15 Minutes Per Week: The Secret to Membership Management
15 Minutes Per Week: The Secret to Membership Management
Eight simple steps that make all the difference in membership. District Membership Chair, Debi Bush, asked me what our club is doing that is helping us to grow our membership. Here is an ingredient for our secret sauce. I'm a very visual person. So, I went down to my local Lowe’s Home Improvement and bought a big styrofoam board and divided it up into sections. I use pushpins and little 3x5 cards with the prospective members' names.
There are 8 steps or categories that I manage for our Prospective Member Pipeline:
1) People I'm following up with
2) People who are "on hold" and I'll come back to them later
3) People who have had a membership proposal sent to them and I'm awaiting its return
4) People whose names have been submitted to the Club Board for their approval
5) People whose names have been submitted to the Club for their approval
6) People who need a pre-induction orientation
7) People who need to be inducted
8) People who have been inducted and are now in the Red Badge program.
As people progress through the process (through our prospective membership funnel) I move their pushpin and card into the next area on the board. It took me a while to get "momentum" but now we have a steady stream and we're inducting one or two new members every week or every other week.
All I do is invest 15 minutes, once a week and just call everyone on the board (except the "on hold" people). I answer their questions, invite them back and also give them information about other clubs in our area. I often encourage prospective members to visit other clubs so that they can get a broad range of the different types of clubs that are available. I never do the "hard sell." If someone isn't interested I let them know that we're not going anywhere and that they're always welcome to come back and visit again later. I find that people usually just don't have a weekly meeting mindset yet. A call once a week (the day before our meeting) lets them know that we care and it reminds them to come back. Most people, I find, want to come back and want to belong to Rotary but because we forget to follow up with them, they fall away. Weekly calls to prospective members lets them know we care and increases our conversion rate to new members at a much higher rate.
It's really that simple. Just 15 minutes once a week. Call everyone and continually be adding new names to your list. If they're not interested, they'll tell you and you just take them off your list.
Now, it REALLY helps if you've got great club programs and lots of club activities. If prospective members come to visit and nothing is going on then it's difficult to get them to come back. It's really a catch-22 situation, you can have all the prospective members coming that you want but, if you don't have good programs and good meetings then you won't get members. We are fortunate in the Westminster 7:10 Club that we've got good programs and a well-run meeting and the club just sells itself. All I have to do is get them there.
Written by Mark Wilson (Westminster 7:10) markrotary@gmail.com