EXTERNAL STRATEGY

Here are the eight simple steps to deliver what members need.

1. Collective Needs – Not Individual Demands

Individual members can be difficult. Personal agendas disguised as a sense of member entitlement can tear associations apart. The member mindset that says ‘I pay your salary so you should do what I want,’ can create divisions when an association serves individual preferences. An association’s bias for favourites can serve to disengage other members, but even those who appear uncommunicative can still care – and may just need a different approach. It’s difficult to create value for all when an association relegates the greater good behind individual demands.

Associations must serve the collective need of the overall membership, not individual member demands. This builds unity, pride and trust. Once associations hold themselves accountable to their mission and vision, members have an incentive to unite behind it because it reassures them that their needs are being addressed. When members see associations standing up for what’s right, it becomes easier for them to put aside their individual demands. This provides the perfect justification not to pander to individual agendas – that the association is committed to the greater good of all members. A rising tide lifts all ships. Focusing on collective needs becomes a catalyst to deliver more value in membership, which then scales to become a powerful force to attract future members.

The more reasons associations create to make members feel proud, the better the individual behaviours align with the collective.

2. Organisational Values – Not Personal Bias

Individual members can be particularly sensitive to any bias or perception of self-interest in associations and their governing bodies. These perceptions are the cause of considerable membership angst and the genesis of many member action groups. Associations can come undone by the negativity caused by such groups in the market – whether it is deserved or not.

Holding everyone accountable to a set of organisational values upholds a clear standard of behaviour, and requires that no-one can act in a biased or discretionary manner. This sends a powerful message. Externally, it eliminates the perception of self-interest that members can find exasperating. Internally, it provides the clarity to correct the behaviour of any directors, managers or staff acting outside of the agreed values. The very definition of integrity is an adherence to a clear set of values, which is what members look for. It reassures them that their association is (first and foremost) serving their needs, not its own.

Associations that hold themselves accountable to values, communicate that they are committed to fulfilling their purpose – serving members. In turn, this increases their power to hold members’ behaviour accountable to the association and educates them that membership has responsibilities as well as privileges. One of the responsibilities of membership is to behave with decorum.

Organisational values can transform member angst into member support.

3. Confident Innovation – Not Business as Usual

As Gary Hamel said, innovation is the only insurance against irrelevance. But innovation cannot thrive in a ‘business as usual’ mindset.

The starting point is to fix the no-brainers, and deliver what members need the most. Sometimes, members may not even know what that is. Before launching the Model T Ford in 1908 and selling 16 million cars, Henry Ford said ‘If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse’.

To share a personal example, when we were looking to launch a new digital resource, we knew it would help members because that’s where the future of the market was heading. Even though some members had not yet embraced online selling or were unsure whether they would want to pay for a new service, we innovated and launched it anyway because it was a no-brainer. We knew it would help members and it was incumbent on us to lead the market into the future. It took a strong communications and educational campaign to explain its benefits, but the outcome was 100% uptake. Members willingly paid for it, and got fresh leads and new orders from the outset. The results they got created trust in us as a successful innovator and market leader.

‘Innovate or die’ might sound like a mantra for the corporate world, but your members will thank you for it. Dealing with the no-brainers upfront is a great way to get started.

Every association knows its own sector in the same way – what is the one thing your members need more than anything else that you could be delivering?

4. Deliver Value – Not Price

It’s never about price. It’s always about value.

The digital resource example is a case in point. Before members could see the value, some were adamant they would not want to pay for this. So how is it that they did, and gladly? They realised that for a little extra price, they were getting a whole lot of extra value. And who did they thank for delivering them value – their association! This is a classic win-win.

Members across all sectors want to keep their costs down, and usually try and demand that their associations do the same with their prices. This is not unique to any one association or sector (although it can seem so). It is relevant for all. Focusing on price is a trap – to keep prices down, associations don’t invest in delivering the new value that members may pay for. This perpetuates an image of a low value commodity – and when members don’t see new value created, they complain even more about price. It’s a vicious cycle.

