Applying Seven Basic Management Truths to the Phonathon

Applying Seven Basic
Management Truths to
the Phonathon

Albert D. Melfo
Copyright 2008

www.academicimpressions.com

Applying Seven Basic Management Truths to the Phonathon
Phonathon management is an art. While good management in all work
situations is vital to the success of that organization, the phonathon requires
that those same management skills be applied immediately and intensely. In
most higher ed phonathons, your employees are students, working part-
time for you and juggling classwork and other activities. Your face time with
your employees is short, and the time that they are productively working (on
the phones) is even shorter. The phonathon is unique because in few other
situations does a small management mistake directly lose you dollars. Problems
in management rise quickly to the surface and show in the bottom line,
The phonathon is whereas in other situations, management problems can go undiscovered or
unique because can take a much longer period to be discovered. Being able to internalize the
in few other following management truths and put them into practice is essential to optimal
phonathon management.
situations does a
small management #1 – Successful employees succeed for different reasons.
mistake directly
lose you dollars. We all know successful people. Some succeed because they are driven to
achieve, to be at the top of their class. Some do it for the money. Some do it
for recognition. Some do it because they’re afraid to fail. Some do it without
knowing how they do it. Some do it for their own personal satisfaction. Others
do it for their managers. 2

Successful managers establish real relationships with their employees.
This relationship lets a manager engage in an ongoing dialogue with their
employees. The dialogue gives the manager a window into their employees’
personalities. As you get to know your employees, you begin to understand
what motivates them and what is important to them. You don’t need this
information to manage, but you will be more effective – and so will your
employees – if you take the time to learn what makes them tick. In the
process, your employees learn that you are interested in them more than just
as members of your staff. They play a critical role in your success, just as you
play a critical role in theirs. Letting employees know that you are interested in
their success reinforces your credibility as a manager, and it builds trust. When
an employee trusts that you want them to succeed, they will actively seek your
guidance and direction. When you provide them with information and tools
that contribute to their success, you reinforce your role as a resource to them
– which they value much more than your role as their supervisor.

#2 – In order to succeed, you must find out what motivates your staff and
work with it.

As managers, we work with many different individuals and different groups
of individuals. Each has its own distinct personality. I have run shifts to raise
money for regional theaters, for visual arts organizations, and for higher

Albert D. Melfo, Copyright 2008 www.academicimpressions.com

education. I have run shifts to sell season orchestra tickets, musical subscriptions,
and live theater packages. I have run shifts to sell discount travel packages to
the masses. The point isn’t that I’ve run a lot of shifts, but that they’ve all been
different. They have been different teams and they have had different group
energies.

Different individuals have different personalities, and different personalities
Experienced have different energies. Whenever you manage a group of employees, you
managers take a juggle a number of different energy types. It is important that managers balance
keen interest in the individual energies of their staffs to achieve the right group energy. The
effectiveness of your group hinges on your willingness to accept this balancing
the energy of the
act as part of your management role. Experienced managers take a keen interest
groups that they in the energy of the groups that they manage because they accept that ultimately
manage because they are responsible for setting the tone for the group.
they accept that
ultimately they Managing the energy of a group can be tricky, because group energy shifts. This
is particularly relevant to phone centers, given the nature of part-time student
are responsible for
employees and the corresponding turnover – a phone center is a group with
setting the tone for constantly changing parts. As a group changes, you will need to adjust your
the group. approach to managing the group’s energy. Just as you have to adjust how you
motivate individuals, you will have to adjust how you motivate your groups.
Think about your hiring decisions. Ask yourself if you are always hiring the same
type of caller. Group energy begins with the people you choose to add to the
group. 3

Your best opportunity to influence the energy balance of any given group is
during the hiring process. When you are hiring new callers and assessing their
qualifications, keep in touch with what your group energy is. The first question
you try to answer when you are recruiting new staff, of course, is whether or
not they are capable of performing the job. The second question should be,
“What will they bring to my group?”

