The Buying Cycle

Members Hate to Be Sold To, but They Love to Buy

Part I - Know the buying cycle

When is the last time you had a long, pleasant conversation with a telemarketer? Don’t you love buying a car from a pushy sales guy in a bad suit?

I thought as much. Your members are just like you. They hate being sold to.

So why are you still selling like mad to your members?  Here’s why, and how to fix it.

Drive for revenue diversity

Many associations face economic risks. Their annual meetings, membership renewal rates and product sales cycle with the economy. Others face marketing risks. Their products and services are becoming less relevant, harder to find in comparison to other options, or are so badly branded and packaged that their perceived value is low.

As we’ve discussed in prior articles, creating a member-centric organization using principles of CRM and perceived customer value (PCV) can be a life saver for an association. Even if your association is doing well, you can do better using these principles. Not only will you be able to solidify membership revenues, your entire product and service catalog will become a more reliable money maker for you.

This is critical to long-term association success, because it means you now have a portfolio of products, services and membership vehicles that you can rely on, even when economic times are tough.

Marketing the goods

How can you take your marketing program to the next level – or fix the one you have? My best suggestion is to stop selling to your members, prospects and customers, and just help them buy.

You do this by supporting every phase of the buying cycle. We’ll cover that cycle briefly in this article and then cover each step in detail in subsequent articles.

Aware
First, to market your products, services and membership, people have to be aware of you. You cannot avoid visibility marketing.

Explore
Once a prospect (or a customer or member to whom you’re upselling) is aware of you or a product of your association’s, they want to explore more information about it. What kind of information or “programmed experience” can you offer to help them? What characteristics must it have to support the buying cycle? What characteristics must you avoid?

Negotiate
For a buying decision involving just one person (say, a book), the prospect will usually negotiate within themselves whether to take the next step of actually interacting with you. What is involved in that internal negotiation? Did you supply the right information in the Explore step to aid that internal debate? The problem gets trickier if the buying decision involves multiple actors. Someone may play the role of initial contact – the explorer – but another may actually authorize the purchase – the payer – while a third or fourth person may advise on the sale – the advisor. What kind of negotiations do these actors go through prior to contacting you directly? A corporate membership may not be a light decision for some prospects. Do you supply the right information in the right language to inform these actors? Do you encourage their debate so that your benefits are viewed favorably? And how will each actor measure your benefits?

These important questions have an additional benefit beyond membership marketing, by the way. If you answer these questions seriously and with good data, you gain customer insight that you can apply in new products and services and in member retention.

Interact
If the internal negotiation on the part of the prospect results in a decision to interact with you, make sure the interaction is positive, responsive and swift. Your fist interaction with the prospect should convey your brand, positioning, identity, key message and association culture. That’s a lot to ask in a quick email or phone call – but it’s essential that you do it.

Next time, we’ll discuss the other steps in the buying cycle and show you just how critical it is to have an ongoing relationship with a member or customer even after the sale has take place.
 

Paul K. Ward is a CRM, Branding and Customer Value Consultant www.Pkward.com.  Paul regularly meets with top Washington-area executives to discuss business best practices, and has recently inaugurated an advisory group for the American Society of Association Executives to assist in creating ASAE member value. He writes for ASAE Global Link, ASAE Association Management and Canada's The Canadian Association.