Episode 247: Gamifying Calls and Rejection: How to Compete for Those Calls and Meetings
Welcome to another edition of Around with Randall, your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.
I'm so pleased that you would take a minute or two of your day to join me, Randall, on this edition of A round with Randall. If you listen to the podcast regularly, you're hearing me more and more talk about making phone calls, and it seems to be coming up more and more often with the clients that I deal with, not just here in the United States.
I have clients internationally that are sensing and feeling and dealing with very something very similar is that it's getting harder to get in front of people, particularly newer people. People we don't know what we would classify as prospects and that our challenge becomes we can't just depend on the people we've depended on in the past. And so today, I want to give you a different way of incentivizing making calls.
And so we're going to gamify the idea of calls and rejection. How do we create an environment that actually produces a willingness, a competition, a collective nature of making phone calls. And maybe you're in office of one. And so this is competition amongst yourself. I'm not going to get into the details of how to make calls, what qualification processes or even what fear feels like or something recently that I did about having not having portfolios.
Let me refer you to those particular podcasts because they're going to get into the details. First and foremost, the basics of making those qualification calls and even into the first visit is episode 21, with episode 179 being about the questions you want to always be thinking about as you do this process. I think fear becomes part of the concern being rejected, and there's two episodes that I highlight the issues involving fear of calling in general or calling people you don't know.
Episode 133 and episode 238. Go check those out to kind of get some affirmation about what to deal with when it comes to fear. In just a couple podcasts, I go, I did how many calls do you have to be making to get a visit? So it's kind of a metrics piece if you don't have a portfolio. Episode 245.
Today we want to talk a little bit about the idea of gamification. How do we make this more interesting for ourselves? How do we get the team environment really driven towards making phone calls? And to do so? I mean, I'm going to create a game more. I did, and I'm going to share it with you here. And at the end, certainly, get Ahold of me and I'm glad to share it free of charge, including a score card.
But I want to create incentives for us to be making phone calls. There can be a lot to be said for being concerned about making calls, which are not fun to people we don't know, but there's no excuse for not doing our job. And that whether we're using artificial intelligence, we're using text messages, emails, whatever, we're not going to replace outreach to people we don't know.
So today's about calls, but I would certainly support the idea of using email as a follow up, not replacement story calls and texting as follow up or set up, but not replacement. So what is it that I'm talking about? Well, what we know is, is there's probably 7 to 10 different responses that occur when we make a phone call.
The easy one is, is we get the appointment and we're going to go see them and spend time talking about qualifying requalify and cultivating. Or they don't pick up or they tell us to drop dead. Those are the easy ones. But there's other things that come as a part of this process. And so what I want to do is create a rejection scorecard and with a couple positives and put point totals with it.
I mean, we're going to play a game every week. I two, three people in the office. How many points can you get when you make phone calls? How do you build out this kind of game? So let's start with just the basics. I want to reward just dialing the phone ten points. If you make a call, just you're just going to call.
And if you leave a voicemail you get 20 points.
If they answer, it's 50 points. So if you call in the answer we've done anything yet. You got 60 points right there. If they agree to a meeting that's the positive 100 points because that's the golden chalice. What we're trying to do to get in front of people. What happens if they decline or say they're not interested? Yep.
You get points for that 210 points. They confirm they don't want to meet with you, but they'll confirm an email or a phone number. You get 20 points for that. You can stay in touch with them in the future. They confirm that maybe there's a better time. Instead of saying, well, I'm not available next week, what about the week after 20 points?
They'll refer you to somebody else i.e. is there anybody else you can think of that might be interested in what we do here at this organization? 30 points. They declined to politely decline. They're not interested in talking with you. 15 points. They're really not very friendly. I'm going to give you an extra five points. That's 15 points. Why is this all important?
I've learned by coaching my sons and daughters teams that when I make it gamified, practice drills, running, conditioning, whatever it is, people seem to get more interested, get more ingrained because people naturally are competitive. Some people are much more competitive than others, but there's a sense of camaraderie, of teamwork. When we all do something together. When the team evolves towards success, then all of us, no matter if our individual part or not, was uplifted, are a part of the success practice.
I'll take, for example, my son's sixth grade soccer team. We've got a couple players that you know are not going to be soccer players much longer in their life, but they're out there having fun. They're part of the team. They're not going to ever be the leading scorer, the leading assist person. They're probably on the slower side. But when the team does well and I'm incentivizing team goals, I talk about the most important player on the team is the one with the most assists, not what the most amount of goals.
Same thing in basketball. I'm talking about the teams scoring, not an individuals that everybody on the team has a part. The 2 or 3 people that tend not to be the most athletic have kept coming back to play, and their parents have been very candid because they say they're having so much fun with their friends. It's a team environment now.
