By Guest Blogger:

David Lewington, Managing Director

Afflinity

Hire In          

Your board has set you the task of growing the membership numbers by 5% this year with no direction or idea of how this will be achieved and no real idea of how the membership management side of the business works. Sound familiar?

Many organisations when faced with this task immediately reach for the hire button as the belief is that you must have a full-time employee to carry out this specific task. A new job description for a Sales Executive or Membership Sales Advisor is created and a salary is approved by the board.

How the process goes.

The Membership Association market is unique and finding suitable candidates with the necessary experience can be tough.  With advertised salaries usually around £30k, can you really find that golden nugget who will unlock your membership potential for that salary. Even if they can, will you be able to keep them? Finding suitable candidates who have both membership and commercial sales experience is challenging with compromises normally made.

A typical recruitment process will take on average three months from creating the job description to appointing the candidate with advertising, interviews, background checks and notice periods taking time to complete. This is assuming that you find the right person and manage to secure their services.

Once hired, your new employee will take time to get to know the organisation, the members, systems, colleagues and of course begin to form their own ideas on how to achieve the stated goals of the board. If your new employee hasn’t worked in membership organisations before it can take time to fully appreciate the way that things work and the best way to achieve results.

On average this process will take upwards of six months from start to finish.

You now have the right person and they have formed some strategies on how to achieve your stated aims. These proposals will require to be presented to the board for approval and will require buy in from colleagues and stakeholders. The whole process is now complete, you are ready to begin implementation and your new Sales Executive hands in their notice as they have been offered £5k more with another organisation.

Contract Out

The exact same scenario is in play to grow the membership by 5% set by the board, however instead of hiring in the decision is made to engage with Afflinity who can provide all of the membership services as an outsource and “contract out” partner.

How the process goes

From the moment we meet and engage, we have a full and detailed understanding of membership organisations, how they are structured and the potential frustrations and road bumps that will inevitably appear when developing new strategies. We will gain a detailed understanding of your own organisation and the desired outcomes that you are seeking. Once established, we present our recommendations and agree the project parameters, budgets and timescales and get going!

So now you have engaged with Afflinity, you have a team of membership experts you couldn’t afford to hire full-time and who are driven by results. If timescales are short, we have the ability to increase our resources and still deliver on time and budget.

You will be able to get your strategy to market in a fraction of the time and for less money and risk by working with a specialist contractor.

Summary

Hiring staff can be time consuming, risky and ultimately you can get it very badly wrong choosing the wrong candidate. Even getting it right can lead to challenges as successful staff attract the attentions of others.

By working with a specialist contractor, you can de-risk your project, get it to completion far quicker and control the timescales. With agreed notice periods you can terminate the partnership easily with no lasting consequences should you feel it isn’t working.

Afflinity are a team of Membership Association Specialists who work with organisations to help them tackle the four main challenges of membership; RECRUIT REWARD RETAIN & RENEW members. Our team has many years of experience in helping organisations solve problems, grow numbers and providing tailor made services designed to make your members delighted.