Even more than saving money, members want their association to help them make more of it, or deliver value in other ways. This can be through information, education, training, advice, connections, advocacy and more. So long as the sum total of the financial and non-financial value created adds up to significantly more than the price of the service, then members will buy it gladly. Never be afraid to charge a fair price, if you are delivering value. That doesn’t mean price gouging!

The membership fee is the most evident and often most sensitive price point. So, is the membership fee model dead? This is the wrong question. A better question is whether the fee provides sufficient value. Does it deliver against competitive choices? In a free market where members can get the services they need from alternative providers, the membership fee must offer value for money. A low price alone won’t retain or acquire members. A greater risk for associations is being too dependent on membership fees as the prime revenue source. Without another revenue source, associations can come unstuck – when the fee doesn’t reflect fair value, members drift towards competitors and are often lost forever.

Over and above the fee model, it doesn’t matter where the income comes from, so long as it is in line with mission and vision – call it a portfolio approach. The key is value delivery and a service orientation. Value delivery is competing effectively in the network economy. Service orientation is allowing members to choose what they need, when they need it – and ensuring that the entire association is geared to deliver it. If members can cherry-pick additional services from their association, it gives them even more reasons to join and stay. The more value an association adds in offering optional services, the more power it creates to charge a decent market price on the obligatory membership fee.

Revenue diversity has multiple benefits beyond the obvious financial ones. If an association has introduced new services that members are willing to pay for, it is clearly meeting a need. If it is meeting new needs, it is maintaining relevance – which makes it even more attractive to members.

This may seem counterintuitive but delivering value through revenue diversity so you don’t have to rely on the fee enables you to sustain the fee itself.

5. Communicate Clarity – Not Confusion

When things get tough, members don’t want to hear that their association is strong, powerful and flourishing. Just because an association claims it’s strong doesn’t mean it is working hard for members, solving their problems or creating opportunities for them. Messages like this can portray an association as more interested in itself, than helping members – a prime catalyst for member disaffection. Members want to know what their association is doing for them!

Members need to hear that you are listening, that you are focused on their problems and what exactly you are doing about it. They want specific details in order to understand and evaluate how well you are serving their needs.

Think of communications like a virtual progress report for members. Convey to members why every action taken by their association is beneficial to them, and how it helps them by linking back to the mission and vision. Make every message crystal clear, so that they understand why you are doing what you are doing, how it helps them and what your actions are. Communicate in the language of members about things of importance to members. You don’t have to get this perfectly right, and members can easily misinterpret things. But each time you are not as clear as you could have been, learn to be a little clearer the next time. Just because you’ve sent a message doesn’t mean it has been received so use an omni-channel approach to reach members in their preferred mediums. This includes everything from email, newsletters, social media, magazine articles, brochures, trade advertising, partner communications, welcome kits, conference speeches, town hall gatherings and of course, face to face meetings.

It doesn’t take long for members to appreciate good, honest intentions. It doesn’t take long for clear messaging to help members understand the issues – and drive confidence, trust and engagement.

6. Communicate Truth – Not Doublespeak

A Victorian association executive, who wishes to remain anonymous, admitted that the policies his organisation had created were designed to obfuscate. They were written to keep members at bay, so they wouldn’t ask too many difficult questions. The aim supposedly was for the association to shield itself from accountability. He said the same about their board reports. Rather than being concise documents to inform the governing body, they looked more like scripts from Yes Minister with verbose obfuscations, circumlocutions and ludicrously complicated sentences designed to keep the board in the dark.

