Spring, 2006

I’m fascinated by human interaction and communication. Helping people discover their strengths and talents energizes me. That’s why I read everything I can regarding communicaiton, personalities, learning styles, expanding skills, and changing attitudes. Mel Silberman’s updated classic, Active Training, caught my attention with its promise of giving me a “proven and reliable method for enhancing involvement, learning, and change.”

As I study Silberman’s work, I’m expecting to learn not only how to make classroom instruction more engaging, but also have to more effectively communicate the principles and practices necessary to make teams (boards, committees, task forces, for instance) produce more meaningful results. In today’s non-stop, over-communicated, over-whelmed, burned-out marketplace, we’ll all need to have a learner’s mindset just to keep up. Silberman’s Active Training aims for “real learning” that results in increased abilities and understanding.

Introducing Active Training
“Training is a method of enhancing human performance.” No doubt most of us think of “school” or “classroom” or “lecture” whenever we hear the word training. School, classroom, lecture: all are passive. Effective training is active and “active training occurs when the participants do most of the work.”

Such training involves six processes:

• hearing
• seeing
• questioning
• discussing
• doing
• teaching

You’ll need to use more than one process to make training effective. Silberman lists retention rates for corresponding intstructional modalities to illustrate his point:

• lecture (learners retain approximately 5%)
• reading (learners retain approximately 10%)
• audio/visual (learners retain approximately 20%)
• demonstrations (learners retain approximately 30%)
• discussion (learners retain approximately 50%)
• practice by doing (learners retain approximately 75%)
• teachings others (learners retain approximately 90%)

Lectures only won’t lead to effective training due to several problems:

• lectures appeal primarily to auditory learners
• lectures hold audience attention loosely–audience attention decreases with each passing minute
• lectures promote lower-level learning (stresses facts and recall over assimilation and application)
• not all learners need the same information at the same pace

Fall, 2005

If you need a pep talk on fundraising, sprinkled with golden nuggets of wisdom, Asking is a good start. If you want to encourage your board or volunteers to get involved in fundraising, give them a copy of this book.

Panas is a humble sage who loves fundraising. His quiet, confident passion ties the short chapters of Asking together into an inspirational essay that’ll make you smile. More importantly, it’ll inspire you to pick up the phone and make a call.

Here’s what Panas has to say…

• Fundraising is a joy. It is not at all like begging. Instead, it is offering an opportunity for people to be a part of a group working together to do something good.
• Some people will be absolutely delighted to help. Some won’t. You have to talk to a bunch that won’t and keep doing it until you find the enthusiastic donors. When you do, all the disappointment will have been worth it.
• Do use a pre-approach direct mail letter but do not depend upon that letter to bring in the money. You, as a fundraiser, are what bring in the money. (Actually, the cause does that. You get to be the agent.)
• Good news! Jerold’s been a fundraiser for many, many years (I’m looking for the exact number of years) and guess what worries him most. It’s NOT asking for the money. He says that’s the easy part. For him, it’s much harder to call for the appointment than to ask for the money. Been there myself.
• Fundraisers do not sell the gift. They “listen the gift.” I’ve been able to simply quote the chapter title several times recently when training volunteers: “No one ever listened himself out of a gift.” Jerold says, “Most prospects won’t really listen or pay attention to what you’re trying to sell until they’re absolutely convinced you’ve heard and appreciated their point of view.” We all know we should be better listeners, but for some reason, we’re far more interested in making our case than just sitting there and listening with interest. I’m doing more research on effective listening (don’t laugh. It IS that important.) I’ll post it here when I’m done.
• Just like you can’t depend on your letter to bring in the money, you can’t rely upon your marketing materials to “make the sell” either. As a Sandler Sales System trained person I must say a hearty AMEN. While I enjoy creating powerful marketing pieces, I realize that fundraising is first of all a personal activity. Marketing material plays a supporting role, but it is not the primary fundraising vehicle.
• No doubt every fundraising book says this, but…donors are not primarily motivated by your need. Panas says, “your donors run away from needs.” Instead, “Major donors give to bold, heroic, and audacious programs….”
• Fundraising is personal. “Work hard at putting people completely at ease and making them feel important.” While Panas doesn’t say this, I think he would agree, your concern for others must be genuine. Prospects have an uncanny ability to smell manipulation.
• When you don’t get the gift, you haven’t failed. It simply means “there isn’t a meshing of the prospect’s passions and interests with the mission of the institution.”
• When you’re making your appeal, be specific. People realize there are millions of people in danger, undernourished, or in poverty. That won’t move them to action. When they know the name of a specific young girl whose life you saved and how you did it, now that’s something they want to be a part of.
• Before you ask others to give, give yourself.
• Great quote: “An obstacle is what you see when you take your eyes off the objective.”
• Don’t talk too much. Panas limits his appeal to 11 minutes.

