Are Your Meetings a Features of Membership?

By Ed Rigsbee, CAE, CSP

Here is the bitter pill…if non-members can attend…the meeting is not a feature of membership. However, the discount on registration is.
Nearly every membership organization can further its mission more effectively, with more members. More members generally translate to larger meetings. To recruit more members, especially Millennials, there must be an outstanding perceived return on investment (ROI) offered.

Contemporary membership research, surveys, and reports all indicate that many membership organizations are challenged with trying to justify why one should join their ranks. There is the good old admonishment, “Join to support your industry.” This has become increasingly ineffective.  Let’s not forget the old standby, ”We have great networking.” Perhaps your organization has progressed to a more contemporary “We have great live and online communities”?

Yet, something is still missing…a truly compelling reason to join. What’s an association executive or director of membership to do?

Accelerate Your Action

In order to grow your membership and member meeting attendance, perhaps it is time to push against conventional wisdom and look in a new direction? Consider the inaccuracy that most of what is offered up by membership organizations as “member benefits” are in fact, features—perhaps features of membership. For an organization’s services, activities, or other things to be considered “features of membership” said services or activities must be available only to members.

Industry benefit activities are those things, like advocacy, that create great value for everyone in the industry—not just the members. These activities are great customer service accomplishments for the longer-term members that care about them. However, they are quite ineffective in recruiting new members—because they receive the value without having to become a member.

Show Me the Money

While advocacy generally is not a feature of membership, a legislative update…distributed only to members clearly is a membership feature which will save the member time, money, and avoidance of regulatory pain…all buying motives. These buying motives are the actual benefit…the things that make your members’ lives better…the things that will motivate non-members to join. Like the above mentioned feature of membership, discount on meeting registration, saving money is the benefit and not the meeting.

Motivating Features

Consider grabbing the opportunity to drive more value, more member ROI, for members at your meeting. There is currently much discussion in the meetings industry about “meeting ROI” but very little about “member ROI.” What the members get in exchange for their annual dues should be important to any association executive. To effectively increase “member ROI” at any of your meetings, consider including in your scheduled offering a number of “member-only” educational, networking, and/or social sessions. You will find this most effective at times when multiple activities are taking place at the meeting so there will be something for non-members to do. And, remember to develop some specific member-only education or activities for your long-term members. They need more than simply a place to see their friends once a year.

As you now know, it is only the registration discount that is the true feature of membership. Add to this feature some member-only activities and those activities also become features of membership. You will greatly increase the total perceived member ROI (member-only). You will be offering your current members more compelling reasons to attend your meetings and to retain their membership. For the non-members, this is like the take-away close—a powerful reason for the non-member to join your organization.

Influence the Decision to Join

There is no advantage in vague or fuzzy-bunny “member value proposition” marketing. In order to grow your membership base, which will increase your opportunity to influence more members to attend your meetings; it is crucial that your organization clearly communicate its member value proposition. A reasonably easy and inexpensive way to achieve this goal is to calculate the member-perceived real-dollar value of each “member-only” feature of membership. Communicating your organization’s real-dollar member ROI via your website and other marketing channels, both printed and electronic, will go a long way to telling your value proposition story and influencing the decision to join.

Give ‘em What They Want

There is the question of which segment(s) you will get the best “bang for your buck” in influencing both membership and meeting attendance? Generally it will be those people that are newer to the industry. They truly have the most to gain from membership. To influence this segment, you have to communicate how it is in their best interest to participate with your organization. During recruitment, is not the time for talking to these younger people about all the great value the organization delivers to the industry. There will be plenty of time for that after they have engaged in your organization and will better understand the value. 
Now is the time to communicate the great value that your organization delivers to its members—the ROI of membership based on each member-only feature. It is your job to help them understand the real-dollar value of each of these features of membership that your organization offers. This will hopefully include a number of new “member-only” activities at your upcoming meetings.

If you would like to explore further, the financial veracity of each of your features of membership for consideration in creating new, maintaining existing, and sun setting your various products, services, and activities, email your request to ed@rigsbee.com and I’ll forward back my Features Framework Exercise from The ROI of Membership-Today’s Missing Link for Explosive Growth. 

Copyright © 2015 Ed Rigsbee
Ed Rigsbee holds both the Certified Association Executive and the Certified Speaking Professional accreditations—an honor that only about a handful of people globally enjoy. Many of the ideas in this article are adapted from his book titled, The ROI of Membership-Today’s Missing Link for Explosive Growth.  In addition to teaching associations the qualitative process for determining member ROI and strategy, he is the CEO of Cigar PEG-Philanthropy through Fun, a non-profit public charity he founded in 1999. More about Ed’s work at www.rigsbee.com

Ed Rigsbee, CSP, CAE
The ROI Guy: Alliances, Relationships & Associations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8dWTxWtpA8
Rigsbee Enterprises, Inc.
1746 Calle Yucca, Suite 200
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
www.Rigsbee.com
ed@rigsbee.com
805-498-5720





George Torok Host of Business in Motion Business Speaker Listen to Business in Motion audio PodCasts On iTunes Business in Motion on Facebook

163 Pieces of the Best Business Advice

Tip of the hat to Carol Roth for compiling this list of "163 Pieces of the Best Business Advice".

