value the worth of the work that you do and the transformational outcomes you create in the lives of the people you serve.

2:07 So we've gotta get them to get it. That's the bottom line. And there's two critical ingredients for making that happen. If either one of them is not fully dialed in, chances are they're still not gonna get it. What I wanna focus on in today's conversation is helping you get those two critical ingredients dialed in and working for you to get the results you want every time you engage a decision maker. These two ingredients are ones we talk about a lot here on the podcast. And it's the focus of most of my coaching programs and a lot of the work that I do with my one-to-one clients. Those two ingredients are messaging and engagement.

2:51 A lot of times, I'll talk to Nonprofit leaders who kind of feel like those are the same thing and don't really see much of a difference between them. And they're like, well, as long as our messaging's good, the engagement will take care of itself. Or the other way around. As long as we're really engaging, the messaging will take care of itself. And what I can tell you from my own experience and from working with hundreds of clients who've tried those approaches, it'll kind of work. But you'll find that your results are consistently below where you want them to be. And you're finding yourself in frustration a lot of the time. Here's the thing. Both messaging and engagement are specific skillsets.

3:34 And one without the other is far less powerful and far less effective. So you have to master both. And you have to use them in concert with one another. Mastering both and being able to use them seamlessly is the difference between consistent success in your encounters with decision makers, and frustration. My goal is to get you out of frustration. There's too much else going on. We need to be able to get these folks to yes. We need to get them supporting our work and investing in our work and clearing a policy path so that we can do that work easily and without interference for either us or the people we serve.

4:14 So let's take a look at messaging first. There are three main things that you need to do with your messaging to make sure that the decision maker gets what you do and therefore can understand the full value of what you do. And then can take the steps to invest or clear a policy pathway, or both, for you to be able to do that work as easily as possible. The first thing we have to do when we've got decision makers who don't totally get it, is we've gotta realize that there are knowledge gaps and misperceptions operating in that decision maker's head. So we gotta change that. We gotta address those.

4:55 Not surprisingly, the first step is to identify what the knowledge gaps and misperceptions are, and to be as specific as possible about that. We need to know what those are because we need to know where the holes are in their thinking. The second piece of the problem in their thinking is usually that they've got some unhelpful beliefs operating in the background. And for the decision makers you work with, you probably know what those are. If they have either said them outright or have implied them in some way. Maybe they have some unhelpful beliefs about the problem you solve, about the work that you do, or the people you serve. And the form that that tends to take are things like, they believe that all service providers in your niche are created equal.

5:41 And that it doesn't matter which one they pick, they can just pick the cheapest one and it'll be fine. 'Cause your services and your outcomes are all the same. It could be that they have unhelpful beliefs about the people you serve. It could be that they have the unhelpful belief that the problem you solve is really simple. And so if it's really simple, it should be cheap. And therefore they should have to not pay very much to have you solve that problem. Those are some of the very universally common unhelpful beliefs that we encounter in decision makers. It doesn't matter what niche you're in within the Nonprofit service sphere. Those tend to crop up all the time. And then within your niche, there are gonna be specifics that are attached to that, some additional details.

6:24 So what you wanna do is identify knowledge gaps and misperceptions, identify the unhelpful beliefs. Get them written down in detail,'cause the more detail you have, the more it's gonna inform how your messaging can respond to those things. And then a really helpful thing is to say, okay, which of these knowledge gaps, misperceptions and unhelpful beliefs tend to crop up across different types of decision maker? Where do we see this coming up over and over again? And I promise you that there are gonna be some that are pretty consistent across multiple types of decision maker. You find that elected officials, that government agency people, that uh foundations or corporate funders or potential contracting partners.

7:10 That a lot of them tend to kind of think the same things that aren't helping you. So you wanna tackle that first, obviously. Go after the easy pickings first. And then you can do decision maker specific detail after you come up with messaging that's gonna go after these core sets of unhelpful beliefs and misperceptions and knowledge gaps. With each set you're gonna create messaging that addresses the knowledge gaps and misperceptions. And you'll need messaging designed to disrupt the unhelpful beliefs. To begin to put cracks in them and wedge those cracks open a little bit. So that they can let in a different perspective, a different set of information.

7:54 The third thing you want to do with your messaging is to align the thing that you want, whatever you want them to do, the outcome that you want from their involvement, with something that they care about. And this is often where ROI conversations tend to happen. There could be all different types of alignment, but you wanna find as many points of alignment as you can. Those are your main objectives for your messaging, for what your messaging has to do. And you'll notice that what isn't here is convincing. What isn't here is persuading. What we need to do is fix the holes, disrupt the unhelpful beliefs.

