Picture your calendar.
What’s the first thing you see in your mind’s eye?
Is it a due date? An upcoming party or birthday celebration? The start of a new semester?
Time management research shows that the majority of stress and feelings of overwhelm are due to the next two weeks on a person’s calendar.
Knowing and understanding this is essential to achieving a pivotal shift in how you approach and schedule face-to-face time with donors and potential givers.
Time is a nonrenewable and valuable resource with which few people easily part.
Some people will be busy and overwhelmed no matter what you ask them to do in the next two weeks. Yet face-to-face meetings are what will launch your giving to the next level.
Stretch it out.
“Gosh, man, I’m slammed these next two weeks.”
No problem. Go three to four weeks out and settle on a mutually agreed-upon meeting date.
Yes, the same feelings of stress and overwhelm will rear their ugly heads in one to two weeks. There’s nothing new under the sun.
It’s a total self-deception.
Two weeks from now, you’re just as busy for the next two weeks after that.
However, if you go beyond two weeks, a person’s stress level about their workload, schedule, etc., will drop dramatically.
It’s weird.
It’s human nature.
Plan ahead.
I recommend using this approach for anyone who is putting up some resistance. You can schedule farther out, so the busyness of the next two weeks isn’t an easy no; they don’t have an easy excuse.
Be flexible.
By contrast, some people will respond to an available time window in the next two weeks.
Unlike the first group, they’re quick to react.
They’re so overwhelmed that if they’re not pushing you off, it’s like, ‘Ah, let’s see where it’ll fit in.’
It’s sort of a both/and kind of thing.
Some will want to grab the opportunity to meet with both hands. They’re in!
Then there’s another group of people, maybe working people, company owners, leaders, and the like, who are more oriented towards scheduling farther out.
Very busy company executives can almost get offended by being asked on short notice. They expect and appreciate a heads-up.
Remember that as you get to know people or understand their work, it’s important to remember that.
We sometimes tend not to realize the priority people might place on the chance to meet and what God is doing, given the opportunity.
Remember, this is just a tool in your toolkit. We’re not looking for one way that works.
Keep moving forward.
This is the first article in a series “Work Smarter, Not Harder.”
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