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If You Work in a Nonprofit, Guess What? You're in Sales

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If you work at a nonprofit, you might not think you're in sales. Your passion and livelihood is working with rescue dogs, military veterans, or foster children. And how is that sales?

You are asking for people’s money or time. That is selling. You are in sales no matter what the cause is.

Start prospecting now

The sales process for a nonprofit is longer than if you were selling an ordinary product or service. Why? The buying cycle is different.

Consider an animal shelter. A shelter's prospects can be donors or perspective pet owners. However, getting donations has its limitations. Think of individual donors. Are most people's donations already budgeted? Probably not. What about corporations? Donation cycles are often tied to budgets. If you want a corporation to become a sponsor, there will be a deadline for submitting a proposal. You’re not going to be successful if you missed this year’s deadline which was likely some time last year.

Your other prospects might be individuals who can adopt pets. Think about yourself. Can you adopt a pet right now? It’s unlikely, and even if you wanted you, you might have to convince other family members.

You should recognize that your prospecting process for a nonprofit might be a little longer than for products that are needed immediately and wanted.

Know what are you are selling

Too often the people working for a nonprofit have a passion for the cause. They make the mistake of thinking that everyone else has the same passion for the cause. The problem is they don’t realize that their job in selling is to uncover that passion in others if it exists. More important is helping others who lack the passion to see why supporting the organization is necessary.

And that’s what selling is.

Think about an organization which is having a fundraiser and honoring a local leader. Let's say the leader accomplished certain things during his tenure in office--perhaps he increased budgets to promote cancer research. A potential donor could be someone whose family was impacted by cancer.

You would not be selling a donation for the fundraiser. You would be selling the ability of the donor to honor the memory of his family member. You would be selling the pride of knowing that other families could be spared the pain of a sick family member. You would be selling hope.

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What do these reasons have in common? They are selling emotions; you are unlikely to make a sale for a nonprofit unless you connect with your prospects’ emotions. What do your prospects care about? That’s what you need to learn before you can sell.

Give yourself time to build the relationship

Consider yourself lucky if you call someone and they immediately have a connection with your cause; they happily donate their time or money. That’s unlikely to happen.

Think about any other sale. You would never call on a prospect once a year and start the sales call with the equivalent of “Do you want to buy?” Instead, you would build relationships with your prospects so that they want to help you and donate to your cause.

That means you must establish and maintain meaningful contact with your prospects. Meaningful means you initiate contact by phone and not email, especially if you’re local. The telephone is more personal.

The objective of the first phone call is to have a second phone call or a face-to-face meeting. During your cal, demonstrate that you know something about your prospect so he will want to meet with you.

You could call and say, “I’ve admired the work you’ve done in the community and wanted to meet with you to see if our work at the ABC organization might interest you. Our work in cutting-edge medical research is benefiting a lot of children in need.”

Contrast the telephone call strategy with an email that may or may not make it through a spam filter, get opened, and read. An email which says, “I’m the executive director of the ABC organization and want to meet with you to show you the work we’re doing,” does not demonstrate a focus on your prospects and why they should want to take the time to meet with you.

Nonprofits do wonderful work in our communities; however, they can't do their work until someone sells the idea of supporting them.

Profile: Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling, a sales training and sales consulting company. She works with business and sales professionals to increase sales and earn larger profits. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. Maura focuses on sales strategies and tactics that lead to better sales results. Maura is a sales expert for WomenSalesPros. She is part of their group of top sales experts who inspire, educate, and develop salespeople and sales teams.She speaks internationally on influence, selling skills, and strategic selling at trade association and sales meetings, demonstrating how her principles can be applied to get results. She successfully worked for over 20 years in the male-dominated oil industry with two major corporations, beginning at Mobil Oil and ending at Chevron Corp. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and was one of Chevron’s top five salespeople in the U.S. having sold over $9 million annually. Maura writes several columns to share her sales philosophies. She's been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power, and Entrepreneur.