It’s no secret associations are struggling with membership. Between the economic downturn and a shift in attitude towards association membership, organizations are struggling to keep their membership up.
Ed Rigsbee, CAE, CSP, knows all too well the struggles of selling membership. In his books The ROI of Membership, Ed lays out the key elements to convincing your members to stay, and new members to join.
“I’ll renew my membership if my company will pay for it.” How many times have you heard this one? Unfortunately, what they are really stating is something like this: “I don’t see enough personal value to pay for membership out of my own pocket.” Fortunately, this buying objection can be overcome.
Understand the Two Basic Features of Membership Categories
1) Professional/Career Development
2) Business Solutions
Most, if not all, of your organization’s (member-only) features of membership fall under one of the two above general categories. For business owners and professionals, both categories deliver high value and they will easily renew if the perceived ROI of membership is reasonable. Yet for employees, they believe their company should pay for business solutions. It is the career development that employees are most likely to open their wallets to receive. Add to the formula the member-only vs industry benefit wildcard and complexity increases. If others can get the value for free, then why would an employee pay out of their own pockets to join to only receive the same value? Take a close look at your career development offering.
Sell the Benefit of Career Development
This is where it gets tricky. You need to explain the “what’s in it for them” as opposed to simply listing the (members-only) features of membership and expecting the employee to make the personal value translation.
For every (members-only) feature of membership your organization offers, explains, lists or promotes—it needs to be presented with a bodyguard of benefits—the “what’s in it for me?”
Make the benefit translation for your employee members or prospects. Help them to satiate their buying motive of profit/gain with a clear explanation of how your organization’s career development features of membership will help them to advance in their job title and paycheck. This will be the key to your member recruitment and retention success.
Tools to Sell Membership to One’s Company
In the situation where the employee member or prospect sees some value in membership but is still not willing to pay for it out of their own pocket, you will need to help them sell the idea of sponsoring membership to their company. When these people approach their boss, or their boss’ boss, they need hard numbers to prove that their membership would be in the best interest of their company. You will need to clearly communicate which (member-only) features of membership deliver business solutions, and how those solutions will help the company to gain customers or increase sales, avoid costly mistakes, and overall improve their financial situation. Do not expect the company decision makers to make their own translations. Your marketing materials must do this clearly and succinctly. (For examples and a template of this kind of member recruitment brochure, send your request to ed@rigsbee.com)
How to Improve Perception of Member ROI
Price everything. If your organization provides products, services, and events for members at no charge—congratulations. You are doing an excellent job. Now put a “non-member” price on all of those things. Create a shopping cart system like ASAE does where members have to check out to get the download, registration or whatever. The member price is zero but there is a non-member price showing. The member then realizes the value of what they just got for free. If you do not tell them, they will not realize the value.
While there are clearly many more things that you can do, the above ideas are easy to implement and are the “low hanging fruit” of improvement. Never forget, if companies are not paying…you are not doing an adequate job of communicating your value. If employees of said companies are not paying…ditto!
Ed Rigsbee, president at Rigsbee Research, is the creator of the active focus group qualitative research method for calculating the real-dollar value of membership (ROI) that organizations deliver. He is the global authority on member ROI and author of The ROI of Membership-Today’s Missing Link for Explosive Growth. As both a non-profit CEO and professional speaker, he has a firm grasp of all sides of the member ROI equation. He holds both the Certified Association Executive and Certified Speaking Professional credentials, something enjoyed globally by less than a hand-full of professionals. Rigsbee is the author of five books and over 2,500 published articles, has been an adjunct professor at two universities and is the founder of a non-profit public charity. Learn more at www.rigsbee.com.