Honesty is an engagement strategy. Never be afraid to tell the truth, or show vulnerability. Best-selling author Brené Brown says that invulnerability is a fake shield that executives use to protect themselves from blame, judgement and criticism. What’s this got to do with association management, you may ask? I was invited by a forward-thinking global hotel group to give a keynote presentation on vulnerability to 60 of their general managers. If one of the world’s most successful service-oriented companies wants to promote vulnerability to its customer-facing leaders, you can be confident this is the future of engagement. They know that invulnerability doesn’t work. When executives buy into the ego of having to be perfect, it’s hard to admit vulnerability – so they have to keep pretending they are perfect. However, members (and employees) can see through this. Here’s the logic: we know people are not perfect, and therefore if they pretend to be perfect, they must be playing a role. If they are playing a role, the inescapable conclusion is that they are inauthentic – fake. And who wants to engage with fake?

Telling the truth sends a powerful message. It reassures members that you are genuinely on their side, no matter what – and that you are real. It is this authenticity that creates the trust that drives engagement. The link between truth and engagement is not well known, but it is a powerful force. Let me give you an example.

In September 2008, we had organised a large expo that filled the (then) Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre to the brim. Markets were strong and exhibitors were filled with anticipation. On September 15, five days before the opening, Lehman Brothers collapsed and the Global Financial Crisis was here. With the world in shock, and confidence shaken, buyer orders at the expo were significantly down. At the cocktail party with 1,000 customers in front of me, I said sorry. I told them I knew how much effort they had put in to the expo, and how much they had expected to sell, and that for many of them it had been painful financially and disappointing. They were expecting excuses and doublespeak – what they got was truth and vulnerability. 1,000 customers gave our team a huge round of applause. Some of their businesses were riding on the orders they expected, and yet not one customer blamed us for what happened. They knew we had done all we could as an organisation and they thanked us for our integrity. We reassured them that we would redouble our efforts, and for years afterwards, people would tell me that this was a reason they stuck with us. They knew we were real and that they could rely on us.

Communicating truth doesn’t just create engagement – it can retain customers (read members) and generate revenue for the future.

7. Customisation – Not Generalisation

Communicating one general message to the market is becoming increasingly insufficient because ‘the market’ is now less of one homogenous identity, and more the greater sum of its individual segments.

Associations cannot be all things to all people. A clearly articulated value proposition will outline where an association needs to operate – whether it can serve all segments or needs to customise. Some segments may conflict with others, so there may be difficult decisions to be made in determining the optimum footprint. Once this is clear, associations need to communicate with members across all segments as if the conversation was a personalised, one to one discussion.

A generalist message cannot engage specialist segments – it is too superficial. Members need solutions to the specific problems facing their specialist segment. By necessity, association messaging must be customised to provide meaningful and relevant engagement.

Technology is simultaneously a cause of this and the solution to it. Technology enables the complexity that creates new opportunities for specialisation. This breaks down general markets into niche segments, each of which has differing constituents and needs. Technology also provides the solution to communicate with each of these segments in a bespoke and mass customised basis – clear, simple messages designed exclusively for each segment.

The foundation for this is a contemporary CRM system filled with highly customised rich data on all member segments, needs, demographics, product and service history, engagement and sociographics. It is at this deeper level of customisation that associations can engage with members in meaningful and relevant ways – and enable it to provide a matrix of customised services appealing to each segment.

8. Consistency – Not Irregularity

On one hand, members can complain that they don’t get enough information and feel uninformed. On the other, they can get annoyed with too much communication. How can you strike the right balance?

Consistency and timing are the keys.

