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Media File Name: 3 - INCREASE SIGNUPS-Vimeo 720p.mp3

Media File ID: 2435853
Media Duration: 20:37
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Date Ordered: 2015-12-10

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Welcome to Church Fuel One. Today's master class is all about how you can
get more people to sign up for just about anything in your church. Whether it's
small groups, volunteers, or a special event, we're going to help you lead more
people to take action.

There's this tension that I don't feel like it should ever be resolved between
church growth and church health. Only the graphic designer people may notice
this but one of the reason we made our logo orange and blue like that is the
combination of a flame which symbolizes church growth, more people, more
everything and then a blue water drop which symbolizes health and life and that
kind of stuff. So we want your church to grow, but in a healthy way. And
there's this tension between we want to just be healthy and honor God and love
Jesus, but then we want to grow, we want to reach more people. And so many
pastors, I remember being a senior pastor in this boat as well, I was on a quest
for more. I wanted more people, we need more people at our church. And it
wasn't just about getting more people to have more people, but it's because
people needed Jesus. So we wanted to reach more people. And then we needed
more volunteers. Because there's this ministry that we wanted to do, so we
needed more volunteers. Could we get people that weren't serving to serve?
Could we get people to just be committed and be consistent in their
volunteering? And then we needed more money because we needed to build a
building or renovate a building and have space and do this ministry and plan
other churches. And so we were on this quest for more. And there's a tension
there because at the same time we needed to be content, right? We're not
content leading a church of 100, we're not going to be content leading a church
of 1,000. And if we're not satisfied leading a church of 1,000, we won't be
satisfied leading a church of 10,000 because there's always more.

And so we're on this quest for more and there's a tension there that will
probably never fully resolve, maybe we should embrace it. And I want you to
be content. I want you to be satisfied with where God has you, but I also know
God's called you and the reason that you're a pastor is because you want to
reach people. And so today, in today's Church Fuel One master class, I want to
talk to you, I want to give you some training about how to get more, there's that
word, how to get more people to sign up for just about anything. The principles
that I'm going to share with you, they're very practical. They're actually proven.
These things are going to work. And this is some very practical stuff that I'm
going to give you today. But it's going to help you get more people. Maybe you

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want to get them signed up for Sunday school or small groups. If you want to
get people into more small groups where they can follow Jesus, this will help
you do that. If you want to get more people to give, this is going to help you do
it. If you want to get more people to serve or volunteer at the big community
event that you've got coming, these principles are going to help you. These
principles that we're going to talk about today are going to help you get more
people signed up for anything that's going on in your church.

So, let's dive into the training today and talk about how to get more people to
sign up for anything. The first thing you've got to do if you want to get more
people to sign up for something is you've got to make it easy for them to do it.
This is simple, but it's so important and so powerful. If you want more people to
do something, you've got to make it simple. All right, if something's
complicated, fewer people are going to do it. But the simpler you can make
something, the more people are going to do it. So, if you want people to sign
up, make it easy for them to sign up. If you want people to take that step, don't
make that step an 18-foot long jump. Make it a simple step they can take. So, if
you want people to sign up for something, you've got to make it easy for them.
Now here's what we do in churches. So many times we want people to sign up,
we actually make it complicated or difficult for them to sign up. We make it
easy on ourselves to track everything and automate everything, but we make it
difficult for them. But if you want people to take a step, you've got to make it
easy for them to do it.

So one of the things that I wanted to give you is a simple card. A simple card.
All right listen, I've been to lots of churches. People bring me in on different
weekends to evaluate all kinds of different stuff and sometimes the
communication cards or the sign up cards that I see are so complicated. They're
so complicated. Even this card, you can look at this simple card. And I've given
this to you in the in design template, I've given this to you in a Word document
so you can customize it, change something. But this card is simple. You don't
need to have a bunch of colors and a bunch of logos. Simple is better. The
simpler you make something, the more people will do it. If you want more
people to fill out your guest registration card, stop asking for their birthdates
and their kids' names and all this other stuff. Simple information. Even this
card, if you look at it, we go: What is the crucial information that we need to
know? Are we going to mail them anything to their house? Then we don't even

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need to ask for their address, right? Can't they just sign up with their name and
their phone number because we'll text them the information. Make it simple.

