Today is a special, Sunday Edition of the Converse Digital blog to celebrate my next big experiment — The #ivs4charity Book Tour. Sure it’s a book tour to announce my new book, The Invisible Sale and raise $10,000 for 10 deserving charities… but it’s more… it’s an experiment in the power of Propinquity to build meaningful relationships that can convert to clients or future business opportunities.
It’s OK to Prospect for Sales at Charity Events
Some folks might think “that’s icky” when they hear me say the #ivs4charity tour isn’t just about raising money for charity. I get that… but here’s why they’re wrong. For them, charitable giving has to be pure to be right. Well I disagree. There is nothing wrong with creating a very cool event that benefits both a charitable organization AND the creator of the charitable event. Having motives that may be considered selfish isn’t impure. Especially when you consider all charitable acts are at their heart selfish in nature…but that’s another post. In fact, if more charities would approach their event design with this in mind — versus just offering up naming rights or other advertising awareness oriented sponsorships — they’d probably raise more money.
How To Create a Charitable Sales Prospecting Event
First, for this to work, you have to actually be committed to helping. If you just create an opportunity to place your business card in a bunch of peoples’ hands, you’re doing it wrong. Your motives will show through and people will resent it. Thus you’ll end up meeting a bunch of people that will never want to meet you again.
Second, pick a cause you truly care about. This will ensure your passion and “pureness of intent” shows through.
Third, focus the event on the charity as much as possible. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have any corporate branding or product mentions, just don’t lead with that message. For the #ivs4charity events (which are book launch parties) notice that we used the word Charity in the title and hashtag and shortened the book title to IVS. We even constructed a hashtag that conveyed the book tour was a vehicle ivs FOR charity.
Fourth, recognize the goal of the event isn’t to sell or make sales. The goal is to create Propinquity with prospects and customers via social sharing, content marketing, and ultimately, face-to-face interactions during the event. Your goal is to increase the frequency of positive interactions between prospects and your brand.
Fifth, make others the star of the show. When I was planning the book tour, I knew I wanted it to be about