• External Consistency – This requires a rigorous attention to detail. The brand and logo usage needs to be consistent, the same colours, the same background, the same positioning. The communication style needs to be the same tone. The spelling and grammar need to be perfect. All marketing campaigns need to be fully integrated and consistent. In other words, everything you put out into the marketplace needs to be seen and recognised as you immediately. No variations to the agreed campaign – unless of course this is a mindful, carefully deliberated change of strategy. Why? The consistency drives awareness, and the professionalism drives trust.
• Internal Consistency – Make sure everyone sings from the same song sheet. When a member has a question about an important service or policy, he or she should get the same answer from everyone, whether that it is the receptionist or the Chair. Socialise the key messages with the entire staff and the governing body. Members often approach board directors personally, so make sure they know and support the specific brand messages. To communicate important changes, get a consultant in to refine the messaging and embed them with everyone. Or at least, send a sheet with FAQs (frequently asked questions) to all staff and volunteers so everyone is informed and can speak with some authority.
• Timing – Integrate all the communications from all of your departments, and schedule them so they don’t conflict with one another. Don’t send an email newsletter, invoice, conference program, policy announcement and Workplace Health & Safety update all on the same day. It’s not so much the quantity of communications that annoys members, it’s their timing. Spread it out.

Then bang home your messages! The members need to hear them, and there is a lot of noise out there getting in the way. Just because an association makes an announcement or sends a message doesn’t mean it has been received, let alone understood – or acted upon! It will take multiple ways, multiple channels and multiple contexts for your message to cut through.

Changing member needs and rising expectations are two of the greatest challenges facing associations today – with 50% of associations admitting they are either poor or mediocre in meeting member needs. Not only are members themselves changing – with baby boomers being replaced by generation Xers and millennials – the manner in which members interact with associations is changing too. This double-whammy has left many associations searching for solutions to remain relevant.

The old are being replaced by the new.

Traditional and relatively uninformed, the old can be loyal, habit driven, activity focused, trusting of institutions and unquestioning. To them, membership of their association was their default setting. It was expected of them, if not an obligation. They relied on their association to inform them. Their world view began small, limited by the information and choices available to them, and grew over time. They are active within their own networks.

Contemporary and digitally informed 24×7, the new are sceptical, opportunity driven, outcomes focused, distrusting of institutions and demanding. To them, membership is merely an option – based on how it helps them. They rely on themselves to get informed, and on peer recommendations from people they know, like and trust. Their world view exploded from an early age, offering limitless choices. They are socially and globally active across multiple platforms, networks and communities.

Associations relying on loyalty will become increasingly disappointed. Oscar Wilde foretold in the late 1800s how loyalty is changing today: ‘What they call their loyalty I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination’. In other words, associations can’t rely on loyalty anymore. They must re-earn it by challenging their customs and accelerating their imaginations to engage with the changing needs of members. All associations face these challenges, and none have a membership so unique that it can justify maintaining old methods to engage new audiences.

Millennials, in particular, have come to represent the new generation of membership. Thinking of them as forever young is a limiting stereotype. Many of them will expect to reach the ripe old age of 100 as a matter of course, and the generation as a whole will swell the ranks of ‘old people’ well into the future. They are the future, and they insist on engaging with your association on their terms. And all associations will do well to surrender the old and accept these new terms of engagement.

Three things set millennials apart from the old.

• Information Rich – They already have all the information they need. They have googled whatever it is they are looking for, and found the answers online. They are three steps ahead even before they consider engaging directly with you, and they don’t need you to give them more information.
• Socially Active – They are socially active across multiple social networks from Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and others we probably haven’t even heard of yet. They share information inexhaustibly, and will share yours if there is something in it for them.
• Authentic Relationships – They demand authenticity and seek friendships and relationships not just at work, but with organisations and brands as well. They need to connect on a personal level with your association and grow to know, like and trust you first.

Authenticity

Millennials crave authenticity. It can seem counterintuitive to traditionalists who have been conditioned that associations must be all knowing and all powerful. These ‘rules’ were established generations ago for a different time, and millennials don’t abide by them. When associations pretend to be perfect, millennials can see right through the insincerity. They want truthfulness, sincerity, devotion and positive intentions.

Groucho Marx said ‘The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made’. There’s no need to fake it. It’s easier to be authentic, honest and fair with members. Isn’t that the essence of a member-serving association?

Authenticity has an added benefit. Authentic, honest reflection can reveal the gaps in association performance that must be addressed to maintain relevance into the future. Moving beyond pretending to be perfect is a strategy in itself. Perfection necessarily avoids the critical issues, while authenticity brings them to light, where they can be tackled.

