The sentence after the ask

I was walking into a store Wednesday night and a girl outside asked if I wanted to donate to her cheer team. I said something like, “I’m not sure if I have cash,” while I was already pulling out my wallet to check. And she basically immediately let me off the hook. So I looked at her and said, “Wait, are you just going to give up?” I did have a $10, so I gave it to her. She had a bag of candy and told me I could pick something, and I told her to keep it and give it to the next person. Then I went inside. On the way back out, I saw her taking an Apple Pay donation from someone else, which made me laugh a little because one of the things I’d been thinking while I was inside was that she should probably have some way to take donations from people who don’t carry cash. I put my stuff in the car, came back over, and asked her how much longer she had to do this. “About two and a half days.” So I asked her what objections she was hearing most often: - “Not right now.” - “Are you going to be here tomorrow?” - “I don’t have cash.” Then I asked what she does after somebody says one of those things. Basically, nothing. She asks once, and if they say no, she lets them go. Which, to be fair, is what most people do. So we workshopped a few responses. “Are you going to be here tomorrow?” > “I might not be, so now’s your chance.” “I don’t have cash.” > “Neither do I. I take Apple Pay.” “Not right now.” ... this one took me a second. Then: “That’s okay. What about right now?” Just smile when you say it. The point wasn’t to badger people until they give you money. It was that the first response people give you is often automatic. They’re walking somewhere, thinking about something else, and “no” or “not right now” comes out before they’ve even really processed what you asked. And if you’re asking people for something, you should probably know what you’re going to say one sentence later. That was the part she hadn’t thought through yet. She was already doing the hard part. She was standing there asking basically everyone who walked by. She just didn’t have a second sentence. I also told her she should have something like, “Anything from $1 to $100 helps,” just to make it clear that a small donation is still useful and give people some sense of range (and someone might just pull out a Benjamin). The nice thing is she’d already been doing this for a couple days, so she has a baseline. Now she can try responding instead of stopping at the first objection and see if it actually changes anything. I’d bet it does. And honestly this applies to a lot more than fundraising. Most people spend a lot of time thinking about the ask, and not nearly as much thinking about what they’re going to say one sentence later.