“Happy with it” vs. winning

I assume you're using CiviCRM. Are you happy with it?

That's good. But it's not enough.

The real question is: Are you winning with it?

Are you nailing your membership goals? Are you expanding your capacity to fulfill your mission as an organization? Can you point to measurable wins?

If you are, hit reply and let me hear about it.

If you're not, what's stopping you? Let's get that out of the way and move you into more than just “being happy” with an “okay” system.

- A.

What’s next?

You know that win you just got?

What was it — you rolled out a new feature? Hit a membership goal? On-boarded some new team members?

Fantastic. Congratulations.

Now, what's next?

I'll tell you what's next. Turn it up. Foot on the gas. Keep building.

You’ve got a mission to fulfill, and you're not there yet.

I want you to take half a second to note your victory, note what you did right, and then get in there and put it on blast for your next goal.

Write me back. Let me hear what your win was, and let me hear what you're getting after next.

Stay on it,
A.

Division of labor

This morning my wife's car wouldn't start. So she called me. And I fixed it.

In my house anything under the hood pretty much falls to me.

Is that the way it should be? Should all women assume that car maintenance and repair is an area for some man in their life?

Of course not.

There is no should here. In my family we've simply discovered over the years that some of us are more or less interested in taking on certain types of tasks.

Now that we have a common understanding for how we’ll handle most types of work, we're all pretty comfortable with how we've divided it up.

So what about managing your business software systems? Who should be responsible for what types of tasks?

The short answer is: There is no should here.

You get to decide what tasks you'd like to take on yourself, or allot to your team, or assign to an outside specialist. You'll decide this based on your assessment of people’s interests, stress levels, skill sets and aptitudes, and your own cost/benefit calculations.

Here's the thing:

There is no right or wrong in dividing this work.

There are common patterns that you might draw from — such as the notion that the CEO should not be caught up in answering every user support request, or that high-value early-stage planning and architecture is a good candidate for pulling in an outside expert.

But you don't have to follow those patterns. You can take on any tasks yourself if you wish, or assign them to whomever you decide.

Don't let anybody convince you that you have to do it one way or another.

Just be sure you're making a reasonable assessment of concerns such as cost-to-benefit, efficiency, and most importantly: measurable business outcomes.

All the best,
A.

Your CRM is for growth

CiviCRM will let you collect donations. But that's not really what it's for.

It will help you manage memberships. And register event participants. And manage your mailing lists. And generate reports. And more.

But those things are not the reason you have a CRM.

Your CRM is there to help you grow.

To grow your income. And your membership. And your advocacy base.

So that you can grow your mission and your impact in the world.

What growth opportunities are there for you? What are your goals for growth? How can you leverage your CRM to make that happen?

All the best,
A.

Vitamin N

Sometimes the best response to a new idea is simply to say “no.”

Or at the very least, "slow down a minute."

There's no shortage of great ideas in the world. You'll hear them from your board, from your members, from staff at other organizations.

But a good idea is not enough. It needs a plan. It needs a goal. It needs a realistic assessment of benefits and costs.

Of course it can be hard to identify the ideas that are worth pursuing. Here are three questions you can ask yourself to make it a little easier:

1. What are the measurable business outcomes w'e’ll get if we implement this idea?

2. What's it going to take to make this happen?

3. Is there another way we could get the same benefit — easier, faster, or cheaper?

Only you can answer the first one. If you're not sure how to answer the other two, it's okay to pull in a more experienced player for expert advice.

Here's the thing:

If you care about your nutrition, you probably want to be sure you're getting the right vitamins. This one is what my mother used to call “Vitamin N.” Take it often.

And when a careful assessment leads you to a “yes,” you can move forward with purpose.

You don't have to say no to everything, but you should really make sure that when you're saying yes, it’s for something you really need.

All the best,
A.

Boeing 737

In yesterday’s email I offered you a Boeing 737 for $500,000. (No not really. Do I look like I have a Boeing 737? But I could offer you 17 free kittens!)

So why wouldn’t you buy that airplane? Those planes typically sell for something between $89 million and $135 million. At half-a-million dollars, that’s a steal!

But of course there are plenty of reasons not to take that deal:

• You don’t need an airliner, and couldn’t use it — couldn’t even afford to use it — if you had one.

• Oh, you could resell it for a profit? How many buyers do you know off-hand?

• Meanwhile, that’s $500K out of your pocket that you could be putting to very good use.

Here’s the thing:

Just because something is a good deal in theory, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you, right now.