Simplicity

Millennial attention spans are notoriously short. Plus they have multiple electronic distractions on hand at any given moment. Associations must get the message across quickly before they lose interest. Simple is better than complex. Remember, millennials have the information anyway. They don’t want more information. They want to know ‘What’s in it for me?’ Visual is better than verbal – millennials would rather learn through watching a video than reading an article. It’s easier, faster, simpler and clearer for them.

Millennials have no inclination to wade through clutter and are deterred by bureaucracy. Getting a message across in 30 words is more powerful than writing a paragraph because it is clearer. Simplicity forces clarity – it discards the unnecessary to reveal the intrinsic value. Leonardo da Vinci has been credited with saying that ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. How right he was.

To attract millennials, simplicity must run through the veins of every association and pump clarity. The membership categories must be simple, joining must be easy and the member value must be clear.

Social Media

How social is your association? The prolific sharing of content on social media seems inexhaustible and technology surrounds us with constant stimuli. It can be overwhelming. Luckily, even with digital, the Pareto principle still applies – 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Associations cannot engage with every conversation online, and they don’t need to. The strategy is as simple as picking the most relevant social media channels and doing them well. It could be as few as two or three platforms, which makes the process manageable. Don’t spread yourself too thin. The key is dialogue, connecting socially and responding to comments. In the same way as you wouldn’t ignore someone face to face, you cannot ignore someone online. You need to respond quickly. Otherwise they think you don’t care. But when you do connect with them, they can carry your message to literally millions of their peers. If they know, like and trust you online, millennials can help you engage with their communities and spread the word. Word of mouth has historically been one of the most important drivers of new memberships – online peer recommendations are the modern version of this. Only they are immensely more powerful in quantity and speed.

Social media is not a public relations mechanism, or a one-way marketing goal. It is a conversation. Facilitating genuine conversations requires letting go of control over content. The aim is less about what the association can achieve in distributing content on social media, and more about what members might achieve if they share and discuss it.

Engagement channels are changing too. Associations that rely on traditional media will reach only traditional users. Associations wanting to target millennials, young adults or new categories of members must connect with their media choices. Just because an association has always used a particular media doesn’t mean that is where it will find its future members. If millennials can’t find you in their media choices, they won’t engage with you.

Getting social has added benefits too. The immediate feedback can be illuminating. Even when it is negative, complaints are a great opportunity to resolve problems and re-engage disaffected members. In building engaged online communities, what often happens is that other members defend and advocate on behalf of their association when it is unfairly challenged. Their support becomes an online peer recommendation, accelerating an association’s positive image.

Trust

Trust operates differently between the generations. The trust that baby boomers and the generation before them had for institutions and brands, is not shared by generation Xers or millennials. Take what happened in 1954. The US tobacco industry jointly advertised, to 43 million Americans through 448 newspapers, that research findings implicating smoking as a cause of cancer were ‘questionable’ and promised consumers that their cigarettes were safe. Abhorrent as it may seem, you can imagine that being taken on trust in 1954 – but certainly not today!

Is it any wonder that millennials and generation Xers don’t trust organisations as much as baby boomers did? They feel they have been misled by organisations and have become weary and untrusting of them.

Millennials have different filters on trust than baby boomers. Top down messages from big media, brands and organisations don’t resonate – and that includes associations. Millennials are far more influenced by peer to peer recommendations. The battleground for this trust is an authentic and collaborative relationship developed online through social media.

It changes the entire premise of the membership offering. Previously, associations might have been able to rely on the trust generated by their market position, image and influence with baby boomers. Today, it means little for millennials. Associations literally have to start over and refresh their offerings to engage future audiences. How exciting and a little scary at the same time! But what a perfect opportunity to reinvigorate and create the new value these prospective members demand. What a great excuse to move forward into the future.

