Why your next step may be a baby step
- Sun, August 21 2011
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Are people not doing what you ask?
Whether it’s your teenage daughter, donor or colleague, your best solution may be asking for something smaller. As I like to say, it’s easy to say no to something hard. It’s hard to say no to something easy.
And there’s no shame in baby steps. In fact, there is loads of evidence that asking people to take a baby step rather than a giant leap does two things:
1. It increases the chances they will take any step at all
2. It increases the chances that they will take a bigger step later
When my older daughter despairs about her hours homework, I have her set the timer and try to just work steadily for 15 minutes. It’s easier to get her mind around a 15-minute task than hours of work.
I knew someone who could not get her boss to spend time with her to articulate how she was supposed to support his new organizational vision. We decided maybe it just sounded too hard for her boss, who may not have even known where to begin in making his vision a reality. So she came up with three ways she knew she could make a real impact on the bigger goals and asked for sign-off on those. It worked.
I’ve also seen fundraisers have great luck with asking for people to pledge to take actions later. The pre-commitment was easy to obtain and improved fundraising results later. The phrase, “even a dollar will help,” can also boost results.
The bottom line? If you are stuck, maybe your next step is asking for a baby step.