• Home
  • Blog
  • Improving door-to-door campaigns

Improving door-to-door campaigns

February 2, 2018
 
Ann Finnemore


Financial Commitments
Recently I’ve had a number of reps from charities knock on my door asking me to set up a regular donation to one of their campaigns. For the most part, they are well-known charities which support worthwhile causes, and ones that I contribute to when I see their collection boxes. However, I never make any financial commitments on my doorstep. When it comes to finances I operate a very strong ‘reactive’ Meta Programme – I like to have time to think and research before signing up to things. Therefore, I ask for information and a web address, so that I can look at the campaign in a little more detail, and set up a contribution if I decide to. However, all the reps can offer is instant sign-up on the door. They have no information leaflets and no way to enable people to set up a donation later on the basis of the door-to-door campaign. When chatting with the reps, they tell me that many of the people answering their doors have a similar mindset to me. They found the whole task disheartening.

Once the Door is Closed…
These door to door campaigns are therefore only able to get donations from those who operate a ‘proactive’ Meta Programme in that context. Yet recent scandals here in the UK about a number of charities’ fund-raising practices have made many people more cautious about signing up for anything without looking into it first.

I understand that the fear is that once the door is closed the person will not go to the website, and will not subscribe. However, if the reps could learn to (1) identify both what was important to the person and what their main meta programmes were in relation to the product on offer and then (2) to respond with the right approach – using the appropriate language, activating statements and non-verbal cues – then more subscriptions and sales could be achieved.

MindSonar in Charities
When selling your products or services that you want to get people to sign up for, do you have approaches for people operating a ‘reactive’ Meta Programme? Are you confident that you and your reps can recognise those people? If not, you are probably missing out on all of those who simply want time to think before saying yes.

Using MindSonar in the training of your reps will enable them to learn how to tailor their approach to potential customers. This can have a
significant, positive impact on results: improving not just the number of sales, but also improving customer satisfaction rates and helping team motivation as reps achieve more positive responses.

Also, maybe those of us who are certified MindSonar professionals should offer our services to the companies who approach us with a one-size-fits-all speech when we answer the door. They could be our next clients!

Happy profiling.

Ann

About the author 

Ann Finnemore

Coach and Therapist, living in the UK. Previously a teacher, a medical researcher and then a senior manager in the public sector. After re-training, Ann entered private practice as a coach and therapist in 2008, co- founding the business Getting You There with her husband, a physical therapist. Her first book “Life in the Driving Seat”, 2016 (Goldcrest books) and is available from Amazon.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

  1. Really like this Ann, a great example of how one needs to understand the customer’s motivation and criteria.

    Recently I experienced a client who thought I could manipulate Mindsonar questions for a particular job. I had to explain they needed to define the thinking style of the job and MS would then identify who had that style. Differentiating the tool compared to others and how the context is paramount has led to a piece of work. Not related to their first need!

    1. Thanks Ian.

      I think quite a few people will be surprised at how MS can be used, in comparison with other available tools. As clients realise the flexibility MS has across a range of functions, from HR to team management and motivation, it will probably be quite common for them to end up using it differently from how they had first imagined.

  2. Great Ann!
    I know a company in Belgium that sells a consumer commodity, and that did amazingly well – right through the crisis – with just this: training their sales personnel to match the customer’s meta program. And knowing their own preferred meta programs.

    1. Thanks Jaap.
      It’s good to hear that there are some companies discovering the benefits of using MindSonar in this way. I believe it can be of benefit not just to the company, but to consumers too as they will have a better sales experience and will be able to assess a product’s usefulness in a way that more closely fits with their requirements.

  3. I like to have time to think and research before signing up for things too. I’ve been bombarded with instant signups on many occasions and I believe it would be nicer for such persons to be armed with more information about what they are asking people to signup for or even have a means to allow them think and signup on their own later.

  4. All these reps coming to me to signup for one charity or the other always make this same mistake of not having more details one can look through at his own time. Maybe I’ll be sending them to this webpage whenever they come around.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}