So this card is a very simple card. Notice the other thing that I've done on this
card here is this isn't a sign up and commit card, this is an interest card. We call
it an interest card and that's intentional. That's important because that's a small
step. Are you interested in serving? Then fill out this card. See that's simple. It's
a simple step that they can take. They're not committing to 6 months or 12
months or showing up next. It's just a simple "I'm interested." This is a "I'm
raising my hand" card. And then we just give a few things, you don't need to
give them 17 boxes they can check of places they're interested in. Just a few,
simple boxes. And so on our quest to get all this information from people and
get people to the exact right spot sometimes we overwhelm them with
information and we make the step too complicated. But if you want more
people to sign up for something, make it simple. As simple as possible. Can
they sign up by texting something right in the service instead of going to the
table where there's a long line? Can they do it from their smartphones? Stop
getting mad at people for being on their smartphones during church and engage
them on their smartphones. Redeem that technology and use it for something.
Can they sign up by texting? Can they sign up by emailing? Do they have to go
to the sign up table? Can you make it simple for them? Because if you'll make it
simple for them, more people will do it.

Here's the second thing. When you want to get more people signed up for
something, you've got to talk about it until you're tired of it. Talk about it until
you're tired of talking about it. See, most of us, we announce something, "Hey,
sign up for this, we've got this thing.", and then we're on to the next thing. And
we move too fast. If you want more people to do something, you've actually got
to make it simple for them. But you've actually got to talk about it more. Don't
talk about it less. Talk about it more, from more angles, on more Sundays, and
across more mediums. You've got to talk about it until you're tired of it. I mean,
you've got to really dig deep. You've got to dig deep and you've got to talk
about it over and over and over again.

Here's another thing you've got to do, number three. You've got to use tiered
deadlines. Use tiered deadlines, what do I mean by that? Well, here's what I
know. Deadlines help people make decisions, don't they? See, a date on a

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calendar causes people to act. Now you know this to be true. This is why you
pay your taxes on April the 14th and head to the post office maybe on April the
15th or hit that e-file on April the 15th. Most people don't pay their taxes way
far in advance. You know when they pay their taxes? The last possible minute.
Most people do their Christmas shopping the day or the two or the three or few
days before December 25th. Most people make those year-end contributions the
last week of the year. Why? Because December 31st is the ultimate deadline.
See, deadlines cause people to take action. See, a sale, think about it, a sale is
really a deadline. Labor day sale, buy these shoes, 40% off today only. Why are
you going to buy those shoes today? Because tomorrow they're going to be 40%
more.

See, deadlines help people make decisions. So this is true for your church
people as well. If you want people to do something, create a deadline for them.
And I actually recommend that you have at least two deadlines. Here's a couple
of the deadlines you can have. Two deadlines. First of all, I'd have an early bird
deadline. I'd have an early bird deadline. I would say, listen, I'm going to pick
an event here and use it as an example for our training, but this could apply to
anything. Let's say you want to have a bunch of people sign up for a serve day.
A serve day would be like on a Saturday you're going to all meet at the church
at 9:00 and you're going to go out to four or five different projects from around
your city or town and you're going to serve. So you want all of the people in
your church to volunteer to serve on this day. Well, what I would do is have an
early bird signup. The first Sunday I announce this, I would say "Listen. Three
weeks from now is serve day. It's serve day 2016. And today is the first day to
sign up. In fact, for everybody that signs up we've got for the first 50 people
that sign up for the serve, we've got serve day T-shirts. We've only got 50 of
them, limited edition. I'm wearing one right now. Serve day T-shirts if you sign
up in the lobby at the table. All we need is your name and your phone number.
We'll text you all the information and if you'll sign up today to serve at serve
day, then you'll get the t-shirt today." That's the early bird sign up.

If you're signing somebody up for something that involves money, you could
involve a discount for youth camp or things that involve money. You go, "Hey.
If you sign up by this day, the price is this. But if you sign up after this, the
price is this." That's an early bird deadline. What does it, is that speaks to all the
organized people in your church, all the people who want to do, all the early

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adopters and all the organized people and all the 'right now' people, the people
that are motivated by now.

So there's another kind of deadline you should have though, and that's the “last
chance” deadline. I am a huge believer in this. If you want more people to do
something, you need to create a day that they can't do it. Now that sounds kind
of counterproductive. You're like, "Wait, shouldn't we have people sign up until
the last minute?" No. You should actually create a deadline to sign up and make
it a real deadline. So, for example, for serve day, I would make the deadline to
sign up for serve day, which is on a Saturday, the Wednesday before. And on
that week, that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday I'd be sending out emails and
social media updates and maybe even postcards that says, “The deadline to sign
up is Wednesday.” Can I sign up on Thursday? No. And you're going to have to
be mean to a few people but last chance deadlines work really, really well. And
you'll see this in lots of businesses and lots of industries but it’ll absolutely
work in church as well. Give people an early deadline, and then give people the
last chance deadline. Today is the last chance to do this so that is why you need
to do it. What that does is that creates a compelling reason for people to act.
They can't do it tomorrow. There's a reason for them to do it today.

