By Ed Rigsbee, CSP, CAE
How is the line, “membership is priceless” working for you these days in recruiting new members? Not so well, you say? The heyday of trade associations and professional societies recruiting members under the pretense of nebulous value propositions has gone the way of IBM Selectric typewriters.
Stakeholders in your industry really do want to join your membership organization—even though they don’t realize it. They must, however, first understand what’s in it for them. They must see the possibility of a real and honest return on investment (ROI) for their time and treasure.
For association executives, the quickest way to selling dominance—actually recruiting the people you talk to about membership—is through understanding basic North American buying motives. There are only six basic buying motives into which almost all situations fall. Yet, understanding the buying motives is not enough. You must also offer the translation in explaining how your organization delivers the value to satisfy their primary buying motive.
Feature Verses Benefit
Before we can get into a substantive discussion of buying motives, you must first be very clear on the difference between features and benefits. As an example, your organization is aggressive in advocacy and affecting legislation in your industry. First, that activity is an industry benefit not a member-only benefit. Everyone gets the value regardless of holding membership in your organization.
You also send to your members a legislative update keeping them informed of your progress, results, and how recent legislation affects their business or profession. If you only send this out to members and at the very most, you only offer simple headlines via email blasts and website postings to non-members, you have an awesome member benefit in the legislative update. This is value that one only receives through their paid membership.
The legislative update is not a benefit but rather a feature of membership. The benefit of this feature is how the update makes the lives of your members better. Timely and accurate information about legislation and regulatory issues can save your members time, money, and heartache—if they heed your warnings and information as it applies to their businesses.
This member-only benefit would most likely satisfy the buying motive of profit and gain, as well as that of fear of loss, and possible avoidance of pain.
Profit and Gain Buying Motive
In the above scenario, your member might discover through your legislative update, a new regulation that allows them to either sell differently, save money through a new approved manufacturing/service process (more profit), or get a competitive advantage over a non-member who might not have this new knowledge.
Fear of Loss Buying Motive
Continuing with the legislative example, your member (depending on industry/profession) might constantly be operating in fear of failure to follow (ever-changing) regulatory policy and procedure. This fear of lost time, temporary shutdown, or even permanent closure can weigh heavy on your members. Your legislative update can help members to have the piece of mind that their association is watching out for them on a daily basis.
Avoidance of Pain Buying Motive
Receiving crucial legislative and regulatory update information in a timely manner can very well save a business from potential fines and penalties from unexpected government agency visits. Any business owner or executive would gladly embrace methods for avoiding the pain of regulatory fines or temporary shutdowns.
When association executives speak with potential members, the default position frequently is to talk about providing legislative updates for members but to forget to translate the value of the updates for the potential member based on the person’s personal or organizational buying motives.
The remaining three buying motives are a bit softer in perceived value, nevertheless are important to understand as some industry stakeholders will also make their buying decision based on them.
Comfort and Pleasure Buying Motive
WalMart founder Sam Walton for years worked at a plywood desk—a sheet of plywood resting on two sawhorses in the upstairs stockroom of one of his early stores. What kind of a desk do you work at? What kind of an office do you have? My guess is that your work environment is a bit more luxurious than that of Walton’s. Do you really need it? Who knows—but what we do know is that you were motivated by the buying motive of comfort and pleasure to have the work environment that you currently enjoy.
What about your members? Does your membership organization offer its members the comfort and pleasure of knowing that they will be kept up to date on the industry’s/profession’s best practices, rules/regulations, and news? This saves a member time, mental space, and need for constant industry/profession scan—as your association regularly does this for its members.
Love and Affection Buying Motive
Believe it or not, even business leaders and owners need collegiality. This is one of the great benefits associations offer to their members, bringing together people through meetings and other methods. People need recognition. Many industry leaders truly need the adulation of their industry colleagues and associations provide this through leadership opportunities, awards, and credential programs. They join their industry associations and societies to get what they perhaps do not get on the job.
Pride and Prestige Buying Motive
Some North American associations have done a fabulous job of creating the perception within their industry that it is prestigious to belong to the organization. And with this prestige comes pride of membership and belonging. One example is the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Dinosaur Program. This is a special added membership, only available to LACBA paid members. It is for the senior lawyers in their 60s and older—the association provides special programming just for them. They even get a LACBA lapel pin that is a little different, with a dinosaur in the center. The Dinosaur members are very proud to wear their distinguished lapel pin.
Sell to the Primary Buying Motive
Association executives would do well to take the time to ask more questions as to what a perspective member is looking to receive through membership in their organization. Focus on explaining the benefits they will receive from the features of membership. Do this through the window of the prospect’s primary, and perhaps secondary buying motive and your sales (membership) presentation should prove to be quite successful.
Extra Icing on the Cake
Understanding the above will also help you to improve the member-perceived value of each member-only benefit your organization offers. Go through the list of member benefits that you have listed on your website. The first thing you will most likely notice is they are not benefits at all but rather the features of membership.
First translate each of the features into member benefits, keeping in mind the above buying motives. Next check to see which ones are actually member-only benefits as you will use only these in your sales (member recruitment) efforts. And to ratchet it up another notch, perhaps you might want to make some of the member only services and products available to non-members—for a price. If you are giving your members products and services at no charge, while that is awesome for the members, there is a challenge in members not appreciating the value. At your website, show these products and services at no charge to members and at a charge to non-members. That way your members will see a higher perceived value in what they already get at no charge.
Selling benefit is easy, while selling features is excruciatingly difficult. Why make your life any harder than necessary. Sell member-only benefits with the translation to the prospect’s unique situation, and do so keeping in mind their buying motive and you’ll be amazed with your results.
Copyright 2012 Ed Rigsbee. This article was adapted from the author’s forthcoming book (Membership Is a Good Business Decision; Prove the ROI). Ed Rigsbee, CSP, CAE, is the chief member evangelist at Rigsbee Research Consulting Group. He can be reached at ed@rigsbee.com.