1. Best Practices for Legislative Engagement
Hello! We are Dianne Hafleigh and Cheyenne McMahan from the Florida SBDC Network. We’re pleased to be here today to talk with you about legislative best practices.
Best Practices for Legislative Engagement
Dianne Hafleigh & Cheyenne McMahan

2. Top 5 Tips Focus Strategically Know Your Audience Deliver Your Message
Share A Story
Follow Up
So today, we’re going to be discussing the Top 5 Tips for Legislative Engagement.

3. 1: Focus Strategically Monumental task FL: 189 Legislators
120 Florida House
40 Florida Senators
27 Congressional Members
2 U.S. Senators
Categorize in 3 groups:
Critical: Key leadership positions (SD)
Essential: Hold or could hold senior positions (SD & RDs)
Supportive: Not in leadership positions or key committees (SD & RDs)
Legislative engagement can be a monumental task. In Florida, we have 189 legislators: 120 Florida House, 40 Florida Senate, 27 Congressional Members and 2 U.S. Senators.
Critical to our legislative strategy is Tip #1: Focus Strategically.
For purposes of strategic importance, each Legislator is categorized into one of three groups: Critical (red-bold), Essential (blue-bold), and Supportive (green-bold). Categorization assist in helping network leadership maintain focus on the relationships that can assist us in achieving our strategic objectives.
Critical Legislators are Legislators that hold (or could hold) key leadership or committee positions critical to the strategic interests of the Florida SBDC Network. It is a shared responsibility between CEO and Regional Director to have frequent communication and engagement with these Legislators. These “Critical” Legislators should have extensive and intimate knowledge and unquestionable champions for the SBDC program.
Essential Legislators are Legislators that hold (or could hold) senior or leadership positions, leadership on key committees, or demonstrate a willingness to sponsor and/or champion legislative causes on behalf of the Florida SBDC Network. It is the primary responsibility of the Regional Director to have frequent communication and engagement with these Legislators and Headquarters leadership to provide support as needed. Essential Legislators should have extensive knowledge of the SBDC program and understanding of how program services benefit constituent business and create impact for the economy.
Supportive Legislators are all other Legislators. These Legislators do not (or expected to not) hold key positions and/or serve on key committees important to the Florida SBDC Network. It is the primary responsibility of the Regional Director to have regular communication and engagement with these Legislators. These Legislators should be familiar and understand the SBDC program and how program services benefit constituent businesses and create impact for the economy.

4. We use a lot of excel files in the Florida SBDC
We use a lot of excel files in the Florida SBDC! This is how we stay on track with our legislative engagement strategy. We have two excel files of contact information for legislators: here you’ll see Congress and we also have one for our State Legislature.
We include pertinent contact information as well as key committees, positions, and we also indicate which of our regions is the “primary” – aka they are the primary responsible party for legislative outreach for that member.

5. 2: Know Your Audience Legislative Calendar Social Media Review Bios
February (D.C.)
March (Tallahassee)
Social Media
Review Bios
Know party, committees, issues, occupation
The most important thing when preparing for your meeting is to know your audience. Understanding your Legislator will help customize your message and ensure for a productive meeting.
You’ll want to be familiar with the legislative calendar and schedule your visits accordingly based on key meetings. In Florida, we have state and federal funding. We conduct Congressional visits in February and State visits in March.
Know your audience. Review the Legislators biography (available on the web – and Know their party affiliation, committee and subcommittee membership, issues that they have passion, and past record on the issues you will be discussing. It is also helpful to know their occupation. Often, if the Legislator isn’t an attorney, they are a small business owner. Knowing this will help guide your discussion and demonstrate that you have adequately prepared for the visit.
We also use social media to keep abreast of our legislators and issues important to them.
We then, in turn, use this information to create Profile Sheets, which we include in our legislative packets. These are a dashboard per say about the legislator that our directors use when they do their visits. We recently started including information about the success story on the sheet – giving them a one or two sentence summary – so that when they only have a few minutes in between visits they can familiarize themselves.