Publisher information:
Panas, J. (2005). Asking: A 59-minute guide to everything board members, volunteers, and staff must know to secure the gift. Medfield, MA: Emerson & Church Publishers.

Ron Huff shows you how to deliver a compelling message in six minutes or less in his book Say It In Six. Milo O. Frank can do it in thirty second or less.

Frank’s background is in advertising and the world of the sound bite. No doubt his concepts work well for those who craft radio or TV spots. With my emphasis on the human side of communication, though, I wondered if his book would be meaningful for real communication. I discovered his principles are sound for nearly every communication.

Here’s what he says:
Have a single, clear-cut objective in mind. That’s good advice for a radio spot, a sales presentation, or a marriage proposal.

Know your audience and what they want. Nothing new here, but still sound advice. Frank lists it as the second principle. In my model, with my concern for the other person, I put knowing the audience before defining what I want. The bottom line is, communication is not a strictly linear process. As I’m getting to know myself and my audience, I’m getting better positioned for effective communication.

Have the right approach. Frank’s “approach” is the phrase or one sentence that will “best lead you to your objective.” A salesman, for instance, may have as his objective to sell an Apple iPod to a small business owner. His approach would be, “Now you can show prospects color photos of your products anywhere you are.” Your approach is simply a short, creative way to present your case in terms of some benefit to your audience.

Have a hook. The hook is what you use to get the attention of your audience. For good examples of hooks, read the front page, above the fold, of any Wall Street Journal. They give you just enough of a story to make you want more. That’s a hook. (You’ll need one of these to get your next speech or presentation off on the right foot too.)

Have a subject that explains, reinforces, or proves your single, clear-cut point. The subject answers the reporter’s famous question set: who, what, where, when, how, and why.

Ask for what you want in your close.

Leave your audience with a vivid mental image of your message. Use imagery (descriptive language), clarity (simple and clear language), personalization (personal language), and emotional appeal (real, human language without jargon).

Publisher information:
Frank, M.O. (1986). How to get your point across in 30 seconds or less. New York: Simon and Schuster.

People who know lots of other people win. Keith Ferrazzi tells how he got to know lots of people and how they helped make him widely successful at Deloitte and then Starwood Hotels and then YaYa Media (sold to Yahoo!) and now as a marketing and sales consultant.

It’s amazing to me how many best-selling books simply present what should be basic common sense. As the old saying goes, “Maybe common sense ain’t so common.”

Never Eat Alone is a mixture of how-to and basic life philosophy. You could have thought of it yourself. The difference between you/me and Keith is, Keith actually took the time to put the words on paper.

Download the entire review »

Who it’s for: Companies considering how to sustain momentum and “move to the next level”; this book will change the way your organization thinks about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Why I recommend it: Great secrets unveiled in perspective on why some companies and ideas “tip” but others never do. One review I read put it best when it said: “Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.”

Why it’s dramatically different: Gladwell demonstrates clear reasons that some ideas, trends, and social behavior cross thresholds, tip and spread like wildfire…and why yours may not if you’re not careful.

Learn more about this resource »

Imagine a world where speakers got to their point and made their case all within six minutes! Just think of what you could do with all that extra time. No more setting through 60 minutes of nothing but wind (and sometimes fury, signifying nothing). Not only would you save a massive amount of time, everyone would get more done because people with a point to make would make it and people who cared about it would get it. Everyone would be happy.It’s not just a fantasy. It’s well within the reach of every speaker. Ron Huff tells us how in his short book Say It In Six.Here’s how a typical professional sales presentation goes:

• Small talk and our introduction
• Why we’re here today
• Here’s who we are and how we’re distinctive
• Here are our core values
• Here’s how we do what we do and our proprietary process
• Here’s how all of that relates (sometime remotely) to something you care about
• Got any questions?
• Thanks for letting us be here today and closing remarks

Ron Huff says there’s a better way:

• The Burning Issue: Jump to the burning issue right away. Preachers call this the “big idea.”
• The Overview: Take no more than 60 seconds to paint the picture of how you came up with the big idea.
• IT: Make the Idea Tangible (IT). Give your audience some way to see or experience your big idea.
• The Payoff: Show your audience how your big idea will benefit them.
• Interactive Close: Specifically ask your audience to take some action.

To put Huff’s system into practice you’ll need to:

• Know what you want to accomplishKnow why that matters to your audience
• See how your goals create something worthwhile for your audience
• Be willing to dump everything that doesn’t directly contribute to the big idea
• Be willing to edit, edit, edit, and the cut some more

Be creative in making the big idea real for your audienceHuff, R. (1996). Say it in six: How to say exactly what you mean in six minutes or less. Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, A Universal Press Syndicate Company.