Membership Organisations and their Challenges

By Ben Pattison, Wellsteed Group

Relevancy for:

-              Peak Body Groups and Industry Associations

-              Community Groups

-              Unions

-              Political Parties

-              Social Movements

Introduction:

Membership organisations are often indispensable bodies whose work profoundly impacts their stakeholders in a variety of ways. Whether it’s through vital member services which help members navigate their business or contractual necessities or through the advocacy work undertaken with government or other stakeholders to improve laws and conditions, these groups rely majoritively on funding from their member base, with additional revenue from partners and sponsors.

Typically, the most important aspects of running a membership organisation involve:

1. Retention and Acquisition of New Members.

2. Maintaining a cost-effective yet still relevant and credible Member Offering and Services.

3. Building internal consensus on advocacy positions and fostering unity surrounding contentious political, economic or technical issues.

4. Proper communication of value proposition and public relevance to members and peripheral stakeholders.

5. Providing worthwhile Training tools and services to improve the professional or vocational standard of industry participants, demonstrating a dedication to excellence and ‘skin in the game’.

6. Maintenance of healthy relationships with government and industry, encouraging collaboration and consultation before policy determinations.

7. Management of finances, integrating internal processes and systems, and member relations.

Key Business Areas of Focus:

1. Sales

2. Marketing

3. Advocacy and Stakeholder Engagement

4. Research and Analysis

5. Provision and Management of Services

Quick Refresher - How Does Marketing Actually Assist Sales?

• Behavioural science - and in this instance sales psychology - tells us that customers will make a purchasing decision when they are 'Ready-to-Buy'. This is often measured across a spectrum and the Buyers Pyramid is a simple way to visualise it. As a rough rule, a mere 5% of any market is ‘Ready to Buy’ at one time.

  
  

• In a B2B setting, Salespeople are tasked with taking a prospect from a Point-of-Interest (having a conversation) to a Point-of-Trust (a stage of qualifying) and then onto a point of being Ready-to-Buy, to win the sale.

  
  

• Marketing assists the sales process through attracting and educating the target market - and in a membership organisation context this includes the organisations other stakeholders as well - telling the brand story and influencing future decision-making through reinforcing trust.

  
  

• Sales turnaround times are much faster when building relationships with a prospect who has a good understanding of a business or who has had exposure to it via marketing. Hence, it's to help 'carry the buyer' and accompany them from being inquisitive, to engaged, to realising they have a need which can be met, and then herding them on to being comfortable in terms of time and resources to proceed to purchase.

  
  

• Without this base mentality in your organisation, you’re setting your sales team up for failure and giving your marketing people a false sense of usefulness and purpose.

The following represents a range of common issues which plague Membership Organisations:

Common Membership Organisation Ailments:

1.     You Don't Educate Your Market.

Many membership organisations have not heavily invested in their brand to educate the market and their industry - or the ultimate recipients of their advocacy: the public - as to what they actually do, nor why it actually matters.

Many are heritage brands that believe their past reputation, household name recall and value proposition is immune to the winds of time, market/generational change and of course the growing technological revolution.

Many are so busy, so caught up in their advocacy pursuits or internal administration, they have no time for strategic planning or putting their offering under due scrutiny.

2.     Confusion as to Value Proposition.

As a result, there is often uncertainty in market – amongst the organisations very own stakeholders or desired members – as to what the said organisation can actually provide in terms of practical assistance and value. This hampers the sales team’s ability to win new members while making retention of members difficult.

This means that member services can often stagnate, meaning staff can be busy maintaining systems and services that aren’t actually being used or valued by members. This naturally has a knock-on effect on the balance sheet.

3.     Lack of Investment in Marketing.

Often, ‘marketing’ funds will be allocated to peripheral items, such as software or internal communications, creating a false impression at executive level that there is a marketing function being invested in (“look, it’s there on the balance sheet”.

4.     No Sales and Marketing ‘Synchronicity’.

Commonly, Sales and Marketing teams will not collaborate and engage in the free-flow of vital market/member information and sentiment regarding the Unique Value Proposition nor Point of Difference of the organisation. This means that in the case there is meaningful marketing activity, often it will not reflect solutions to the pain-points or expectations of actual preferred clients/members. Meaning it’s just going to waste.

5.     Clunky Internal Systems.

Internal Systems to nurture and farm existing members can be problematic to fine-tune, given the highly manual nature of many organisations’ engagement strategies.

Personal touch, by physical-meeting or phone contact are always preferable to email contact, yet finding internal capacity to prioritise this can cause employee fatigue if the headcount or organisational structure and duties don’t reasonably allow for it.

6.     Wins Aren’t Celebrated or Amplified.

Advocacy and Lobbying initiatives and endeavors – particularly ‘wins’ – are not amplified to the member base, peripheral stakeholders or the public.

What Eventuates:

This means Member Services often:

1. Don’t reflect Market Expectation.

2. Can remain underutilised despite investment and being a cost to the organisation.

3. Causes Member dissatisfaction with relation to the cost of membership and perceived lack of value.

This means the Sales Function and New Member sales turnaround times are hindered by:

1. Distorted brand image in market: meaning the market makes up its own mind about you.

2. Lack of understanding of the organisations role in market and usefulness to businesses.

3. Lack of perceived relevance and compatibility with different types of businesses in industry.

4. Lack of industry penetration, means relying on word of mouth only (warts and all).

This means Retention and Tenure of Membership is hampered by:

1. You end up with obsolete services

2. You aren’t actually pitching your most-useful services to members and the market.

3. Members struggle to justify membership costs in a high-inflationary environment where they have cost pressures from all angles. Guess what’s going to get cut?

Knock On Effect:

1. Less Leads

2. Less Quality Leads

3. More Cold Prospecting – meaning capturing interest further away from the point of being ‘Ready to Buy’.

   This means longer Member Sales Turnaround Times.

4. Membership offering can lack relevance to market, forcing the sale focus away from ‘solution selling’ to price-driven negotiation, where sales must justify the price-point or reduce/add further value lest lose the business.

5. Retention Rates drop over time, as Member Services are not updated or recalibrated to reflect market or industry expectation and need, calling into question the value of membership price point.

6. Advocacy and Lobbying initiatives and endeavors – particularly ‘wins’ – are not appreciated my the member base nor its value amplified. This further calls into question the value of Membership pricepoints.

Why this is problematic:

You don’t want your members to feel like they have to justify their membership – you don’t want them to view it as an expense but an investment.

If your members cant remember the last time they extracted value from their membership, they will likely not renew.

Member retention – and renewals - is a time consuming and costly administrative burden. To lose a member carries a cost beyond the membership fee.

Poor Member retention cannibalises the work of the sales team, potentially nullifying sales, resulting in stagnant or negative growth.

Next Steps: If you would like further information regarding any of the above or greater clarity as to how to visualise your organisations value proposition, please reach out today. Likewise, if you're ready to embark on a full growth strategy and are considering your options, we'd love to be involved.

ben@wellsteedgroup.com Copyright Wellsteed Group 2025