As I discussed in an earlier post, coaching your Blood Donor Recruiter is essential to maximize results in your donor recruitment process. It helps ensure they are staying fresh and bringing in the highest number of donors to donate blood. At the end of every coaching session, it is important to develop goals for the Blood Donor Recruiter. These goals should be items that help to improve their results. But how can you ensure the goals are right? Make sure the goals are SMART.
SMART—an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistically high, and Time-bound—is a widely-used and time-proven method for defining goals in a way that invites accountability and achievement.
- Specific: No vague statements. For instance, “I’ll get better at following the script,” is vague. Who is to say what “better at” means? “I will follow the script,” on the other hand, describes exactly what the tele-recruiter is committing to do.
- Measurable: In order to incorporate accountability, goals must be measurable. “I will follow the script,” is specific, but as it is written, following it just one time is enough. “I will follow the script in 100% of my conversations with donors,” tells exactly how often the tele-recruiter will comply.
- Attainable: Setting a goal unrealistically high only results in frustration and can be demotivating. Perhaps the tele-recruiter currently follows the script only 75% of the time. It may be that 100% of the time is too lofty of a goal for one week’s improvement. “I will follow the script in 85% of my conversations with donors,” may be more attainable.
- Realistically High: Yet, goals need to stretch individuals. Improving from 75% to 85% in a week may be too easy. “I will follow the script in 95% of my conversations with donors,” may be difficult but doable. It may be realistically high for the individual.
- Time-Bound: Finally, there needs to be a date range within which the tele-recruiter will accomplish the goal. Because you will be meeting again in a week for Follow-Up Coaching, most often you will have the tele-recruiter set a goal to accomplish within a week’s time. “I will follow the script in 95% of my conversations with donors in the next week,” locks in commitment and accountability.
At the end of the coaching session, set a follow-up date to review progress on things discussed during the coaching session. This follow-up date should typically be one week ahead.
Try implementing this into your coaching session, and watch you donor recruitment results increase!