It helps that we're winning a lot, but by creating those environments, we're keeping people moving forward together even so much so that when we think about are you soccer? Because we're playing it now? Conditioning is critically important. We've got nine players on the team. It's a U12 team, so we're not full 11 and the field is probably 80%, 75% of a normal soccer field, which is really large, particularly for 12 year old, like 11 year old legs.
What we find is, is that I need them to be in better shape. So we do a lot of competition drills in practice. So now I'm dividing the team up 2 or 3 parts against each other, and all of a sudden they find themselves running more because they don't think of it as running, but as a game. Gamification.
There are scientific studies that show that when we gamify, we tend to bring more people along and people's progress. People's goals, people's accomplishments are elevated.
And so why wouldn't we do this in our offices?
The gamification builds out a sense of camaraderie that we can build into in terms of our own individual behaviors. So when I give you the point totals at the top, I'm going to go back through them here. And I'm even going to show you the card. And if you want the card you can email me and I'll give you the card is that there's higher level points for things that we normally wouldn't think as positive.
A highly negative response from somebody on the phone gets you more points. Why? Why would I say that? Because what I'm trying to do is lessen the blow and the personal dissatisfaction when we get rejected. Now, I don't think you should aim for that, but it goes back to what I've said in every single podcast, every single time I teach qualification calls, every time I coach a gift officer around the world, the reason they choose not to engage with you unless you just are offensive has really nothing to do with you.
It has to do with them. It has to do with their position at that moment, either mentally, emotionally, physically, financially what's going on in their business, their personal life. Maybe they had a bad cup of coffee, but we tend to internalize the negative toward us instead of realizing it's more about them. So the point system is built so that when you get a negative, you get some affirmation, some uplifting, like, well, you know, call suck.
But I got some points. And if you track it and I love Excel because I'm an Excel nerd, it's so easy to do. You can create a game for the office, not just we're all going to call for 30 minutes, but at the end of the week on Friday, we are going to compare scorecards and we're going to have fun, exciting little prizes or high five moments that are going to uplift all of us in the ability the desire to have more calls and more outreach.
So let's go back through this. First and foremost, there are some pre call rituals which you have to go through. And if you go back to episode 21 I go through that in really great detail. But it's who are you calling? Have you done some quick research? Again, high level we're not profiles here. Google puts some stuff on call.
Check the CRM.
And then who else is making calls that week? Another thing about this kind of system is, is it doesn't make a difference if you're annual giving major gifts, planned gifts. Notice I didn't say get a gift. I said get somebody on the phone. Have a conversation. What's the purpose of that conversation may be different for each one person in the office, but you can all play together.
Maybe you've got some side things, like who made the most phone calls on a particular day? Who had the most polite declines? Who had the funniest response to the calls? The tactical tip here is to position this gamification not only in a week or a month or whatever, but into daily activity. Getting people on the phone. Maybe you want to do some type of mini challenge.
Like as I mentioned, we want to confirm more email addresses. We know things are moving digitally, or we want to confirm their LinkedIn page or their phone number.
We're going to create a sense of energy.
The other thing is, is that we want to also look at this longitudinally with some post game or post calling analysis, i.e. how everybody feel about that, how many conversations that we have.
How many meetings did we get?
Who had the most amount of rejections?
Who had the most amount of no responses?
Maybe even. We want a weekly award for the rejection of the week. Hall of Fame.
This is all in part to build out a consensus that we have to get on the phone. We got to do outreach.
Too many of the gift offices I'm working with are sitting back and almost waiting for things to happen. Now, it's important to realize we want the best people to call. We talked about that specifically in episode two. 45. In a hospital is going to be great for patients and university or any audience or independent school is going to be alumni.
Most likely are parents. We're not dialing for a phone book. We want something reasonable. But the idea is, is that we're looking for long term behavioral challenges, make more calls. So I want to go back through the point system. And then I'm going to hold up. If you're watching this on YouTube I actually got a scoring sheet in Excel.
You all done for. You. If you just dial a number you get ten points. If you leave a voicemail, you get 21 to leave the right voicemail. I'm not asking them to do anything. I'm going to call you back if you want wanted. Here's my number. But we're wanted to say thank you for the gift or thank you for the for the for your involvement or your name came up in a conversation a lot of different ways to leave voicemail but not making the onus on them.
They answer the phone. You get 50 points. Now it's about positioning in the decision tree that goes along with helping them understand why you're calling. We'd love an opportunity to chat. Can we do so in person? If not, can we talk about it here? We're looking for an opinion on a project or opinion about our organization in the community, and we do a decision tree.