6. 3: Deliver Your Message Make it easy Clear, concise, and consistent
Talking points
Support material:
Cover Letter
Profile Sheets
Brochure, Flyers
District Impact Sheet
Statewide Impact Sheet
Annual Report
State of Small Business
As you know, legislators are busy!
It’s critical to prepare and deliver a clear, concise and consistent message that results in further education, understanding and support for the SBDC program. Remember, we are not there to lobby but to educate and champion support for the SBDC program.
When preparing for your meeting it is critical that you develop and deliver a uniform message that results in your Legislator walking away prepared to support the SBDC program. Your message should enhance their understanding of small business needs and how your SBDC and the America’s SBDCs help respond to those needs. Your message should also define your networks work; explain why it is essential, and outline how the Legislator can help.
In Florida, our State Director modifies our engagement guide each year with talking points, which our directors and leadership team use on their visits.
We also compile legislative packets, which we send with our directors for their visits. We have brought a few with us to show you – these include a cover letter, profile sheet, brochure, service flyers, district impact and statewide impact sheets, annual report and state of small business report.

7. 4: Share A Story Everyone loves a good story Success story requirement
8 written/ 4 videos
Strive to find a personal connection
For Critical and Essential legislators, share success story from legislator’s district
Everyone loves a good story. Key to our visits is a discussion of a client success story.
In order to do this, we have to have a repository of stories. In Florida, we require our 10 regional offices to submit 8 written success stories and 4 video stories a year. This is included in part of their contractual agreement with us and we ensure compliance during our annual quality improvement visits (QIPs).
Through stories, we strive to find a personal connection to the legislator, as well as demonstrate meaningful impact and return on investment. Ideally, the story has a great picture, great quote, and, most importantly, attributes impact to our assistance.
We strive to include a district-specific story for each legislator. When time and resources are limited, we focus on district-specific stories for our critical and essential legislators.

8. This is how we organize and track our success stories – the first sheet is a snapshot of an excel spreadsheet we use to track all the written and video success stories our regions submit each year. You’ll see we detail the clients name, business type, market segment, type of assistance, and whether the story has a client release, quote and picture.
We use this sheet and the research on the legislator to then select which story to use on the sheet (shown in the spreadsheet below). We strive to find a success story that includes a meaningful connection to the legislator. For example, Congressman Matt Gaetz is on the armed services committee. For his sheet, we picked a client that sells military memorabilia near our Navy Base.

9. 5: Follow Up Shouldn’t be one-time event Be a resource Stay engaged:
State of Small Business
Stay engaged:
Social media
Mailing lists
Events
Dividend$ Award
Client visits; Ask clients, champions to write letters to Legislators
SBDC Day
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, tip #5: Follow Up.
Legislative visits shouldn’t be a one-time event. Instead, they should be an opportunity to foster a relationship and continued conversation with the member.
Key to this is to try and establish and position your SBDC as a resource to them. In Florida, we developed our State of Small Business Report (modeled after the Georgia and North Carolina SBDCs) – which serves as a one-stop resource for all the updated small business statistics and data. We have heard from our legislative members and their staffers that this serves as a valuable piece to them.
Other ways we stay engaged, include:
-following and interactive with our members on social media. We try to follow up on visits in addition to and calls through social media. All our impact sheets can be found on our website, so we drive them to their specific sheet again in our follow up.
-Mailing lists: we include all of our mailing lists to receive key communication from our office.
-Events: When appropriate, we encourage our regions to invite legislators to events.
-As part of our network’s annual performance excellence awards, we annually give a Dividend$ Award to one legislator who championed legislation in support of small businesses.
-We also encourage our clients to invite legislators for clients visits and ask them to write legislators letters on our behalf
Finally, SBDC Day was a huge and very successful event for us to engage with our legislators. The day fell during our State Legislative Visits so our leadership team was able to use our “I Love the SBDC Day Because…” campaign and take pictures with legislators.

10. ? QUESTIONS www.FloridaSBDC.org Dianne Hafleigh Cheyenne McMahan
Communications Specialist
(850)
Cheyenne McMahan
Marketing & Training Specialist
(850)
Thank you. Questions?