{"id":439,"date":"2012-11-05T09:33:50","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T09:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.naylor.com\/associationadviser\/index.php\/2012\/11\/05\/newsletter24422_439\/"},"modified":"2012-11-05T09:33:50","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T09:33:50","slug":"newsletter24422_439","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naylor.com\/associationadviser\/newsletter24422_439\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask and Deliver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.naylornetwork.com\/NAY-ADVISER\/assets\/charles%20headshot_bw.jpg\" alt=\"\" align=\"left\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I met recently with the head of a prominent state association who told me he wanted our help selling advertising and driving revenue in his organization&#8217;s member magazine, e-newsletter, website, print and online directories, tradeshow and more. Normally I don&#8217;t shy away from an assignment as long as the project and approach to market are well thought out. From our conversation, three things were clear to me: he was, in fact, committed to delivering tangible value for his members&#8217; dues; he was clearly under pressure to generate non-dues revenue (our forte) and he was confident that both could be achieved by simply layering on more products to the communication mix.<\/p>\n<p>When I asked him how he came to this decision and why he felt that the timing was right for such a bold move, he simply said it was his opinion and that the decision was fully supported by the board of directors.<\/p>\n<p>He wants to deliver value \u2013 great! &#8220;Have you asked the members what they feel is valuable?&#8221; I asked. The fact was that this question had not been asked to the readers\/members, nor was it asked to the advertiser community\u00a0that he hoped would fund these communication initiatives.<\/p>\n<p>In short, there was no data to back up the plan \u2013 not from his members or from the larger association community that addressed the rapidly evolving world of communications. Although I offered to conduct this type of survey (at no cost) for him, my offer was declined, and I knew that my time and the company&#8217;s resources were best spent in other areas.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.naylornetwork.com\/NAY-ADVISER\/assets\/takeaways.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<table style=\"width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; background: #dcdcdc; border: black 1px solid;\" cellspacing=\"3\" cellpadding=\"3\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"border: black 1px solid;\">\n<ul>\n<li>Have the courage to ask members what you need to know, not what you want to hear.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t make important decisions without the right data to back them up.<\/li>\n<li>Throwing everything at your members to see what sticks is not a way to test the value of any new initiative.<\/li>\n<li>If you survey members regularly, do you know how you stack up to your peers?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Dictating to your members what you think they want is a losing proposition. You must first ask them, and ask them in such a way that tells you what you need to know \u2013 not necessarily what you and your board may want to hear.<\/p>\n<p>Surveying members \u2013 whether done in print, online, telephone or face-to-face \u2013 is a great way to start. But that shouldn&#8217;t be your only point of reference, and it&#8217;s important to do them right. If you don&#8217;t have time to do a definitive survey of your members, outsource it, but make sure your survey results are not presented in a vacuum. By that I mean you need to gauge your results against a representative sample of associations of similar size and industry composition.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s where benchmarking comes in. It&#8217;s not just knowing the facts; it&#8217;s knowing the facts relative to a larger universe of organizations who may be wrestling with the same challenges you are or perhaps competing with you for your members&#8217; attention.<\/p>\n<p>At Naylor, we participate in more than 300 association meetings a year. The same questions always come up: &#8220;What&#8217;s going on in the marketplace?&#8221;; &#8220;What are other organizations like ours doing to stay relevant to their members?&#8221;; &#8220;Which best practices should I be following?&#8221; and &#8220;How much should I be investing in various communications initiatives?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s face it. The world is changing very fast. It&#8217;s hard for associations to keep up with all the changes they&#8217;re facing demographically, economically, legislatively and more recently, socially. We want to show how print, online, events and social media are each relevant and each an effective tool for staying top-of-mind with your members. And if used correctly, they will ensure you keep attracting and retaining highly engaged members and volunteers in any economy while generating non-dues revenue.<\/p>\n<p>It takes courage to ask the questions you need to know, not what your board or inner circle wants to hear. But they don&#8217;t have &#8220;skin in the game&#8221; like you do. You need to ask your members, vendors, suppliers, and academic institutions what you can be doing better for them to keep them in your fold.<\/p>\n<p>In the coming weeks, we&#8217;ll tell you more about how we&#8217;ll be giving you the best practices and data you need to make confident, well-informed decisions about your member communications strategies and investments.<\/p>\n<p>As the old saying goes: &#8220;You don&#8217;t get if you don&#8217;t ask.&#8221; After all, how can you expect to sell your organization\u2019s value, increase member retention and revenue if you don\u2019t ask? (See related story, <a title=\"Like It or Not, You\u2019re in Sales\" href=\"http:\/\/staging.naylornet.com\/associationadvisor\/index.php\/newsletter21942_485\/\" target=\"_blank\">Like it or Not, You\u2019re in Sales<\/a>.) So, by all means ask the questions and be prepared for the outcome, whatever it might be.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"mailto:cpopper@naylor.com?subject=Ask and Deliver\"><em>Charles Popper<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<em>is Naylor&#8217;s Vice President of Association Relations. He has more than 15 years of business-to-business and consumer publishing experience.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<table style=\"margin: 5px; width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; background: #dcdcdc; border: black 1px solid;\" cellspacing=\"3\" cellpadding=\"3\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"border: black 1px solid;\">\n<p align=\"center\"><strong><em><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">Rate this article 5 (Excellent) to 1 (Poor). Send ratings and comments <\/span><\/em><\/strong><a href=\"mailto:associationadviser@naylor.com?subject=October Ask and Deliver feature story\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><em><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">here<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/a><strong><em><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have the courage to get the answers you need to hear. Benchmarking can help.<br \/>\n<em>By Charles Popper<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-membership"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ask and Deliver - Association Adviser<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.naylor.com\/associationadviser\/newsletter24422_439\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ask and Deliver - Association Adviser\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Have the courage to get the answers you need to hear. 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