How many personal visits per week to donors/prospects?

I have recently been asked, "How many visits to donors should I be making per week." This question might come from an executive director, or it might come from the director of development, or it might come from the major and planned gifts officer. So here's the answer...

Here's how I do it.
1. Go to the report forms that you're going to fill out -- your monthly activities report form. This is your accountability mechanism for reporting all that you do for the fundraising effort each month. You DO have one of those, don't you? If not, why not?

2. Decide what I want to have as the end report for a given month. Say 20 visits

3. Go ahead in the calendar to the point where appointments begin to thin out.

4. Figure a set period of time, on set days of the month, when I will intentionally prioritize personal visitation over anything and everything else NO MATTER WHAT
I used to look ahead and program 2 weeks in the field, 2 weeks in the office. I worked it around board meetings, staff meetings, and moved what had to be moved. Your situation will be different, but the principle is the same. Set aside time in advance and protect it with all the guns you have.

5. Figure that I've got so many hours. Let's say I set aside a day and a half a week, but I vary the days so as to accommodate peoples' schedules Tuesday and half of Wednesday on the first week of the month, then Wednesday and half of Thursday the next week, then repeat the pattern for the remaining two weeks.

6. Then I start with time needed to do an appointment. I need a half hour for the visit or one hour, whatever. I have time in transport from one appointment to another. I have lunches to schedule, etc. So, let's say I can do two appointments the first Tuesday, then a lunch appointment, then two afternoon appointments, get back to the office about 4 and go through the mail and email, return calls, etc. etc. So that's five people I've seen that day. Then Wednesday take morning and lunch or take lunch and afternoon. Three people. That's eight people that week, right?

7. Start a spreadsheet of open appointment times, so that I can fill in as I go

8. Take my average of 8 appointments per week, go to my database -- my list of prospects that I've picked out to visit -- for a variety of reasons, of course. Find my top 12 people. I know that if I start with 12 I can get 8 appointments on my schedule and will have to do the other 4 on THEIR terms.

9. Pick up the phone, call the first person. Slot their appointment in so that it meets my schedule and theirs.

10. Pick up the phone call the second person, etc. etc. Fill the appointment blanks of the spreadsheet you're using as the people decide what time is best for them

11. Pick up the phone; then pick up the phone again, then pick it up again. Keep this up for an hour. Fill in the spreadsheet as you go.

12 You're done for the first week.

NEXT DAY
1. pick up the phone (PUTP) repeatedly for just 1 hour. Make the appointments for the second week.

NEXT WEEK
1. Pick up the phone repeatedly for just 1 hour. Make the appointments for the third week

THE FOLLOWING WEEK
1. Pick up the phone repeatedly for just 1 hour. Make the appointments for the fourth week.

Keep this cycle going. You're basically working about three weeks' worth of appointments ahead. Once you get that going, NOTHING gets in the way of it. Because you've already sewed up those time slots, right? Simple.

In other words, once you have made the priority decisions necessary, block it out on the calendar. Keep it sacred -- absolutely NOTHING gets through this, OK? Anybody comes along with a different suggestion for your use of your time, they get a growl and bared teeth! OK? Seriously.

Then just pick up the phone (PUTP), fill the spreadsheet of appointment blanks. Keep going in the first round until all are filled. Then you'll know what that 1-hour thing up above is all about.

It usually takes me about an hour to fill somewhere between 8 to 12 appoitment slots. And so I'm actually making maybe 20 calls in that hour. The rest are people who will get back with me -- I've left messages with them, or they're duds, or whatever.

The biggest block, and the biggest indicator of success, is
a. how many times you pick up the phone in that one hour, and then
b. how many of those spreadsheet slots you fill in with peoples' names that means scheduled appointments.

That's the only trick there is to it. PUTP, PUTP, PUTP, PUTP. Pick Up The Phone.

It gets monotonous after a while when you get good at it. But it's the threshold you have to cross to get that absolutely WONDERFUL feeling of success in a task that you set yourself to do.

AND... to top it all off, you get to go out of the office on completely legitimate business, get away from the hassles, the meetings, the politics, and meet some absolutely MARVELOUS people, and spend some time in their presence learning about their needs, wants and values, their life's story, and how they feel about your organization.

It is, I must say, an EXHILARATING EXPERIENCE when you've done it. I would even say "addictive" in the sense that the next time it's so much easier that it was the first time, etc. etc.

Know what I mean?

So the answer to your question comes in the first six steps. Once you've got that psyched out, and have the days marked on the calendar.... that's it: That's how many you should be doing.

When I was doing it two weeks out and two weeks in, I did about 6 appointments, maybe seven sometimes, a day. Six days the first week out, then five the second week. So that was about 36 slots to fill for the one week and about 30 slots to fill for the second week. So that month I could visit about 66 people -- ON AVERAGE.

Not everything worked out so smoothly. Sometimes I'd have a two-hour drive to the next appointment, sometimes the guy was a no-show, sometimes I could only fit in 3 appointments in a day's time -- you know, depending on where it was, etc. So the process needs some flexibility in approach. But you can see how this adds up over time. Makes a REAL GOOD LOOKING activities report for the month! I can tell you that!

That's how it's done.