Whether that’s a 737, or a full-blown Salesforce implementation at “non-profit rates,” or an out-of-the-box open-source CRM with zero license fees — you still have to be able to use it, for identified business needs, with identifiable value.

All the best,
A.

Perfect and affordable? Wrong questions.

Ever bought a house or a car? Most people quietly ask themselves two questions about such a purchase: Is it perfect for me? And, can I afford it?

But in business it's different. In business those are not the questions. The main question in business is this: Will the business value of this purchase significantly exceed its costs? (And there are several costs to consider.)

If the expected value isn't right, no price can be low enough — even if it's free.

I mean, can I give you 17 free kittens? I can drop them off at your house tomorrow.

Can I give you a burned-out car with no doors and no engine? You've got plenty of space in your front yard.

How about a dull razor for a dollar?

Boeing 737 for $500,000? Come on, that's a heck of a deal.

Here’s the thing:

CiviCRM, like WordPress, Drupal, and other open-source tools, is extremely affordable if you just count the license fees — there are none! Even when you add on the implementation costs, you can still come out way ahead.

And if you’ve identified the business goals that this helps you achieve, and you know the value of those achievements, you can pretty easily tell whether it’s worth the investment. (Hint: With careful planning, it usually is.)

All the best,
A.

Buyer’s remorse

Have you ever bought a pair of shoes or a shirt (or a CRM solution) that you didn't really love?

Most people have. I have.

Buyer's remorse, buyers regret, whatever you call it, it's a real thing.

When it happens, we don't usually blame the seller. The seller was just selling what they're selling, and we decided to make the purchase.

Usually we don't even blame the manufacturer. This thing we bought is probably good for what it is. There are probably people who would love it.

It’s only later that we realize it wasn't really what we wanted.

So what's the difference between a purchase we love and one that we regret?

Usually it comes down to one simple question:

After you've owned it for a while, can you point to specific, valuable benefits that you're getting from it? Does this shirt make me look great? Do these shoes feel comfortable all day, and do they fit wonderfully with the rest of my wardrobe? Am I actually using this CRM to grow my membership faster than ever?

Here's the thing:

If you want to avoid that feeling of buyer’s remorse, it helps a lot to know, before you decide on the purchase, what those specific, valuable benefits are that you're trying to get.

Name them. Put a value on them. And then think about whether you have reason to believe that this purchase is going to help you achieve them.

And in a business setting, if you can't put a value on the specific benefits you're trying to achieve, should you be making any purchase at all?

All the best,
A.

How big could you get?

In the entire world, right now, there are a finite number of people who could be members of your organization.

If your mission is to serve professionals in a certain industry in your state, then that number is the total number of professionals in that industry in your state.

If you wanted to diversify, you could probably include retired professionals who want to support the industry, and students who are studying to break into that industry.

Either way, it's a finite number.

Do you know what that number is? If you don't, you can probably find out, or make a fairly reasonable working estimate.

Now ask yourself: How many of those people are members of your organization right now? 1 percent? 30 percent?

Now ask: What is your goal to increase that number in the coming year? What could your organization achieve by adding 10% or more to your membership rolls year-over-year?

And what would it take to get there?

Here's the thing:

Your members are out there. It's a known quantity.

You may have good reasons for not wanting to grow bigger. But "not having a goal" should not be one of those reasons.

What's your goal for membership growth?

All the best,
A.

“We're not interested in ROI”

As if on cue, right after I sent yesterday’s email to this list, I met with an association director who literally told me, "We're not a business, so we're not really thinking about ROI here."

If you ever catch that thought flowing through your head, please stop a moment and ask yourself two simple questions:

1. Do we have unlimited resources?

2. Do we not care what impact we make in the world?

Of course you're interested in ROI.

The sooner you make peace with that notion, the sooner you can get on to the business of making an impact in the world with your finite resources.

All the best,
A.

Profit

I love a good joke; here's one of my favorites:

The struggling non-profit organization: really good at the non-profit; not so hot at the organization.

Hilarious, amiright?

In a for-profit business, everyone knows they're there to turn a profit. They won't be around long if they don't.

Unfortunately, too many mission-driven organizations don't have the benefit of that clarity. After all, they weren't founded to make a profit but to serve a mission.

But sooner or later (and hopefully sooner), every organization has to ask itself: How are we going to fund this mission?

Resources will always be finite. Even if money grew on trees, somebody would have to pick it.

