Funding
The Goal of the First Visit
The goal of a ‘first visit’ is to get the other person to say,
“Wow, this is great, what can I do to help?”
If you can get the other person to say – in effect – “I’m in!”, then it’s not about cultivation, a series of complicated chess moves or backroom meetings about ‘timing’. It is about answering their question: What can I do to help?
You can get there in two years or twenty minutes. It often comes down to your message or how long it takes you to do discovery and make a connection to your message.
To get to this goal means:
- Clearly communicating the CAUSE/PURPOSE/VISION.
- Laying out a tight CASE. Think of CASE as a solution or address to the CAUSE.)
- Creating ENGAGEMENT. In all likelihood, you’ve asked great questions and listened your tail off .
Bonus: You brought a high level of PASSION to the first visit.
Sometimes, you can do all of the above and the other person doesn’t say exactly, “Wow, this is great, what can I do to help?” But you can always get there with some dialogue:
- “My goal today was to share [XYZ IMPACT], to learn more about what you care about and to ask you if this is something you would like to help with.”
- “Would it be okay to follow-up with a conversation about how you might be able to help?” This is asking for permission to move to the goal.
* Note: Even if you don’t get a straight up ‘yes’ to the above questions, they create productive dialogue to advance the conversation. For example, the prospect could say, “Well, first I would want to see the program in action.” PERFECT! OF COURSE! And now they are committing to coming to your place to see the program AND we have a common understanding that we are going to talk about ways to help financially!