Now, all of this, it needs to go on that communication calendar. One thing that
I'm giving you this month is a communication calendar. It's an Excel calendar,
it's created in Microsoft Excel, but you can import it into Google or use it in
Numbers or any different program you want. I created a communication
calendar for a serve day, so the example that I've been using. And this serve
day, when you look at it you'll see a couple of things. You'll see, first of all,
several mediums. We talked about communicating it until you're tired of
communicating it and so for serve day we're going to spend three weeks talking
about it. You go, "Michael, we can't talk about something in three weeks, we've
got all these other things to talk about." That's the problem. You got to not do
some of those other things. If it's worth doing, it's worth spending multiple
weeks on.

So you'll see on the calendar, if you download it and print it out, you'll see
there's one Sunday that we're going to show a video. We're going to show a
video recap of last year's serve day and we're going to tell everybody sign up
begins next week. Sign up begins next week. So we're not even asking them to

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do anything, we're just teasing them a little bit. We're just telling them this is
coming. We're not asking them to sign up for other things along this calendar,
this is all about serve day because this is a big deal in our church and if it can't
be a big deal in your church I want you to consider whether you should even be
doing it. So we're going to show a video. But that week we're actually going to
sneak out an email to all the people who served at serve day last year. We say,
"Listen. I know we said on Sunday that sign ups start next week and they do for
everybody else but you're special. You participated last week. So we're going to
give you today on Tuesday the opportunity to sign up now and you can choose
the projects you want before they fill up."

And so by the time we go public with it, we're going to already have people
signed up. Then the next Sunday we're going to communicate it. We're going to
say "Today's the sign up day and we've got T-shirts available and if you'll go
and you sign up today …we've got this many spots, we've got this many T-
shirts." Create a bonus. You'll see throughout there we created another deadline.
We created that early bird deadline then we created that last chance deadline the
Wednesday before. Today's the last day. We used email in there. We used a
postcard. Because this is a big deal, so we're actually going to send a postcard
to key leaders and volunteers and we're going to go in our database and choose
the people that need to get that postcard. We're going to send an email, also, to
people who participated the last year. So we're segmenting, we're
communicating. We're firing different bullets of at different groups of people
because we want to get targeted communication. All in our communication
calendar, all in our plan. So we're building this communication calendar. We're
talking about it a lot, until we're sick of it. The week of we're going to do social
media updates, countdowns. Seven days until serve day, six days until serve
day, today's the day.

And then the Sunday after it's over we're going to show a recap video. If you
can't get it done in time, you show it the next week. A testimonial video. And so
all of this communication energy goes into serve day. The reason people are
going to sign up for it is because it's a big deal. More people are going to sign
up for it because you’ve spent more energy promoting it, because you've
created a tiered deadline system, because you've created a communication
calendar that works, because you're giving people a reason and you're telling a
story. That will help you get more and more people signed up for your serve
day.

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Now, here's the fourth thing. The fourth thing is you've got to make it personal.
This is huge, this is huge. If you want people to do something, it can't be all
about the thing. It's got to be about them because people inherently care about
themselves. You're the same way, I'm the same way. You've got your issues,
your job, your ministry, your calling, your family, your kids, your calendar,
your vacation that you're thinking about. You're thinking about your vacation,
not mine. You're thinking about your kids, not mine. I'm thinking about my
kids, not yours. What do we think about? We think about ourselves. We think
about how does this relate to me? When opportunities come your way, you
think, "How is this going to affect my family?" And that's what people in your
church are thinking. When you're talking about serve day or youth camp or
small groups or anything that you want people to do, you know what's good for
them. But you know what they're thinking about? They're thinking about
themselves. So here's what you've got to do: you've got to make it personal.
You got to make it personal.