Customer Service

What’s in it for me? It’s what all prospective members want to know. Ultimately, it comes down to customer service. Members want to feel as though it’s all about them – their needs, their aspirations. They want their association to service them.

Service costs nothing except time, effort and dedication. If associations should improve one thing, this would be it. Simple things like excellent customer service often make the greatest difference. The most innovative new product will fail if it does not come wrapped up in great customer service. The best strategic plan will stall if members don’t feel valued. Service is the determining success factor for all member-serving associations.

So what does great customer service look like? You can feel it as soon as you engage with a truly service-oriented association. It’s the confidence that everyone really does care. It’s working together to take advantage of any opportunity to deliver great service. It’s not waiting an extra moment more before taking positive action. The tell-tale signs are small but significant. One association I visited in researching this book stood out. When I arrived, their receptionist knew who I was meeting and made me feel welcome. Every single staff member walking past greeted me and checked whether I was being attended to. The CEO was professional, efficient and inspiring. In the meeting, she said she would have one of her colleagues send me some additional materials. Her colleague emailed it to me before I had left the building, with a proactive message asking if I needed anything further. That’s service! A day later, I received a hand written note of thanks from the CEO. The experience gave me a sense of confidence in the association.

Create some internal service level agreements with your team. Define the response times and service levels you would like to give members. Make them realistic, but stretch to make them distinctive. Empower everyone with the responsibility to give the best possible service you can. Make your members feel special. Make them feel loved. Lift up their confidence. Inspire them. Because when they feel your service, they’ll more easily forgive other shortcomings. Doing the basics brilliantly gives you a massive competitive advantage.

It’s all about the member. Serving member needs is at the heart of everything an association does. This may sound obvious, given associations were established to serve their members. But there can often be a gap between intentions and outcomes, between words and deeds, and between theory and practice. All associations want to serve members, and many serve them well. But how many can demonstrate that everything they do prioritises member needs above all else? There can also be a gap between what associations believe they are doing for members, and what they are actually doing. Closing the gap starts with service orientation.

Service orientation is allowing members to choose what they need, when they need it – and ensuring that their association is geared to deliver it. In practice, this means that if there is a conflict between a bone fide member need and an internal process, the process must change to serve the member – not vice versa. It means designing the entire portfolio of products and services specifically around clearly defined member needs. It means setting rigorous internal service level standards that all staff meet and exceed in engaging with members – every single day. This complete, unrelenting focus on members sets associations apart for the future. Why? Membership is a privilege to be earned by associations, not an obligation on members. Associations that know it must be re-earned every year are more likely to deliver better value.

Associations that transform their entire operations to fully serve members understand that members are in charge because they have choices and that their choices dictate the very future of associations.

When this service orientation is extended to the market, membership nirvana becomes a possibility. How many associations strive for 100% membership reach? The answer should be 100%! Why wouldn’t every association want to achieve maximum membership? If an association offers complete service orientation and member value, why couldn’t it achieve total market membership? This ambition transforms a virtuous intention of serving members, into a powerful growth driver. It sets in motion a higher expectation of association performance, which in turn drives the necessity to innovate and improve.

The future of associations is achieved through serving members, not in isolation of them. Commercial performance is enhanced because of members, not despite them. Service orientation ignites this virtuous cycle.

Research

It is unlikely that anyone would dispute the benefits of a systematic investigation in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions. And yet, many associations arrive at conclusions and come to judgements based on little more than gut feel or anecdotal evidence. I am, of course, talking about research. How can associations operating without research know whether they are meeting member needs? Relying on anecdotal evidence is dangerous. Just because a handful of members say one thing doesn’t make it true for all. Human beings are predisposed to prioritising feedback we already agree with. Too many association executives can be quick to claim that their members love them, without the evidence to support it. While we all want to do well for our members and believe that we do, we need research to prove it – or show us where we may have missed the mark.