Here's the thing:

Membership dues, event fees, contributions, grants: all critical income sources that have to be maximized, continually.

Staff salaries, operations, infrastructure, materials and event production, marketing: all expenses that need to be aggressively managed.

Just like in a “real” business, if you're investing your limited resources in a way that's not generating more income than expense, you're going to have a real hard time carrying out your mission.

You're applying that same rationale in managing your CRM, right?

All the best,
A.

Legos

Starting out with CiviCRM is a lot like opening a box of Legos.

You may have seen what's possible by looking at what other people have done, and you can definitely get a sense of how things fit together by playing around with it here and there.

But you're not going to build anything is cool as this Taj Mahal or even this simple bank building without a lot of careful planning, or a very clear set of instructions

If you're starting out with CiviCRM, or have significant improvements in mind, be sure you take the time to make a clear plan, based on clear business goals.

You don't want to wind up with a pile of bricks.

All the best,
A.

CiviCRM vs Classy and DonorPerfect

One last thing from my recent conversation with a client on pros and cons of CiviCRM: how it compares to other CRM's.

When this client came to her organization several years ago, she was involved in the decision to move their data into CiviCRM from several other systems, including Little Green Light, WePay, and ConstantContact, plus an array of spreadsheets from various department heads.

On top of that, her organization has recently combined with two others, and I've helped them move their data from Classy and DonorPerfect into their existing CiviCRM system.

She had this bit of insight comparing CiviCRM to their experience in Classy and DonorPerfect (lightly paraphrased for readability):

DonorPerfect was easy enough for me to understand, becuase I work all day in a CRM and think in those terms. And it was possible for staff to get things done, but only by thinking very carefully about how all the data fit together. So it made sense from a technical perspective, but staff couldn't easily relate it to their own mental model of how things work.

As a result, they never pulled their own reports — they hired a contractor to pull out reports on a per-request basis. And it was clear that staff using DonorPerfect had been skipping data entry tasks out of frustration; it was just hard for them to see how it all fit together.

Staff who are now coming into CiviCRM from DonorPerfect are saying that CiviCRM is easier for them. That's because they've had a lot of hand-holding from me and from Allen to understand how it works, and because we've streamlined the workflows to fit the staff's understanding of the work.

Classy, on the other hand, was simple to the point of being simplistic. Staff were just using it as a contact repository, with no notes, no relationships. But because it was so simple, it was very easy to use, and offered beautiful dashboards on the data it did track. Because of this, staff coming to CiviCRM from Classy thought that CiviCRM was just impossibly complicated, and it's not as visually as beautiful, which has a subtle negative impact on their user experience.

But actually, those former Classy users are now not even using CiviCRM, because what we learned was that they weren't even using Classy as a CRM. They just used it to collect credit card payments. They never even needed reports from Classy, didn't use it to track actual contact information. So for the work they're doing now, they don't really need the CRM, so they're shielded from the complexity and I didn't have to train them on Civi at all.

I see here two bits of wisdom:

1. A complex system can be molded to fit the organizations needs, but without good training and careful streamlining of workflows, it can be frustrating and confusing for staff. With an open-source CRM, you can do that streamlining; but you still have to do it.

2. A simplistic CRM is easy to use, but it's almost not a "real" CRM at all. That is, it may allow you to collect contributions or survey responses, but don't expect to do meaningful segmentation in support of your engagement / moves-management strategy.

All the best,
A.

3 ways to shield staff from complexity in CiviCRM

Yesterday I talked about shielding staff users from some of the CiviCRM's complexity, and I mentioned a client of mine who made a point of doing that before even launching the CRM for her staff.

How did she do it? She used a collection of features in CivCRM and her CMS (WordPress):

• Limit access to features with CMS permissions and roles:
  If a user hasn't been trained on a certain feature or workflows, she just doesn't give them access to it.

• Limit access to data with CiviCRM ACLs:
  If there's sensitive data that only certain staff should see, of if there's a collection of data that would just be confusing to some staff, she shields them from it using ACLs.

• Simplify data entry with CiviCRM profiles:
  Users who just need to enter data (record contributions, register event participants, enter new contacts) don't always need full access to all of CiviCRM's back-office features. For these users she's created a few simple profiles (remember, in CivCRM a profile is just "a collection of fields") that serve as freestanding data entry forms. It's much easier to train staff on these streamlined forms than it is to train them on all of CiviCRM.

To paraphrase a comment from my conversation with my client:

Without this training and shielding, the system is so complicated that staff will either be unwilling to use it regularly, or they'll be overwhelmed by complexity and frustration, which then makes the whole thing an uphill battle.

