What we try to do at Incept on behalf of our clients is to strengthen the relationship with each and every call we make, no matter if the donor wants to donate or not. You see, building a relationship cannot be looked at in the same sense as putting together a Lego set or as some type of black-and-white formula of success between your organization and your donor base. Building a relationship with your donors has to come naturally, and to be successful you must prepare your own recruiters to feel natural in their calls.
When a Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME) builds a relationship with a donor, we follow these points to help us strengthen the relationship more easily.
Ways to Strengthen the Relationship With Your Donors
- Appreciation is key. Showing appreciation for the donor’s previous donations is a very easy way to open them up and create a great first impression. At Incept we have the donor’s lifetime donation count on screen, so we know exactly how many times that donor has donated successfully. People liked to be thanked. Don’t you? It feels good to be thanked for a good deed and to feel recognized. Showing appreciation as an out-of-the-gate approach works very well with getting new recruiters comfortable with their job as well.
- Be a real person with your donor and not just a voice. In this modern age we have grown accustomed to the automated voices of inbound lines, the over exuberant personalities put on by the telemarketers calling our homes, and more and more occurrences that seem to transcend customer service and personal life. Try treating your blood donor as a person, and don’t be afraid to be real with them. Tell them how blood donations have affected your life or someone you know in your recruitment pitch. Make them feel important by telling them they are important because of what they do! Relax your approach and talk to them as you’d want to be talked to by a recruiter. Be calm confident while listening.
- Strengthen the relationship above all else. No matter if your recruitment call ends in an appointment or not, you can still always work on strengthening the relationship by handling the needs of your donor. At Incept we always want to second-attempt asking a donor to donate. Sometimes people just need to be asked in a different way. But when we have second attempted, and feel as if the donor can’t or doesn’t want to donate, our jobs as Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) default to handling their request and documentation as professionally as we can. The quality of our interactions with the donor at any given time can ultimately result in a repeat donor. And with a selfless act such as donation blood, we are never looking to practice any aggressive sales techniques, but rather show appreciation.
Building a relationship doesn’t have a set of instructions and isn’t something you can “touch”. Building a relationship can have a set of methods that work, and while a “relationship” isn’t tangible, it definitely is something that is real.
What does your organization do to build real relationships with your donors?