Now, I've seen this and I've done this so wrong in the past and I've really
learned this over the last several years. I've learned this, to not make the
communication about our church or our thing but to make it about the people.
So this is how this works. When we talk about small groups we talk about,
"We've got small groups in our church. They meet different nights. Here's what
we study. Here's who the leaders are. We've got a group near you." And so, it's
all about the group. It's all about the group and it's all about the church. Instead
what we've got to do is we've got to make it personal for people and talk to
people about what's going to happen to them when they get in a group. Here's
the friends you're going to make in a group. Here's the problems you're going to
have solved by being in a community group. Here's what's going to happen in
your lives and in your kids. Here's what's going to happen for your kids when
they go to camp. Not who the speaker is, who the band is and when the dates
are. That's about us. But here's what's going to happen in the lives of your
teenagers when they go to youth camp. Hey, here's what's going to happen in
your family when you serve with your kids. Here's what they're going to see.
Here's what they're going to think. Here's some benefits to you. Not just,
"Here's what the projects are and they're from 9:00 to 1:00." We've got to make
it personal.

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Now one of the masters of this was Steve Jobs. Now I'm probably like a B level
Apple fan boy, I don't have every Apple product. Like I'm not wearing the
Apple watch right now because I have a watch and it tells time. I have a dumb
watch, not a smart watch. But it works fine so I don't have an Apple watch. I
haven't found a use for it yet. But I do have Apple computers and I have an
iPhone and we have an Apple TV in our house. So I'm a B level Apple fan. But
I loved watching Steve Jobs just talk about his products because he was the
master of this. You can go back and watch some videos, he was a master at this.
He talked about the products by talking about the way people used the products.
The products almost took a backseat to the people using the products. So, when
he stood up and he announced the iPod. I mean, listen, Apple wasn't the first
person to invent an mp3 player. I actually had a Creative, Creative was a brand.
It was blue, and it was this big. I had a Creative mp3 player.

So there were a lot of mp3 players before the iPod came out. But when Steve
Jobs and Apple came out and introduced the iPod and he brought it out and had
it in his pocket and he pulled it out and there was this big aha moment. He
didn't pull it out and say, "This holds 1gb of data." That's not personal. That's
about the device, not about the person. He didn't say, "This is how big it is or
how small it is." He said some of those things, but those weren't the main thing.
When he pulled it out of his pocket and he introduced the iPod to the world,
here's what he said. He said "It's 1,000 songs in your pocket." And I've always
remembered that because I love that sentence, I love that metaphor, I love that
imagery. Because he made the iPod about the users. It's your music in your
pocket. It's like you were walking around when people were walking around
Walkmans and Discmans, carrying their discs around their case full of discs. He
said, "This is like having 1,000 songs in your pocket." Just that phrase, it would
just conjure up the fact that people could have their music with them and they
didn't have to carry around all these discs. And this was a personal way to
communicate the reason that people needed an iPod.

So if you want someone to sign up for your small groups, for your serve day, to
sign up to volunteer, to sign up for youth camp, you've got to make it personal.
Why? Why should they sign up? What's the benefit to them? What's going to
happen in their life? So with small groups it's not just about the title of the
study, it's that you're going to make lifelong friends. Student camp? It's not just
like here's the band and here's the speaker. It's, "Hey listen, your teenagers are
going to hear from the adults who say the same thing you say but just in a

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different way that they're going to listen to it." See, serve day, it's not just like
here's the three projects and it's from 9:00 to 1:00 and we're going to serve the
city. It's like, "Hey, if you've got kids you can serve with your kids and they're
going to see you serving and caring about other people and it's going to attack
the root of selfishness in all of us." And that's a benefit. And see you're getting
to that deeper meaning. You're getting to those benefits. Not just the reasons
people should do something, not just the facts, not just the details, but the real
personal benefits. If you truly want people to sign up for your stuff, and it's
church stuff so we know it's good stuff. It's important stuff, it's stuff that's going
to impact not just their life but maybe an eternity. So we know it's good stuff.
But we've got to communicate in such a way that they see the compelling,
compelling benefits and just are compelled to act.

So those are some ways that you can get more people to sign up for anything.
Create some deadlines, create a communication calendar, talk about your
benefits, talk about it until you're tired of talking about it. Clear off the space.
Don't talk about three or four or five things at once, spend lots of time talking
about it. Come at it from different angles. Tell stories, share testimonies. Show
videos, social media. Build it all together. And throughout all of it, throughout
all the deadlines, all the communication and all the angles that you're hitting,
make sure you make it personal for people. That's how you get more people to
sign up for your stuff. Thanks for watching this episode of Church Fuel One.
We'll be back next month with another insanely practical training. Download
the resources, check out all the resources, all the case studies that are available
to you in the program. Let us know if you've got any questions, if we can serve
you in any way.

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