Can I keep you in touch? And it's okay to bless and release. You have 50 points. And if they decline another 10 or 15, depending how polite they were, they agree to a meeting. Now, if you're an annual giving person, this one's a little harder because you may just be asking for 25 1500 and $500. You don't want a meeting.
So maybe you have to. Just the point system. Even if they're not interested, they decline, they're polite. Whatever. Can you get an email address? We'd like to stay in touch. You're an alumnus of the institution, or is there a better time for us to chat to meet? If you're not available now? All this is to say is I.
I'm sensing that too many people are apprehensive about making calls.
Before the internet. And yes, I'm old enough to remember that before cell phones. And yes, I'm old enough to remember that too. This was the only way we knew how because we didn't have e-mail. We didn't have texting, we have LinkedIn. We didn't have Facebook. We got on the phone. I'd love to chat with you about the gifts that you've given, about your involvement, and I'd like to hear more about why you think what you give to us, or why you're involved with us is so important to you.
Back to that passion I didn't understand from my mentor, my first mentor, father Tom petty, but how important this was when he was instructing me in this get on the phone to talk with people, get on the phone and talk with people. People want to talk to you. Then you take that next step into cultivation. Qualify cultivation. Today's world has positioned us from a technology standpoint to be able to communicate in different ways.
And what I'm finding and what the data is telling me and what our my anecdotal gift officer stories are telling me is if all you do is sit and wait or just use email, or just use texting, you're not going to get to where you want to go, particularly with people who are over 60 years old who also remember exactly what I just said about making phone calls, not having the internet, and not having texting.
If you're not stewarding your people by phone and getting in front of them, if you're not reaching out and inviting them to things, if you're not finding ways, particularly with newer episode 245 newer people that you don't have a portfolio or a full enough portfolio, you reach out to people you don't know. If you're not doing this in a meaningful way, calls.
You're going to find yourself behind the metrics bubble that's going to burst on you. Today's gamification is all about how do you make it more fun? How do you build out an environment where we all embrace the idea of making calls and getting out, seeing people?
And yes, I promised I'd show you. If you're sitting here on YouTube, you can see it. If not podcast of How Athletes Become. I'll send it to you. Glad to. In Excel, all you got to do is put in how many of the things happened and it automatically counts the points pretty easy. I just think we got to get out more gamification of calling and rejections.
Realizing it's okay, doing it as a team, creating an environment where this is not only a wonderful opportunity to get out and talk about the things that are important to us, but it's imperative and it's necessary and it's obligatory to the gift giving process. The donor relationship building process.
That's what my hope is to that give you something fun to think about. Totally different off the world kind of working against what Randall talks about in terms of picking one subject and going. But here's a subject with an answer, and hopefully, maybe some of you will take advantage of it. Be fun to hear the stories. Make sure to get back to me.
And if you'd like again spreadsheet up there on YouTube. And if you're doing this via voice podcast of Help Science, become glad to email it to you. Don't forget to check out the blogs at Howlett philanthropy.com two per week. Just finished a three part series on the End. If you're listening on this or have been a little while ago, potentially, but on The Giving Pledge and is it working and it's not, and what's happening and how we're looking more, more and more like from wealth perspective, like the Gilded Age and what actually happened.
And then what happens if we could just get more of those dollars that are in DAFs and in private foundations and in these large accumulated asset pools of individuals out into the world to make the world a better place. Three-part series. Kind of interesting to me. Something to read, podcast or excuse me blogs at Hallettphilanthropy .com.
And if you'd like to email me again that's podcast at Hallettphilanthropy.com.
It's up and down left and right a little bit shaky. It's kind of like at the end of the movie grease, John and Olivia Newton-John are on that shaker up and down as they're singing the last song in that great musical that's topsy turvy a little bit. That's what we're dealing with in the world a little. It's not a steady is way it feels.
Philanthropy has an amazing way. Nonprofits have an amazing way of filling gaps. When these topsy turvy times happen. For people that are trying to figure things out, organizations, priorities in the community, what you're doing is serving that mission. And I can't imagine a better way of spending a career. You're making a difference whether you're a board member or the CEO gift officer.
Maybe you're just an office staff member and you're doing unbelievably important work in supporting others. You're in data, you're in in prospect management research only works if we all pull together. And in doing so, you get to my favorite adage, some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. You're someone who makes things happen for the people in the places and the things, the organizations, the moments where people and everyone else is wondering what happened.
That's the essence of philanthropy. I hope you understand that, appreciate it, and embrace that opportunity. I'll look forward to seeing you the next time. Right back here on the next edition of around with Randall.
Don't forget. Make it a great day.