8:35 And then help them understand how what you want really lines up very well with what they want in the end. So here's the thing. How you go about crafting messaging around these core objectives is the difference between breakthrough and continued frustration. One of the most critical things we have to understand is that facts and data don't persuade anybody of anything. And in fact, you are not in the business of persuasion. You're in the business of engagement and alignment. And the way we accomplish that is through messaging that engages the decision makers emotions, that engages their senses, that weaves a story for them that they can clearly get involved in and it helps them increase their understanding of the whole picture as well as the detailed pieces that you need to correct.

9:33 With story, you paint a vivid picture, you evoke emotion, and you engage the senses. And you do it all with words. If your messaging isn't doing those things, then you're leaving a ton of influence on the table. Because the bottom line is that as humans, most of our decision making occurs in the emotional center of the brain. The logic center has a little bit to do with it, but the emotional center has much more to do with it. So if we're not engaging emotions, if we're not engaging the senses, if we're not creating a full sensory experience for the decision maker through words, through story, we're missing a huge opportunity to influence them.

10:17 And why would we do that? That makes no sense. We wanna use every tool we have to bring them along and to get them fully on board. We don't just want them to go, oh, okay. We want them to go, heck yeah, this is great. This is a no-brainer. How come I didn't know about this before? That's the response we're looking for. A big piece of that is making sure your messaging is addressing all those things. But here's where it becomes an art. And that's with the engagement piece. Because you could write all this down and hand it to'em on a piece of paper, and it might do some things. It might help them understand a little bit. But how you really engage is through personal interaction, whether you're doing it over a Zoom call or live and in person, which is always preferred.

11:05 But however you're doing it, it happens through conversation. It happens through a two-way interaction. There are five core principles to successful engagement. Number one, maybe the most important, is to choose your energetic state. It makes all the difference in the world. If you come in already thinking, already believing, oh, these guys are really tough, or this decision maker's really impossible. They never listen. They don't get it. They're ugh. They're so frustrating to deal with. If you come in with that energetic state, I promise you it will not engage them. Think about what energetic state you want them to be in when they go, oh my goodness, how come I didn't understand this before?

11:50 This is amazing! I want in, I wanna work with you on this. That's the outcome you want. So your energetic state needs to match the energetic state you want them to wind up in. It's critical. Now the very useful thing to understand is that you can choose your energetic state at any time. You can choose what energy and frequency and vibration you bring into an encounter. It's totally up to you. Even if you maybe have a lot of good reasons to be really annoyed with this decision maker and feel like, ugh, they really don't listen. They're a pain in the neck. You could feel that. But don't bring it into the encounter. Give yourself a moment or more to focus on, what's the energetic state I wanna bring to this encounter that is gonna get me the result I want.

12:40 It's all about the results, and so we wanna make sure that our energetic state is matching that. That is essential. If you miss that step, the results you get are just gonna be disappointing. The next critical thing, and this is all these are easier said than done, and that's why we spend so much time on them in my coaching programs. 'Cause you gotta practice this stuff to get really comfortable with it and good at it. But the next big thing is to operate as a peer with that decision maker. Now, that doesn't mean you come in all arrogant and pushy. It just means that you don't come in feeling like they have all the power and you have none. That you're just this little tiny guppy and they're the big fish.

13:23 None of that. You are problem solving partners who are there to get work done together. They may not know that yet, but this is part of the energetic state you're bringing. If you come in a subservient powerless attitude and perspective. I promise you that is how they will respond to you. And if you come in there as a peer, they will respond to you the same way. You get to set the tone, it's up to you. Another critical thing is that you absolutely have to allow your full range of emotions to be expressed in your voice when you're talking with your decision makers.

14:03 You gotta be a whole human and that will help them be a whole human. If you come in in presentation mode, where you're kind of monotoning your way through and just kind of like, oh, here's the facts, and da da da da. There's nothing engaging about that and we know that. Intuitively we know that. We don't talk to our friends that way. Not if we wanna have our friends want to hang out with us, right? We wouldn't do that. So it's the same thing. Now, that doesn't mean you go overboard on the casual end and walk in and go, sup, dude, when you're talking to a decision maker. You respect the professional environment, but you still show up with the full range of emotion and your full range of humanity expressing itself in your voice and in your emotion.

14:47 If you are fully present as a human, they're gonna respond in kind. And they're gonna engage. When you're in presentation mode, they back way off. Their attention span wanders, and they go away mentally. So that's connected to the next thing, which is you wanna connect on the personal level as much as possible. That means finding as many points of affinity as you can. If you both like bowling, if you both like playing cards, if you both like basketball, if you both like music, whatever it is. If you happen to have both gone to the same school, or if your kids go to TaeKwonDo together. Whatever all the different connection points are. I, By the way, I've just named actual real life connection points that I or my clients have had with various decision makers over time.

