Membership Director Search and Training
Do you find yourself in need of a Membership Director and not sure where to look? Let Bauer Voss Consulting do the search for you. We have stacks of resumes from qualified Membership Directors as well as sources to find someone already in your area if you want to avoid relocation expenses. We have a tried and true testing software application that profiles the applicant against more than 50 membership professionals that have been successful.
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Need a Dynamic and Knowledgeable Speaker for your next Conference?
We offer 60 minute to full day presentations that will motivate your team or your organization. Based on real life examples your team will take away useful information that they can begin to use at their Club to create more membership sales and retain existing members. Discounted (and sometimes waived) speaker fees for CMAA and NGCOA organizations.
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Wanted: Geeks to Serve on Membership Committee
As seen in Board Room Magazine October 2011
Written by Heidi Voss
Gen X is clearly a technologically educated group of consumers that prefers to communicate via email and texting. Phone calls are too time-consuming. Surprisingly, many of the baby boomers are catching up to them. How we “talk” or communicate with our members and potential club members has changed drastically in the last few years.
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Keys to Member Retention – as featured in Boardroom Magazine
Clubs focus a great deal of time on member recruitment and devising strategic ways to get new members. While this is a very important part of growing your club, member retention is just as important.
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Wanted: Geeks to Serve on Membership Committee
Navigating the options that are available to you as a club and determining what is best for you as you try to gain new members and retain current members is almost worthy of an entire separate sub-committee of your membership committee at the club. What would the credentials be to serve on this committee? Would you need to be able to speak geek? Have an understanding of all software platforms? An affinity for blogs and a love of Wii golf over the real thing? The great thing about the technology that is out there is that if you craft your marketing plan carefully you can use different aspects of the communication technology to overlap and create a much more effective communication strategy with both your potential new members as well as your current members.
Both the downturn in the economy as well as the introduction of so much stimuli in the world has had a direct impact on getting new members to want to join your club. It used to take five contacts on average to enroll a new member in the club. It now takes an average of 10 contact points to enroll a new member.
Here is an example of all of the contact points that are needed to get a new member:
Step Contact Point
Step 1 Initial inquiry phone/web inquiry/member referral (through Facebook), etc.
Step 2 Reply to inquiry (via email, phone, text)
Step 3 Deliver club collaterals or send link to online brochure
Step 4 Call or email the following day
Step 5 Schedule the club visit
Step 6 Club visit
Step 7 Immediate email or text thank you
Step 8 Hand-written note (always a shock in today’s world)
Step 9 Phone call for questions and to close sale
Step 10 Schedule appointment to get application
Step 11 Approve application
Step 12 Contact new member to schedule new member enrollment
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Step 13 New member enrollment/orientation – give them web log-in, bag tag, etc.
Step 14 Gather data on new member for service staff
Step 15 Get referrals
Step 16 Keep them active in club
It is important that you map out a strategy for getting to the tenth contact point. If you are simply sending a letter of invitation and following up to that letter with one phone call you are only at two contact points and you will not reach the sale. Mixing some technology into this process will help you have multiple contact points without overwhelming your potential new member.
Some suggestions are to be sure that you are using your resources wisely and monitoring what is working the best for your club. If you are not tracking all of your leads and conversion rates, you should begin to do so. Monitoring how you are getting new leads, how they heard about the club, capturing their information and then using this information to help you not only convert them to a new member, but also find more of their friends, is key. A CRM, or contact relationship management software, should be your first step to organizing this data. Systems like Sales Force, Act! and belongCRM are all good options for your club. These are not accounting systems; they are sales software systems. Their strength lies in giving you up-to-date reports on your sales pipeline and helping your board determine where dollars are best spent.
In addition to a CRM, you need to view your website as your best sales tool at the club. It should have a strong public side (viewable to everyone) and a members’ only side that requires log-in and may only be viewed by your members. Many clubs today are only focusing on their members’ side and are forgetting about how new members learn about the club. Having direct links to your club’s Facebook page on the club website, as well on your email newsletter templates, is key.
That leads to the question – Should the club have a Facebook page? Here are some pointers that will help you if you choose to have a Facebook page:
1. Make sure that you have someone at the club who has the time to dedicate to the site. They will need to set it up, be the administrator, assign other administrators (if needed) and keep it up to date. Be sure they can spell.
2. Have a direct feed from your website to your Facebook page.
3. Have a plan for what will be posted on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. These posts need to be meaningful, not simply, “It is raining again.”
4. Launch a campaign to get all of your members to “like” your Facebook page. This means that they endorse you on their site to all of their Facebook friends. This is the new member referral program at its finest.
5. Go on other clubs’ Facebook pages and see what they are doing for new and up-to-date ideas.
6. Post pictures of your members having fun at your club. They will forward these to their friends.
Once you have your website and Facebook accounts in place you are ready to jump into Google Analytics, a free application offered by Google that will allow you to monitor how your website it doing. It will provide you with useful data that will enable you to see who is going on your site, what pages interest them, how long they spend on your site and if they have visited other links that you have recommended. Be sure that you have this application overlaid on each page of your site. Clubs that only put it on their home page are not getting the full use of it.
There is so much out there that it is easy to get confused, caught up in a fad or simply spin your wheels and not see any results. Don’t be afraid to ask your members that are in the technology industry to lend a hand, offer guidance and help the club stay on track with providing the best personalized service possible and making each member feel like they belong.
Heidi Voss is the president of Bauer Voss Consulting, a company that specializes in membership recruitment and retention. To learn more about Heidi please visit http://www.bauervoss.com or call (740)549-1210 or email (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
