Easter
Campaign
Several years ago while in the middle of my career
at Sunrise Engineering, I worked out playing basketball every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday morning from 6:00 to 7:00 am,
I and a group of men would religiously exercise to exhaustion each of
those days on the Stake Center basketball floor. The group of players were very good, competition
was keen, the work-out was intense and it was good to relieve stress and to
stay fit. We never fought or argued but,
without referees, we did learn quickly that you would never “get the call” when
taking a charge in the lane.
One morning one of my basketball buddies told me
that his mother-in-law, the Mayor of Fredonia, Arizona, had been meeting with
town people discussing the possibility of building a public sewer system in the
community. At that time, each resident
of that town used an on-lot septic tank and drain field to dispose of sewage. I asked him to call her and then I asked my
people to visit her that day to offer our services to help the town make the
project happen. Over the course of the
next few years, Sunrise Engineering assisted the community to find an
attractive funding package, sell the project to the citizens, design, manage
construction and start up the new collection and treatment system.
That was the best business situation I could imagine. It was a referral in the Engineering world. I regularly called on all potential clients
in our area, checking to see what projects were coming up and if we could help
them. That was the equivalent to door to
door trackting but the Fredonia sewer project, in missionary lingo, was a
referral to an investigator who was baptized.
At Sunrise about 80% of our projects came to us via
referrals. They were repeat customers with
new projects, which was equivalent to someone in a part member family referring
a family member. Also, new projects for
new clients also came from self-referrals (from the client himself) and
referrals of others from other clients, contractors, agency staff or just people-networks
like in Fredonia. All of these had one
thing in common, the client knew us and had heard something good about us by
someone they knew or trusted.
John Wayne once said, “Life is tough but it’s tougher when
you're stupid.” Let us not make life
tougher for ourselves. Realize that
calling on someone who has invited you to come will be much funner than a cold
call or cold contact. The referral will probably
have interest in your message and will be much more likely to yield results
than a cold door approach.
The Easter Campaign on the member Facebook project proves
this to be true. The project consisted of about 4 weeks of a special Easter
presentation on the country communication Facebook page with an offer for a
free DVD, Finding Faith in Christ.
The numbers for the project as of 12 May 2014 are as
follows:
Total Referrals, Easter Campaign 545
Contacted as of 12 May 2014 259 (48%
of total)
Positive at Contact 98 (38%
of those contacted)
New Investigators 48 (49%
of those Positive at Contact)
or
(19% of those
contacted)
Baptismal Dates 5
“Share” on member Facebook page 81
Referrals from Member “Share” 78
From these numbers it can be extrapolated that 20% of the
referrals will become new investigators.
That will amount to about 110 investigators. This is incredible results when considering
the Facebook page had just started at Easter time. Only 2 of the 4 Stakes have had the Facebook
project explained to them and the units in those 2 Stakes had not had time yet
to call all the social media specialists to work under the ward or branch
mission leaders. The Easter campaign was
really just put out there to see what would happen and help us learn what to do
and not do in the future.
We learned valuable lessons.
Members sharing on their personal Facebook page yields referrals almost
every time. Awareness of each campaign
must increase and members should be encouraged to “Share” the campaign message
with their friends. Members should use
their personal face book page and obtain as many friends as possible. Members should set up their own profile on
Mormon.org. We send the DVD immediately
after receipt of the referral and send missionaries who will often be a few
weeks before contact is made. The future
campaigns should indicate that representatives will come by for a 5 or 10
minute explanation.
Finally, we cannot be satisfied with 38% of the referrals
being positive. People who ordered the
DVD actually had to enter and send their contact information to receive the
DVD. There has to be some level of
interest on their part to do that; enough interest to at least listen to our
explanation and message for 5 or 10 minutes when we come by. These referrals are sacred and deserve to be
contacted and carefully taught.
At Zone Conference next week we will work on more persuasive
and none threatening door approaches to improve our opportunities to get in for
a few minutes to answer questions or make a comment.
President Robinson
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