6 Things Politicians Want To Know

Here are the six things that politicians want to know, whether you are presenting something to them, either in writing or as an op-ed or as a call into a radio show or you're calling their office.

There's basically six things that are going to come up.

1) Issue

And the first one is what's your issue? So you have to have a clear idea of what specific issue you're focused on and what you want to get done. That's just completely essential.

2) Position

The second part or the second thing that they will want to know is, what is your position on this? Do you want to get something done or do you want to stop something from happening? Are you in favor of a particular bill that they support or are you opposed to it? And you want to let them know. So the second thing is really your position and what you think.

3) Facts

And the third thing really is, do you have any supporting facts that they haven't heard before? So if you have new information that they might not have known, and again, it doesn't matter whether you have a meeting with them or you are bringing this up through some other method of communication ultimately... and if we look at the whole idea of having a meeting with them, that's really the key here. You've got a 15 minute meeting. You've got to communicate these six important things. And the third one as I said, is you have to have your facts. You don't have to have a complete Bible of information, but you have to have four or five really salient facts that make a lot of sense. 

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 4) Arguments

The next thing that you want to bring up are arguments in support of what you're trying to say. And again, if you have other arguments from other people or your group include those and it's not a bad idea to include arguments on both sides because you might say, look, these are the arguments in favor of what we want to get done. However, you will find that our opponent on the other side will say it should be this and this and this. And then you have a rebuttal to that so you have a counter argument to whatever you think the rebuttal is going to be and that shows that you've done your homework, you pull together some information and you kind of give a more balanced point of view to them and that I think makes you a more credible delivery person of the ideas that you're trying to put forward.

5) Story

Another thing that's really critical, and I have this listed as number five, is if you have a personal story, it doesn't have to be your personal story, but it could be from a person that you know or a constituent in the district of the lawmaker where you say, this person is really being hurt or this business is really being harmed by the current legislation and we need to change it, or this would benefit this person because they have a specific problem that needs to be overcome and nobody has thought of this yet and this would address that particular problem. So having an anecdotal story, nothing wrong with it.

If it has strong emotional appeal or shows that there's a victim involved, obviously that helps strengthen your case as well. And then finally, and they actually expect you to do this, so don't be put off by it, but the term that they use is you have to have an "ask."

6) Ask

You don't want to waste their time in this short 15 minute meeting and at the end of it just say, well, I'll get back to you with more information.

You want to say, look, here's what I would really like you to do. I would like it if you would support me and our group in this particular legislation or if you would vote for what we are suggesting or we're in support of the bill that you are putting forward and we just want to make sure that if there's anything that we can do to convince other lawmakers or if there's anything that you can do to move it forward. Either get it out of committee, get it to a floor vote, any of those kinds of things.

Is there somebody else we should talk to? But you would have some kind of ask and basically the ask is going to be listen, we would really appreciate it if you would support this piece of legislation or you would vote for it when it comes up.

And that really is the final thing that will walk you through the six things that the politician is going to be conversant in and know about.

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So again, just to recap what they are, you're going to have your issue and if there is a specific bill you can cite that and that's actually a good idea too saying, look, we know that you were a co-sponsor of bill number 1234, and we support that as well. And that issue has to do with ABC.

He'll know what the issue is or she'll know what the issue is generally anyway, and our position is you tell them what your position is. You tell them what the facts are that you understand them to be, and then you also say, here are some supporting arguments in terms of either data, facts, research, other things that you can supply to them or their staff.

Very helpful because they may have it or they may not, and finally, if there's a personal or anecdotal story that you can support, and then lastly, of course is the ask, so that's it.

And that's six things that you can do to strengthen your case when you meet with a lawmaker, write them a letter, communicate with them somehow to let them know that there's a specific group of things that you would like to get done in this area. So hopefully that's helpful.

This is John Thibault with iLobby. If you would like to have other training, other tools, other information, please feel free to sign up. leave your comments below and feel free to share this.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much.