Here's the thing:

CiviCRM is a powerful and complex system. You can do a lot with it — which unfortunately includes creating a lot of headaches for your staff. Data has to be recorded correctly. Complex relationships need to be created, between individuals, organizations, events, mailings, activities, payments, and other entities.

But it also provides great features to streamline that complexity into workflows that are manageable for your staff, based on your organization's unique needs.

The more you invest time — and careful goal-driven planning — to get that right, the easier your staff's lives can be, and the more value you’ll get from your system.

All the best,
A.

Shielding users from complexity in CiviCRM

A complex and powerful system like CiviCRM will give you a lot of rope — sometimes enough to tie yourself in knots.

I love my consultation work because it gives me time to talk with clients about valuable topics that probably wouldn't be justified if I were billing for every minute of a phone call.

Yesterday I had a great talk with one of my clients about the pros and cons of an open source CRM like CiviCRM, compared to other CRM-like systems she's worked with (and she's worked with several!)

Here's a paraphrase of something she said to me yesterday about managing complexity in a system like CiviCRM:

One of the reasons CiviCRM has worked so well for us is because I myself made sure that the system was set up and ready to go before I ever created a single user login. And then when I did start adding users, I made sure each of them was carefully trained on their specific tasks.

This matters, because first impressions count. If it's not very easy for new users to get started, or if there's the slightest hint of frustration at the beginning, users can lose confidence in the system early on, and that will linger.

It's like going out on a first date, but you're still getting dressed and fixing your hair for the first 20 minutes. Not a good look.

Here's the thing:

Simple systems are usually simplistic; powerful systems are usually complex.

Starting off right — when you're first launching the system, or when you're rolling out a new set of improvements — often means shielding your staff users from that complexity.

Simplify workflows where possible.

And if there are unavoidable complex workflows, make sure you understand what they are, why they're necessary, and that your staff are well trained on both how to complete them and why they work as they do.

This way you can use the complexity of your CRM as a benefit, instead of letting it become a liability by intimidating your staff users or wasting their time with a system that confuses them.

All the best,
A.

Why are CiviCRM upgrades hard?

If you’ve already got an expert professional (in-house or outsourced) handling upgrades for you, you can probably skip this email. But if you’re curious about the kinds of challenges that can come up, or you’re doing the upgrades yourself (totally do-able, by the way), this might interest you.

Running your own open-source CRM gives you a lot of flexibility and power. But it also gives you ownership of maintenance, and that includes upgrades.

In fact, upgrading your software may be the one maintenance task that comes up most frequently, that you can't get away from, and that can make you pull your hair out when something goes wrong.

So why are upgrades hard?

The short answer is: They're usually not.

But sometimes you can run into problems like these:

• You don't know how to backup your site before the upgrade (and if this is a problem, it's about more than your upgrades, because frequent backups are a minimum best practice for any site that you're running.)

• If someone has modified your CiviCRM code files (which is a bad idea but sometimes developers will do it), those customizations will be lost in the upgrade.

• If someone has created PHP or template file overrides, or made changes to the database schema (again, bad idea, but it can happen) those customizations can cause fatal errors during or after an upgrade.

• it can happen that one or more of your extensions is incompatible with the new CiviCRM version.

• CiviCRM upgrades sometimes require changes to your CiviCRM settings file, or to your customized message templates, or to your CMS theme.

• The new CiviCRM version may provide new warnings about issues that have long gone unnoticed on your site. The warning isn't caused by the upgrade, but it can be surprising to start getting new warnings.

• The new version may require an upgrade to some other component of your site: the CMS, PHP, MySQL, etc.

After you've handled a few upgrades, you'll see some of these, or others. And it can be frustrating.

But it's not CiviCRM's fault. Out of the box, a vanilla installation will almost never hit any of these issues.

The complexity comes from the fact that CiviCRM itself is meant to be highly configurable, extensible, and customizable. The more you shape it to your needs, the more valuable it becomes for your work — but the more attention you'll need to give in maintaining it.

Here's the thing:

As with everything, customization and complexity are trade-offs.

Before you decide to make significant customizations, it's good to think about the actual business benefit you'll get, and compare that to the increased cost of maintenance. Usually it's worth it — if you have clear business goals for the system.

All the best,
A.

Identifying your true fans

It was about 15 years ago that Wired Magazine's founding editor Kevin Kelly published an essay called "1000 True Fans". The idea has since gained a lot of traction with small-scale artists, musicians, and writers.

