By Mitch Gingrich
The Iron Logic of Competition will put political treasurers, compliance consultants and fundraisers out of business.
While the political campaign world is generally a nice place, where professional treasurers eagerly look forward to having drinks with their competitors at the next convention, that pleasant picture is a lie. Even in this industry, businesses compete for clients and will profit or bust based on how well them perform. For every friend in the business, there are 5 firms who will eagerly pry your clients away and leave you with an empty client roster. You cannot afford to ignore the Iron Logic of Competition:
- You must win clients or go bankrupt.
- Competitors test new strategies, technologies and processes, keeping winners and ditching losers.
- Successful innovators start taking clients from static competitors
- The rest of the competitors must copy innovation or retire.
For a professional treasurer or fundraiser, your livelihood is at stake. Complacency is easy. Routine and past success traps many professionals into the prison of complacency. Clients show at the beginning of the cycle. Maybe you’re down 5-10% midway through an odd year. When January of an election year rolls around, your client list is down 50%, it’s too late. Revenue crashes. Profits evaporate. You lay off employees that feel like family. Even if you SCRAPE and CLAW you probably can’t get that revenue back. You earned a reputation for failing the Iron Logic of Competition.
Don’t let your competitors open a lead. Putting it off even a few months risks your business and livelihood.
When Michael Jordan played high school basketball, he copied Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the two best players at the time, who themselves rose copying the skills and styles of past greats. Jordan watched Magic and Bird intently, copied their moves, practiced, practiced, practiced to be just like them. After years of competing with and losing to these greats, Jordan achieved similarity.
Then Jordan adapted. He worked on his dribble, his defense, and his perspective. He tweaked training. He tweaked how he practices with his team. He tinkered with every aspect of his game, his body, his mind. He tested changes, saw whether they helped or hurt. He rejected changes that lost and kept changes that won.
This is the Iron Logic of Competition. In competition, copy winners and test differences.
The Iron Logic of Competition applies to political campaigns. You win or you go home. No Secretary of State, the FEC, no regulatory agency gives prizes for second place. No one gives salary for second. Reporters only interview losers a couple of times if at all. The post-election party depresses everyone. Your vision stays just a vision. Losers are out of the game.
Campaigns and professionals who test new technology and rationally evaluate its performance will replace the old guard with sentimental attachments to old tech or who are just stuck in their ways.
Most modern campaign pros watched the shift to digital media. Some of the old mail pros who didn’t adapt to the new technologies still exist, but they lost control over huge chunks of campaign budgets. Their businesses, client rolls, revenues, and profits shrank radically if they failed to adapt.
What campaign pros are next?
Political treasurers and fundraisers are in the crosshairs of change.
ISP revolutionizes campaign finance and fundraising.
Treasurers using ISP create higher quality reports in less time than their competitors. They can get the campaign data they need with less work and in less time. Our research (article coming soon) shows that reports filed through ISP average fewer RFAIs, which translates into less political capital and campaign resources squandered on preventable mistakes. Treasurers can take more clients, get their work done in far less time, and with greater accuracy using ISP. The list of competitive advantages, from automation of busy work to pricing to functionality to support and enterprise service is long and detailed. Every point is an advantage your competitor uses to take your share of clients. I know, because at ISP, we make every point our advantage and take away every reason you have for using one of our competitors.
Treasurers using competing software systems are vulnerable to professionals who adapted to ISP.
Can a fundraiser printing out old school call books raise more than one using a mobile app? Can they work for as many clients? Mobile apps put actionable data on the screen while calling. A phone is easier to carry than a book. Callers press a button to call. The app tracks how many calls they made, letting fundraisers babysit multiple candidates at once. Callers can text donation links to the donor or send follow-up emails with the touch of a button, radically increasing the rate at which donors give. Across the board, mobile apps changed the industry for fundraisers.
The time saving alone allows fundraisers who switch to ISP to gobble up their competitors’ clients. But since fundraisers generally get paid on a percentage of the amount raised, they’ll also make significantly more by working innovative tech into their processes.
If you’re a political treasurer or fundraiser who ignored the Iron Logic of Competition, you probably feel a deep pit in your stomach. You should!
Here’s the good news, ISP thrives in competition. We’re constantly pushing the limits, testing and rejecting losing adaptations, and accepting winners. That’s our job. This is why we exist and why our clients love us. We keep our clients at the front of the competitive pack, giving you the best chance to win elections or grow your business.
Don’t wait until it’s too late to adapt. Don’t wait until your clients switch to someone who adapted. It’s easy to think, “I’ll make a change next cycle.” By then, your campaign could be over. Your clients could move to someone already on ISP. It costs a lot less to keep a client than to gain one!
This logic called “Iron” because it’s hard and unbending. It doesn’t play games or give second chances. This is your campaign. This is your PAC. This is your business.
Don’t mess with the Iron Logic of Competition.