For example, if your group has become complacent, you need to offset that
energy. To do so, you may need to step out of your comfort zone and begin to
add callers who you typically have not hired in the past (assuming, of course,
that you believe they will be able to do the job). You could, for instance, hire a
few applicants who come across to you as being more salesy than your typical
hires. Maybe you typically look for applicants who are active in student or Greek
organizations, and you really like the energy, but as a whole you are having
attendance problems. Maybe your callers are just too busy; experiment by hiring
some less outgoing students. Remember: You will train everyone you hire, and
much of what you train callers to do is to be more outgoing – at least on the
phones.

Your best opportunity to influence the attitudes that your callers have is during
their initial training. Minds are most accepting of ideas when the ideas are new.


(For example, it’s much easier for my son to learn a foreign language than it would
be for me.) Training isn’t much more than programming for humans. Give trainees
good information, and provide them with a solid foundation of your program
and your expectations for them, and you can essentially prevent most serious
performance and behavioral problems from developing. Quite often, trainees –
fresh out of training – out-perform veteran callers. The reason for this is simple
– they haven’t developed any bad habits yet, and they haven’t forgotten any of the
basics.

#3 – Fun is good, and success is fun.

Give trainees Ideally, you work in the development field because you enjoy it. With regard to
good information, the phone center environment, specifically, given the nature of the work that you
and provide do, if you didn’t enjoy it, you likely would not continue to do it, because you would
eventually be selected out of the business. To do this work well, you truly have to
them with a solid
enjoy managing, with all of the challenges that it involves.
foundation of your
program and your The first phone center shifts I ever ran were to raise money for the Pittsburgh
expectations for Public Theater. I managed a group of 12 people, who at that time were paid
them, and you can $5/hour plus nominal bonuses. The vibe of this group was the theater – the
excitement of live, off-Broadway productions, and the care and quality that went
essentially prevent
into the productions. The energy of this group was enhanced by our location – we
most serious called from the theater’s administrative offices in the basement. The theater’s
4
performance performance space was directly above us and, as we worked, we could hear the
and behavioral applause, laughter, and cheers of the audience while plays were performed. This
problems from group was successful because they loved the theater; some of them were struggling
actors/actresses or avid fans of live theater. They put that energy into their work,
developing.
into their calls. We were hired to raise $75,000 in 8 weeks. Instead, based on our
early success, the campaign was extended to 13 weeks, and we raised $125,000, a
record for the theater. The client was happy, and we had fun.

When I sold subscriptions to the Civic Light Opera’s performance season, my co-
manager and I had our phone center on one entire floor of a building smack in the

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middle of downtown Pittsburgh – it was a great space for the work we needed
to do (and it was donated by a generous friend of the CLO’s executive director
at the time). We ran a morning shift and an evening shift, and managed about 35
callers. In a subscription campaign, your objective is to help the box office sell
out scheduled performances. For the CLO, this included actually assigning seats
to individuals as they purchased them over the phone. The walls of our office
were covered with blow-ups of the actual seating charts for Benedum Center,
where the CLO performs. As the sales campaign progressed, you could watch
the seating charts filling up, steadily becoming covered by our color-coded
system that recorded whether the subscribers had purchased the whole season,
or the first or second half, etc. While our callers were on the phones with
subscribers, we assigned the seats, writing the names of the happy owners of
As a manager, the new seats directly onto the charts. This group was successful because they
you determine loved what they were doing. They wanted to sell out that hall, and they did it,
what the group selling up to 12 seats at a time – entire rows – during a single phone call.
energy of your shift
#4 – If your employees fail, you fail. & #5 – If your employees succeed, you
will be through
succeed.
your effective
management of As a manager, you determine what the group energy of your shift will be
individual caller through your effective management of individual caller energy. If you don’t learn
energy. how to do this, you will not stay in management.
5
Individual staff performance issues may be one of the most frustrating, repeated
challenges that a manager encounters. As managers and supervisors, you know
how important it is to maintain a consistent positive environment for your staffs.
Good caller morale is a critical factor in consistently strong shift performance.
Despite the energy and commitment that you devote to creating and maintaining
a positive, productive, and enthusiastic environment – despite training,
incentives, one-on-one attention to callers, and your personal commitment to
your shifts – you will nonetheless be faced with performance problems.