15:36 I didn't actually pull those out of a hat. Those are real connection points and there are gajillions more. I could tell you stories all day long about the totally out there points of affinity that Nonprofit leaders have discovered with decision makers. A lot of'em seemed pretty unlikely on the surface, but they wound up being incredible connection points that pulled that decision maker in enough as a human interacting that then they became more open to hearing the whatever the technical details were that advocate went there to talk about. So I can't overstate the value of finding as many connection points as you can and continuing to come back and touch on those points and weaving together.

16:16 You're building a relationship. And you can't build that on dispassionate facts and technical stuff alone. It just doesn't work that way. That's not how us humans are wired. And then kind of an overall principle to apply to all of your engagement is the following. Pull, don't push. This is so hard to learn and I will freely admit that I struggle with this one myself. 'Cause I'm so enthused and I'm so committed to the thing, whatever it is, that I want them to get it. Here, let me give you all the stuff. Let me tell you, let me tell you the thing so that you'll get it. Nope, that doesn't work.

16:56 What works is asking questions. Is pulling them in bit by bit, saying, Hey. You know, what do you think about this? What would you guess is true about such and so, and then give them a chance to respond. And then you can say, well, would it surprise you to learn that blah blah is true instead? And you pull them in a little piece at a time and invite them to think. Invite them to consider. Invite them to wonder. Spark their curiosity, which by the way is an emotion. If you spark their curiosity or surprise them, you have got them engaged on multiple levels. You've engaged their emotions, you've engaged their brain. And once they're thinking, once they're actually wondering about something that you've said or a question you've asked, now you've got them coming to you in an engagement rather than standing back and being separate from you.

17:49 Pull, don't push. So those are the basics of the two most essential ingredients of messaging and engagement. Now that you've kind of had a chance to consider these, what do you think? Would you now be inclined to say, eh, as long as my messaging is good, I'm good, or as long as I'm really good at engagement, I'm good. Or is it likely that in fact we do need both? And that if we really wanna weave a connection and capture and hold a decision maker's attention and involvement and investment, that we're gonna need the very best messaging and the highest level engagement skills that we can manage.

18:33 The thing is that all the messaging stuff and the engagement stuff are skill sets. They are all skills that take practice to get good at. And they're also often, unfamiliar ways of operating for a lot of Nonprofit leaders, especially if you've had it hammered into you that you've always gotta be in professional mode. And that professional means sticking to the facts, not showing emotion. Not using humor. I've worked with a lot of folks who've struggled with this mightily. To become really comfortable with the new, more effective ways of engaging and of crafting messaging. We also have to uncover what's in the way for us.

19:15 A lot of times when I work with clients, we'll find that as I'm teaching one piece or another of this, they'll find that they've got some internal resistance to some pieces of it. And it comes up differently for different people. You know, some folks take to some of it right away. They're like, oh yeah, no problem. Love the storytelling ready to go. And other folks are like, oh, I don't know. That just doesn't feel professional. Or like, I don't think I'm that good on my feet or whatever it is. There's all kinds of things that come up for us that make us feel like, ah, I don't know if I can make that work. I'm not so sure that's such a good idea for me. And then they start cherry picking the pieces they're gonna bother to work on and leave the other ones that are kind of uncomfortable and unfamiliar and leave those on the shelf.

20:01 Well, let me ask you this. Who do you think is gonna get the better results? The person who uncovers the source of that resistance and deals with it and learns to do all of the techniques really well, or the person who picks the two or three that feel pretty good and easy and not too uncomfortable, and leaves the other ones aside. Who do you think is gonna have the more robust toolkit? Who's gonna have greater success on a more consistent basis, engaging their decision makers? So if that's you, if you've been kind of feeling like, yeah, well, you know, some of this stuff sounds pretty good and I've been working on that. But some of that other stuff Kath talks about. I don't know, I don't, maybe we'll leave that.

20:42 I have an opportunity and a challenge for you. I'm about to start a new coaching program in January, and in it we are going to be focusing precisely on these two skill sets that are at the heart of the most successful advocacy results that you're ever gonna see. It's dialing in your skills on messaging and engagement. And getting good at all the pieces. Not picking and choosing, but learning how to do them all. And getting the coaching you need to help you practice, but most critically, to help you uncover any resistance you might be feeling and finding out where that comes from and working with that to get to a place where you can do that comfortably and eventually with ease.

21:30 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 be outta business by 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. In a few weeks, it's gonna be 2026. And I know that if you're listening, your results are already good.

22:12 A question to you. Is, would you like them to be better? Would you like to move out of 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? If that sounds like something you'd like to make happen, there's no better time to start than 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. 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.

23:12 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. So if you wanna secure a spot, be sure to message me on LinkedIn or the podcast website and I'll link those up in the show notes. And come on in. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.