Good tips, ideas and reminders for anyone in business.

Also it's a clever way to create good content - ask other experts. It's the Chicken Soup model of writing.

Yes, I contributed. My advice is below for you.


109. Best Place to Invest?

When I started my business I left my corporate job with a separation payout. They were downsizing. I visited my financial planner and asked how to best use that money- pay down my mortgage, invest in mutual funds or stocks? He first asked me to explain my new business which I had started part time two years earlier. His advice was to invest the money in my business because that would give me the best return over the next few years. I followed that advice. It was good advice.

Thanks to: George Torok of Power Marketing.

And here are some pieces of advice that resonated with me



2. Wise Words from Henry Ford

While I never met Henry Ford (I'm too young to have known him), his words live on and have inspired me on many a day:Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.Believing I could start and grow my business played a huge role in the success I am now enjoying. Thoughts become things. What thoughts are YOU thinking?

Thanks to: Randi Busse of Workforce Development Group, Inc..


9. I'm Anxious Today-- Excellent!

When you have your own business, you will never have the "right" amount of work: there will always be too much or too little. Therefore, you will always be anxious. The trick is to stop thinking of anxiety as a bad thing. Instead, say to yourself, "I'm anxious today- excellent! This means I'm alive." Thinking of anxiety as one more form of energy-- fuel-- keeps you focused, committed, and excited about achieving your goals day-to-day.

Thanks to: Frances Cole Jones of author of "The Wow Factor".


25. Attention
Pay attention to the things you can control, not to the things you cannot control.

Thanks to: John Pulsifer of Jolly John Auto City.


37. Create an Advisory Board

The best business advice I received when starting my company - Loyalty Factor LLC - was to create an advisory board of senior-level individuals who believed in me, and the business model. The board had to include marketing, sales and financial experts. I was surrounded by experts in all aspects of a business and had the support system to encourage and energize me to exceed my goals and objectives. Capitalize on other people's experiences and expertise to strengthen your own.

Thanks to: Dianne Durkin of Loyalty Factor, LLC.


105. Sweat the Little Things.

My grandfather was a craftsman and an artist. His business was to make things look good. He told me that if you don't sweat the little things, then the big picture will suck.This bit of advice isn't simply about "paying attention to the details," but this is more about having the business discipline to be meticulous about the aesthetic, the functional and even the peripheral pieces that inevitably contribute to whole of the business.The little things are what really matter.

Thanks to: Dave Racine of Pierce Cleaning.


134. Stay Dispassionate

Tip: Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems at first. I received this tip from a friend. One of the most important things in managing a business is maintaining your equanimity, not over-reacting to situations (positive or negative). Many times we faced critical problems like key contractors leaving at crucial moments in product development, issues that could have sunk us if we didn’t manage it properly. But by maintaining an unemotional approach, we turned the problems to our advantage.

Thanks to: Gaurav Bazaz of Pravega Inc..


Here's the full list of 163 Pieces of the Best Business Advice

Here's the Carol Roth site


George Torok

Host of the weekly radio show Business in Motion

Listen to Business in Motion Podcasts

Listen to Business in Motion on iTunes

Meetings the Necesary Evil

iPad killer app #2: fixing meetings
By Seth Godin

Here's an app that pays for 12 iPads the very first time you use it. Buy one iPad for every single chair in your meeting room... like the projector and the table, it's part of the room.


I recently sat through a 17 hour meeting with 40 people in it (there were actually 40 p
eople, but it only felt like 17 hours.). That's a huge waste of attention and resources.

Here's what the app does (I hope someone will build it): (I know some of these features require a lot of work, and some might require preparation before the meeting. Great! Perhaps then the only meetings we have will be meetings worth having, meetings with an intent to produce an outcome). I can dream...


1. There's an agenda, distributed by the host, visible to everyone, with time of start and stop, and it updates as the meeting progresses.

2. There's a timer, keeping things moving because it sits next to the agenda.


3. The host or presenter can push an image or spreadsheet to each device whenever she chooses.

4. There's an internal back channel that the host can turn on, permitting people in the room to chat privately with each other. (And the whole thing works on internal wifi, so no internet surfing to distract!)


5. There's a big red 'bored' button that each attendee can push anonymously. The presenter can see how many red lights are lighting up at any give time.

6. There's a bigger green 'GO!' button that each attendee can push anonymously. It lets the host or presenter see areas where more depth is wanted.


7. There's a queue for asking questions, so they just don't go to the loudest, bravest or most powerful.

8. There's a voting mechanism.


9. There's a whiteboard so anyone can draw an idea and push it to the group.

10. There's a written record of all activity created, so at the end, everyone who attended can get an email digest of what just occurred. Hey, it could even include who participated the most, who asked questions that others thought were useful, who got the most 'boring' button presses while speaking...


11. There's even a way the host can see who isn't using it actively.
Can you imagine how an hour flies by when everyone has one of these in a meeting? How focused and exhausting it would all be?
$500 each, you'll sell 50,000...

PS no one built the first one yet. Sigh.

Seth Godin
--------------------

I'm with Seth on this. I hate meetings because people run them poorly and hence waste time and aggravate others.

George Torok

Host of Business in Motion

Business Speaker