Research always begins with knowing who to ask. Happy loyal members might seem like a good place to start, but they are more likely to tell you the positives you want to hear, rather than the negatives you need to hear. The latter will help you more in the long-term, painful though it may seem while you receive it. Taking loyalty and satisfaction as the two main criteria, there are four different groups of members within all associations:

• Apostles – Loyal and satisfied. Often the most engaged with your association. Happy to tell you why they love you, and what’s great about your association.
• Hostages – Loyal but dissatisfied. Willing to remain a member despite their needs not being fully met. May feel trapped or lack alternate options.
• Mercenaries – Disloyal but satisfied. Open to offers from competitors and may leave as soon as a better opportunity arises.
• Disaffected – Disloyal and dissatisfied. May have left already, or their membership may be about to lapse. Often openly vocal in their criticism of your association.

In terms of research, they are all equal. Whether they hate your association or are unjustifiably biased towards it doesn’t mean their voice doesn’t count. Talk to them all, especially the disaffected who may be more open to telling you the truth about where your association is underperforming. In particular, seek out new (or younger) members, as they may have more to share about current trends or a new vision for the future. Track changes in each of these groups annually. Are you attracting more apostles or creating more disaffected members? Have hostages or mercenaries increased or declined? The research will point you towards how to address the cause of these changes.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a management tool to gauge loyalty. Most Fortune 1000 companies use NPS, which is widely accepted in the corporate sector. It is based on one simple question, and a 0-10 point scale: ‘How likely is it that you would recommend our (association) to a friend or colleague?’ Those who score 9-10 are Promoters, while those who score 0-6 are Detractors, with the NPS calculated as the former minus the latter – simple. However, I have come across associations too afraid to implement a NPS for fear of what the score may reveal about them, or highlight where they are underperforming! Associations committed to service orientation should be eager to discover their NPS, because it lets them know how well they are performing in the perceptions of their members. It also provides a benchmark for improvement into the future – helping them to perform better. If every association adopted a NPS, it would deliver a comparable benchmark across all associations. That would give prospective members an immediate insight into thousands of associations at a glance. A high NPS could drive new membership acquisition, while a low NPS might spur associations to improve their service offerings. Either way, it would help generate better commercial performance.

Beyond satisfaction and loyalty research, it can be helpful to conduct a needs analysis. Needs analysis is the process of understanding the goals, aspirations and needs of members, and analysing them in order to find the solutions that satisfy them. Member needs are often complex and conflicting, and without a process to undercover them, they may remain unfulfilled by their association. Ask questions from the member’s perspective – what is it that they most need from their association? Be precise with your wording. Provide some test statements for validation or offer comprehensive multiple choice options. The process may take some time to refine until you have a firm understanding of their needs. Make sure your research can drill down into sufficient member demographics and categories. Member needs can vary significantly between job function, size of organisation, specialist sector, length of membership and any other category. For example, one group may have a core need for education, while another’s may be for networking. Knowing who needs what, helps you satisfy them all separately. Analyse the data for each category separately to reveal their specific needs. This process is more productive than analysing the entire membership, because there will be less conflicting data – so patterns will be easier to identify. Your aim is to create a matrix of needs across all the demographics and categories you have identified. This matrix becomes the building block of the services you need to deliver to satisfy all members.

Gap analysis is the comparison of actual performance with potential performance. It identifies the difference between requirements and capabilities, and can be put to effective use to reveal the gaps where member needs are not being met. Two questions work in unison – based around importance and performance. The first question asks members how important a particular area is, against a predetermined range of replies from ‘essential’ to ‘not at all important’. For balance, the range should include the same number and weight of positive choices as negative choices (preferably two each) and one neutral option in between them. The area itself can be a product, service, need or aspiration – the choices for inclusion are limitless. The second question asks how well the association is actually performing to deliver this. The range of replies is the same, albeit with slightly different wording from ‘excellent’ to ‘not at all well’. Providing each reply with a numerical score enables a net score for both importance and performance. The net gap score is the difference between them. Hypothetically, (an area such as) networking may have an importance score of 4.3 and a performance score of 2.9 to reveal a gap of minus 1.4. These can be ranked across all items to transparently highlight an association’s performance across all areas. The data also serves to rank all the areas based on importance to members. The purpose of the gap analysis is to raise questions around the metrics revealed. For example, what more can be done to improve networking opportunities?

