Membership Growth Blog

WOW!

What a crazy ride it has been the past few months. I am now involved in multiple membership organizations and have been given the role of Chair for a major organization’s North American Membership Committee.

In my new role, I have the task of developing membership pitches for others to use when convincing others to join the organization. Last week I was giving my pitch at a conference. When I sat down, the speaker sitting next to me shared with me some advice,

STOP SELLING

His advice to me was that people don’t want to be sold into a membership organization. People want to feel like they are part of a community. Selling sets up a vendor-client relationship and not a connected community.

His advice changed my life. I am now tasked with getting people connected and contributing to membership organizations and not buying from our organization.

What a crazy ride!

Are you truly passionate about your organization? If not, how do you expect others to be interested in joining?

Passion and purpose are linked when trying to attract new members to your organization. Think about the last time you went into a store to make a major purchase. That is the same attitude that people are going to approach a member based organizations. They are going to want to know all the facts, the benefits, and costs up front but most importantly, your potential members want all of that information delivered with passion.

Walk into an Apple Store with me and see the difference between the employees there versus the nearby Best Buy. Think of the neatly dressed, smiling faces of the Apple employees ready to show you the latest gizmo from the labs. You are encouraged to touch, play, and ask questions. All the prices are laid out, and you are treated like a person.

Now go into Best Buy. Have you found anyone to talk to about a computer? Most likely someone was at the door to make sure people weren’t stealing anything, but all the employees I see are standing around gossiping or trying to look like they aren’t interested in helping. When you go to ask them a question, do they really know the product or does it feel like they are reading the features list off of the side of the box you were looking at?

Are you Apple or Best Buy when someone is coming to see your organization? When you are presenting, are you really showing your passion for your mission, goals, and direction? When you hand out materials, is everything up front and easy to understand?

People are becoming much more cynical towards anyone trying to sell them anything. Because of the increasing numbers of scam artists out there, people are putting up their shields faster than ever. If you are upfront, honest, and open about what your organization offers and any costs involved, then you will be respected. Remember, not everyone wants or needs to join your organization, so don’t waste energy trying to attract people who will not be interested.

Be honest, be open, and most importantly, be passionate. Whether you attract more people or not, people will remember someone with passion.

While reading through my daily feeds, I came on this post by Phil Gerbyshak about 15SecondPitch. If you want WOW! in your life or your organization then you need to stop reading right now and go to 15SecondPitch. In only a few minutes the site will have helped you develop and post your pitch for the world to see. Did I mention that it was awesome.

Here is my 15 Second Pitch:

So I tried to put my principles into practice this week by hosing a Toastmasters demonstration meeting. I lined up a great speaker, got a Toastmaster, and even got the best room in our building to do the demo in. I had even had over 15 people tell me that they were going to attend and they were going to bring friends.

I had 6 people come. Only 6 people! You need at least twenty paying members to charter a Toastmasters club and I only had 6. What did I do wrong?

I posted flyers in approved places, I sent out e-mails, and I posted an ad in the company newsletter. Why out of 2200 people in our office did only 6 people show up?
Face Time.

The reason that more people did not come is that they are bombarded everyday with people asking them to spend time on an activity. E-mails, signs, and postings on internet sites do not work. The only way to truly attract more members is to get out there, get some face time, and show your potential members why it is important to join an organization.

Next time, food, fun, and an even better speaker.

Better luck next time,
Chris

What is your conversion rate? In Internet marketing speak they call when a user clicks from the front page to a sales page the click-through. In terms of membership organizations, the conversion rate is the rate at which you turn visitors into members? It is a little similar.

So what is the best way to convert guests to members? An Open House.

Open houses give you an opportunity to show off what your organization has to offer without the rigid formality of a standard meeting. It also might add an element that many college students find important, free food. I remember during undergrad and grad school, the organizations that had the most new members were the ones that had the best free food.

A lot of churches have forgotten this important membership building tool. My 93 year old Great Uncle has told me many stories of his famous pancake breakfasts. At these events, hundreds of people would come through the doors to have some free pancakes. Did they get every one of those people through the door to become members? No, but for open houses you are looking at the numbers.

It could be that you find your normal conversion rate is 1 in 5. So for every five visitors you get 1 new member. What if you are only getting one guest at each meeting? That means it takes 5 meetings before you convert a guest. What happens at a well organized and publicized open house? Maybe you get 100 guests? It could so happen that due to the nature of the event you get 1 in 10 guests to join your organization. That is still 10 new members in 1 meeting instead of 1 new member in five meetings. Under you old method it might have taken 50 meetings to get that many new members.

Think about if you made it a goal to have an open house every quarter? Even if you were at 1 in 20, you would still beat your old membership conversion rates. So I ask you, when was the last time you had an open house?