The Perspectives Course has probably helped you enlarge your vision, given you new ideas for action, or challenged you to enter new area of involvement.
"How can I pass on the benefit I received to others?" This is a common question asked by every student who benefited from the course.
Perspectives Alumni who had asked this question earlier have valuable experience we can gain from. There are useful lessons we can learn from the experience of Perspectives alumni, which adds up to around 25 years of experience in the US and 3 years in India.
Some of the observations from the experiences of alumni are:
- Most students joined the Perspectives Course because of positive endorsements from friends.
- The most effective method of signing up Perspectives students appears to be alumni inviting their friends personally.
- Promotional tools like brochures, posters, promotional emails and this website are useful support materials for alumni to invite friends to Perspectives.
- Promotional campaigns like putting up posters, distributing brochures, making announcements in churches, email promotions can raise the curiosity of potential candidates. However promotional campaigns in isolation may not result in signing up candidates for Perspectives. These campaigns must be followed up with personal invitations to see potential candidates signing up for Perspectives.
"How do I invite a friend to Perspectives?”
As you’ve noted from the learning of the Alumni, personal invitations are the most effective means to sign up students for Perspectives. You can learn from the alumni how to do this successfully when inviting your own friends.
Typically most alumni tend to go through a set of similar steps when they invite their friends to Perspectives. Although these steps need not be strictly followed, you could keep them in mind while inviting a friend personally.
- Identifying potential candidates: Based on your personal knowledge about your friends, you may feel that some of them would benefit from attending Perspectives. You identify and prepare a list of friends in this category. Please also see the Promoter’s Grid which may be helpful for you identify your friends who may benefit from Perspectives
- Understanding the need: With each friend, you identify a need you see in his/her life for which Perspectives can provide an answer.
- Introducing the course: You introduce the course to your friend, explain how the course might meet a specific need you saw in his/her life. Also share with him how the course helped you personally.
- Facilitating decision-making: Based on the questions your friend might have, you guide him/her using different promotional tools like brochures, promotional emails, this website etc.
Some guidelines to keep in mind when you invite a friend:
- If you invite a friend for whom Perspectives does not meet any of his needs, you are doing a disservice to him and to the Perspectives class.
- Your goal is not to fill up seats for Perspectives, rather to make the Perspectives course available to those whom you believe would truly benefit from it.
- Therefore most of your focus should be spent on rightly identifying the candidates, which is step 1. If you have identified the right candidate, steps 2, 3 and 4 would flow naturally.
“How can I identify which of my friends will benefit from Perspectives and the ones who may not?”
“How can I ensure that I do not bring people who may not really benefit from Perspectives?”
Use the following grid to help you distinguish between two sets of people: those who will benefit from Perspectives and those who may not.
Whether Perspectives would be useful to a person at a given point in his life depends a lot on his/her spiritual search at that point. Let’s consider possible spiritual searches a person may experience at different stages of his life and the potential impact of Perspectives at these stages.
“How can I identify which of my friends will benefit from Perspectives and the ones who may not?”
“How can I ensure that I do not bring people who may not really benefit from Perspectives?”
Use the following grid to help you distinguish between two sets of people: those who will benefit from Perspectives and those who may not.
Whether Perspectives would be useful to a person at a given point in his life depends a lot on his/her spiritual search at that point. Let’s consider possible spiritual searches a person may experience at different stages of his life and the potential impact of Perspectives at these stages.
Promoter’s Grid
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. |
Stage 1 |
Stage 2 |
Stage 3 |
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Spiritual Search |
|
|
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How can you recognize people at this stage? |
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You will see them being actively involved with
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You’ll find them
In church and society
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Potential impact of Perspectives |
May find Perspectives NOT VERY USEFUL |
Perspectives might have SOME IMPACT |
Will find Perspectives EXCITING |
You could use this grid as a personal tool to assess a how a potential candidate might benefit from Perspectives. Use this grid only for your own personal decision making in inviting a friend to Perspectives. It would be not be right to share your findings with the person about the stage at which he/she falls in this grid. It is only for your personal reference.
What are the promotional tools available and for what purpose can I use each one?”
We have mentioned the use of promotional tools to facilitate your friend’s decision-making.
Take a look at these tools and their uses in the Promotion Toolkit below.
Promotion Toolkit
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Promotional Tool |
Expected Use |
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Poster |
To create awareness and arouse curiosity to know more. You can print out these easily customisable Word .doc posters or request us for a larger full colour poster. |
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Brochure |
To communicate to the potential candidate the possible benefit of attending the course and few key details |
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This website: |
To provide a pool of detailed information which the candidate can explore to know more about Perspectives and arrive at a decision to take the course |
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Promotional email |
Provide an invitation to a friend, share how the course helped you, give a brief introduction to the course and provide links for further exploration. A PDF brochure can also be attached to the email. |
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Registration Form |
To enable a potential candidate to express his/her final decision to attend the course. |
| Presentation to make in Churches | Make a short presentaion about perspectives in your church, youth group or women's fellowship. |