But it's not just for them.

Kelly's idea was simple: An individual creator can escape the starving-artist lifestyle and actually make a decent living to fund their art by having only 1,000 true fans — the people who love their work so much and are so deeply affected by it that, as Kelly says:

[They will] purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. ... They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work.

But Kelly alluded to something more, which is this:

Although the 1000 true fans will indeed make up a large part of the artist's income, they also have an incredible compounding effect on increasing the number of regular fans.

That's because they talk, and share, and wear the t-shirt, and get the tattoo. And they know people.

If you're trying to spread a message, if you have a mission in the world, your true fans are the ones who will help you spread it.

Do you know who they are? The people who click every link in your newsletter? The people who select the VIP package at your events? The people who donate for every appeal? The people who share your content on social media?

Could you find out? And if they don't exist, could you cultivate such a fan base?

Here's the thing:

Your CRM is a great source of information on all of your members, potential members, donors, and casual contacts.

But among that mass of 5,000 or 300,000 collective individuals, there are the people who will take your message to the world — or at least to their world — if you can get them excited about the value that you're providing.

All the best,
A.

Using your CRM to deliver value

Most people I know think of CRM as a way to capture value.

Of course that's true. Collecting data, signing up new members, managing volunteers and contributions —CRM is great for all of that.

But one of its most powerful uses is in delivering value.

I've hinted the last couple of days about the importance and meaning of delivering value. Here are some ideas to leverage your CRM in making that happen:

• Instead of sending one long monthly email newsletter to everybody on your list, use the information in your CRM to target specific content to people who are likely to care about it. Every second they spend reading your email is a cost; be sure the value they get is more than that cost.

• Streamline new-member onboarding with a series of email or snail mail communications that targets their sector, their interests, and their demographic.

• Offer a member dashboard for logged-in users, where they can not only see —and edit — their own information, but also see the content that will motivate them to increase their engagement.

• Make it easy for people to share information about the good work you're doing. A one-click “share this” integration with Twitter or other social media allows them to spend just a few seconds of their time while getting a sense of pride and belonging by participating in your work.

• Track, and make use of, behaviors that will tell you what their interests are: email links they clicked on, event breakout sessions they selected, campaigns they did or did not engage in, etc.

Here's the thing:

Yes, your CRM is a great tool for capturing information and engagement.

But more importantly, it’s a fantastic opportunity to make sure that your organization’s value is both well delivered and well received.

All the best,
A.

What it means to deliver value

Doing good work is a great thing, but by itself it's usually not enough.

I see this all the time in the open source software world. Somebody will create a wonderful piece of software and make it available for anyone to use. It's well written, bug-free, and well designed.

But nobody uses it, and eventually the project dies.

Why? Usually because something else was missing: Did anybody actually know about this software? Was there a good documentation that it would explain what it was for and how to get the most out of it? Was it easy for new users to get started, feel good about the experience, and continue on to master the more complex and powerful features?

Without all that, it doesn't matter how good the software was, not enough people were going to see its value.

Delivering value is a lot like delivering a package. Yes, the package has to have the correct content, but if it isn't delivered to the right person, or the right person doesn't recognize and open the package, then it wasn't really delivered. It was just sent.

Here's the thing:

Delivering value does not mean just doing good work. That good work has to be received and understood by people who can appreciate it.

For all the good work you're doing in your organization, how are you making sure that value is understood and received?

If you want members and potential members to value the good work you do, it's up to you to deliver that value in a way that will actually be received and appreciated.

Your CRM can help you do that.

All the best,
A.

CRM strategy: delivering value

How are you delivering value to your members?

As a member-driven organization, there's no question that you need members to be engaged in your work. Members support your work through dues, volunteering, and advocacy. And you serve them directly, as a core element of your mission.

But why would they want to give you their time, or their money?

It's because you're giving them something valuable in return.

Because you're also competing with a thousand other interests in your members' lives. Every second they spend engaging with you — reading your emails, attending events, volunteering, whatever — could be spent on other activities they value: time with their own business network, time with their family, entertainment, personal development, etc.

Here's the thing:

If you want more member engagement — more renewals, more volunteering, more mission advocacy, anything — the key lies in delivering more value.

Fortunately, that doesn't have to mean more work for you. But it probably does mean more strategic use of your limited resources.

And your CRM can help you make that happen. Let's talk about that tomorrow.

All the best,
A.