Boiling down a global corporation into just what matters to a specific organization is WORK! And that's when I realized how important sales writing skills are to prospect research.
I forgot how difficult it is to do lots of profiles. But it was a first assignment from a new client and my best contractor was busy. So I took them on and it was fun...and hard work.
You should also know that I've been prepping to co-lead a workshop at APRA's conference in Las Vegas in July on Improving Your Profile Techniques. Between organizing my materials and researching lots of profiles I've had lots of questions swimming in my head such as...
- How does one go about deciding the major sections of the prospect profile template?
- Exactly which pieces of information should be included and where?
- How does the way we communicate over the request impact the quality of the work we provide?
- How much do we, or should we, "sell" the prospect to the gift officer?
The Prospect Profile Collection
Teaching something has a way of making me question everything I think I know. So one of the first things I like to do is collect good resources. And one of the three guiding principles behind the Prospect Research Institute is Shared, so I've created The Prospect Profile Collection online.
The
collection is a work in progress, but it already has a number of recent blog posts on prospect profiles and nine profile templates, including a surprise profile. If you go on the page and spot the one that's different from all the others, be one of the first few to comment and you never know what pleasant surprise might arrive in your snail-mailbox!
Do you have a prospect profile template you'd be willing to have added to the collection? Please contact me and let me know!
The Big Takeaway
While I can't share here all of the content I've been preparing for the APRA workshop and the Institute's first online course on profiles, I can give you at least one takeaway...
Start thinking like a journalist!
If you do nothing else differently you will still have improved if you present your material the way a newspaper reporter would. Why? Because journalists are taught to put everything important and attention grabbing in the first few paragraphs. Heck! The first sentence! The reader must be irresistibly drawn through the article...all the way down to the last few paragraphs with all the dull, ordinary facts.
Now read your last profile over again. Wonder why that gift officer was reluctant to add the new prospect you identified to her portfolio? Look at the narrative on occupation. How much of that is really necessary? Writing less is never easy, is it?
Now imagine if you could transform your profile into a front-page newspaper article. A headline that got the equivalent of retweeted all over your development office! What would it take? Don't be afraid to play with this one. Playing is a great way to shake our minds out of old habits and gain new insights. Let's try one for a children's hospital.
Dina Delight is an executive at a global company who has made two million-dollar gifts and is passionate about pediatric cancer.
...
Million-dollar donor, Dina Delight, passionate about pediatric cancer, is EVP at Biggie Co. where we have a really good connection!
If I were a gift officer I would be very excited about Dina Delight! Of course, condensing our prospects into a scintillating headline is not appropriate in the fundraising office. Our prospects deserve way more respect than that. But if you try to make an attention-grabbing headline about the next three prospects you profile, I'll bet that you wind up going back to shine a light on the pieces of information that are most important to developing a relationship.
Are We Salespeople?
Which brings us back to selling the prospect to our gift officer. Selling often has a negative connotation. We imagine a sales person trying to make us buy something we don't want or need. But we are all sales people. Every time you try to persuade your child to a new food, or your spouse to buy a new and bigger TV, you are selling. It's no different in prospect research. If you don't believe me, read about it.
When we recognize that we are selling, that we are persuading our gift officers why or why not to pursue a prospect, now we have a path to learn how to do it better. When it comes to prospect profiles, writing like a journalist and selling our story to the reader is a skill that will set you apart from other researchers.
Ready, Set... GO!
Start with the articles in the resources to the right, or check out Prospect Research Institute's Profile Peer Review Program or Introduction to Prospect Profiles online course. And if you're attending APRA's pre-conference workshops, I hope to see you there!
