Once you have identified your donor prospect, the next step is usually to make a discovery visit. Sometimes this happens over the telephone, but ideally it will be a visit at the person’s choice of location. The goal is to meet her where she feels most comfortable and qualify her as a major gift prospect.
Most often we aim to determine or confirm the following:
*Affinity, or how close she feels to our organization
*Inclination, or how philanthropic she is to us and others
*Capacity, or whether she has the ability to make a major gift
Confirming Affinity and Inclination
No matter how much or how little time you have in your first visit, do NOT walk away without finding out about the individual’s giving, passion, and movement to the next step:
1. Why does the prospect give to our organization?
You can begin your conversation with a “thank you” for past giving and a natural curiosity for how the prospect first discovered and began giving to your organization. If there is no giving to your organization, or even if there is, consider asking if she is involved with any other organizations.
2. How does the prospect feel about the relationship?
Next, you can guide the conversation naturally to ensuring that the prospect likes the mailings and other information received or if you need to make adjustments. Maybe you need to add or change the type of mailing to cater to the prospect’s specific interest.
3. Would the prospect like a tour, visit a program, etc.?
Now that you are talking about what the prospect likes about your organization, you can make an appropriate suggestion about a tour, talking with a program director, or some other activity that would interest her.
Confirming Capacity
To confirm or verify a prospect’s capacity to make a gift, guide conversation toward the primary source of wealth:
4. What a wonderful award this is! It looks like your business has been doing well…
You do not have to have constant eye contact with your prospect. Take a look around you and ask normal, curious and fun questions about what you see on the walls or on the shelves.
5. I’d love to learn a little more about your business. How many employees do you have here?
Don’t be afraid to change the conversation. Keep track of time and be sure to bring the conversation around to answer your questions before the visit is over!
Discovery visits take practice.
If you find yourself back in the office wondering how you spent an hour talking and still don’t know anything new about your prospect, forgive yourself and replay the visit in your head or talk it over with a colleague until you recognize where you could have done things differently. Then schedule another visit.
Once you become adept at your discovery visits, you will find that you are able to shorten the time between identification and actually asking for the gift. Discovering a prospect’s true interest in your organization prepares you to deepen that interest into passion. And once you have passion, in-depth research on your prospect prepares you to ask for the right amount.
Best wishes to you on your next discovery visit!
Click here to register for the 6/14/2012 webinar: Savvy Conversational Research Techniques for Fundraisers