Sometimes even when you do everything in your power to help someone, they
fail to improve. Sometimes they even get worse. When all of your efforts seem
to fail, it can cause you at times to feel that you just can’t try hard enough. It
can make you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. It can make you feel
unappreciated by your staff. It can feel like employees are boxing you into having
to have the difficult serious talk with them. When you know that you are doing
the right thing, but you aren’t experiencing a positive outcome, it is frustrating.

#6 – Effective management = success.

How? Manage. “Manage” is an active verb. True managers accept that it is
their responsibility to address the performance or behavior problems that they
identify.


Do it. Set expectations and stick to them. Set your goals higher than you need
to be. Stretch. Find out what motivates you, and find out what motivates your
group. You may find very early that the things that most motivate you don’t quite
match what you need to be successful in fundraising. If this is the case, get out
of it and give yourself the opportunity to discover what does motivate you. Tap
into the energy of your callers by establishing a strong personal rapport with
each of them. When you understand your staff and what makes them tick, you
will understand the range of energy types that are at your disposal. It’s kind of
like conducting an orchestra – you have to know your players and their parts, in
addition to the overall score, in order to perform the work.

It’s a lot like coaching a team – you have to know your players’ strengths and
When you weaknesses in order to devise the plays that will allow them to win games.
understand your Manage consciously and with intent. Accept that you are there to manage
– when you make decisions and give instructions, you aren’t being bossy –
staff and what
you’re managing. You combine the energy. You stir the pot. You are the cook,
makes them tick, the coach, the teacher. Sometimes you are the cop, sometimes the gardener.
you will understand Respond to the needs of your group. Sometimes you will be serious, sometimes
the range of energy silly, sometimes nurturing, and sometimes you will be an instigator. You will do
types that are at it not because you’re in a certain frame of mind, but because it is what your
group needs. Effective management is not much more than being able to assess
your disposal.
a situation at hand, and respond to whatever the situation requires in order to
succeed. 6

#7 – Great shifts generally don’t just happen. They are created by great
managers.

Your ability to have consistently productive calling sessions is tied to how
fully you accept that the final outcome of any shift is a direct result of your
involvement. You are the manager. As the manager, you control the balance
of energy within the group that you manage, and you direct the group’s
energy toward achieving your program objectives. Sure, we all have off shifts
– nights when we do everything in our power to keep the energy positive and
productive, and our callers do everything in their power to have good calls,
but sometimes, it just doesn’t happen. When you have one of these shifts,
ask yourself, simply, “did I do everything that I could have done to make this
shift work?” Did you monitor shift results frequently and adjust your game
plan to offset non-performing calling pools? Did you monitor individual caller
performance to determine whether poor results were due to a potentially bad
list (no answers, wrong numbers, bad data, etc.), or to an individual caller who
was failing to use proper technique? If you noticed some of your top callers
failing to achieve the results you want from donors, were you willing to pull
them off of those lists? Likewise, were you willing to take a chance on some
newer callers who displayed potential, based on strong performance on non-
donor lists? These things all matter – even a well-prepared game plan can crash


and burn. If you can answer these questions in the affirmative, admit to your
callers that it was a rough shift, thank them for hanging in there, reinforce
to them your belief that they really gave it their best shot, and chalk it up to
experience. Tomorrow will always be a new day.

Setting the tone

When you give your group what it needs to be successful, you are being a
truly effective manager. As the manager, you set the tone when you select
your staffs. You set the tone with the decisions you make and the policies
you establish, and how you choose to enforce them. You set the tone with
your supervisory style and with the way you engage and interact with your
If you apply these employees. Your management style is only as effective as the results generated
management truths by your group.
to your phonathon,
If you apply these management truths to your phonathon, you’ll see quick
you’ll see quick improvement. Prospective donors will be able to sense the energy and the
improvement. control in the phone center when speaking with your callers. Well-managed
callers will help set the tone for new callers when turnover is high. In each
piece of your phonathon, your management practices will be tested. Whether
they are weak or strong, you’ll see their effects in your bottom line almost
immediately.
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Join us for the Phonathon Bootcamp to rethink and rebuild your skills in segmenting, scripting,
calling techniques, and recruiting and retaining student callers.

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