Research insights can ignite internal debate around critical questions, and improve the efficacy of any board or strategy meeting. Every conference, networking function, education session and service will all benefit from research into how well it delivered on member needs. The opportunities to uncover data are limitless, and the more research you do, the more members feel like their needs are being heard. So long as you take some action towards delivering them, of course. Knowing what your members need is directly linked to developing your own competitive readiness in the market, which in turn drives your commercial performance.

If all this research sounds expensive and time consuming, it isn’t. There are times when investing in an independent research organisation is beneficial, but all of the research outlined in this section can be done in-house, so long as you stick to best practice questions and methodology. Survey Monkey is an accessible, cost-efficient resource that requires no formal training to use, and delivers easy-to-understand data insights at the push of a button. The Australian Associations Research Survey was conducted through Survey Monkey at a total cost of less than $500.

However, sometimes things do go wrong.

A member crisis can signal both a time of intense difficulty and the need for an important decision to be made. The Chinese language sums up the word crisis with two characters – the first representing danger and the second, opportunity. Perceiving a member crisis as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience can dramatically affect the way it can be tackled and resolved. It can also be a turning point to steer an association towards progress, change and influence.

On my first day as CEO of an industry association, I inherited a loud and vocal member action group that had been conducting a public campaign against the association and board for many months. They had printed a brochure on what they felt was wrong, bought an advertisement in the trade press highlighting their concerns and created an online newsletter to articulate their manifesto to anyone who would listen. My first action was to arrange a meeting with the leader of the action group and to fly down and talk with him personally.

The advice I give to association leaders with whom I work is to do the same. Member action groups don’t generally arise without a reason across all association sectors, so it is not unreasonable to assume that something significant may have occurred in the past to cause them. The first step is to listen with an open mind, and fully understand what that is. It takes empathy to allow what might seem like a combatant to speak their mind openly, but it is a necessary step towards a resolution. Instead of making judgements about who is right or wrong, the aim of listening is to try and get a sense of the unmet need of the member action group. Invariably, underlying needs are well founded, although the tactics to achieve them may not be. The need will differ from group to group. It could be a need for belonging, a need to be heard, a need to be respected, a need for progress, or a need for help from their association. Associations must focus on member action group needs, not tactics.

Listening to the needs of members is a priority for all member serving associations. It may take time for members to fully express their feelings of frustration, anger or disappointment. Once they have, it becomes easier for the real tangible issues to be revealed. Keep the conversations positive, and on common ground. Agree that while the problem may have been in the past, the solutions necessarily lie in the future. Going over the past does not serve either party and can only accentuate the conflict. Agree to focus on needs, so both parties discuss opportunities for getting both member needs and association needs met in the future. The resolution must not be ‘zero sum’ – we have been falsely conditioned that in a conflict, there must be a winner and a loser. This is a fallacy. Why can’t both sides win? There can be a synergy of mutual ideas for the benefit of both.

As for my example, pretty soon after our first discussion, we developed a mutual respect and the beginnings of trust. The upside for the member action group was that they could see key issues being tackled and the association moving forward assertively. The upside for us was the resolution of what had been a distraction and the creation of a more united association, with more engaged members and new collaborative ideas for the future. Everyone wins.

Every member action group can provide valuable feedback, information and ideas. If they didn’t care about the association, they wouldn’t be acting. Association leaders can find valuable new suggestions for future progress and re-engage members to support the association’s goals. This is what makes a member crisis an opportunity.

It is however, important to remember that all members have a voice, not just the vocal ones.