4 minute read
Membership + Marketing
LEARNING THE JOB ON THE FLY
By Ricky L. Potts, Jr. • Membership Director The Fountaingrove Club • Santa Rosa, Calif.
WHEN I RELOCATED TO sunny Santa Rosa, California in 2019 to take my position at The Fountaingrove Club, I was coming to a property that was new to Troon, to a club that didn’t have a Membership Director, and that was rebuilding after the devastating Tubbs Fire of 2017 (as I write this, we are still rebuilding, and hope to open our new clubhouse later this year.)
And with all of that, I also really didn’t know what being a Membership Director entailed. Do I just answer the phone, host tours and process paperwork? Or would I be helping to prepare documentation, creating best practices and working with a Board of Directors to welcome new members to the club?
Also, while membership sales would obviously be my primary focus, I knew I couldn’t forget about membership retention, too. It costs a club a lot less money to retain a member than to go out and recruit a new one. Sir Richard Branson once said, “Recruitment is sexy; retention is about listening and improving your offering… Nothing too sexy about that!” He’s right.
So while this was all new to me, I was up to the challenge. Additionally, Rick Ladendorf, President of Prevo Health Solutions, was here helping out through the transition. He spent a few weeks with me showing me the ropes and introduced me to the club’s customer relationship management (CRM) system. We partner with Clubessential, and the CRM would become the lifeblood of my job.
We are pulling in leads from several different places, including our website, social media, member referrals, walk-ins, Live Chat and now, thanks to a relationship with The Private Club Agency, a targeted pay-per-click campaign that is running on Facebook and Instagram. That’s not to mention cars driving by and all of the fami-
lies rebuilding homes in the area. While I’m not sure how many leads a typical club has, when I landed we had over 700 active leads in the CRM.
Now the challenge became: How would I juggle managing all the leads coming in, selling new memberships, processing applications, attending committee meetings and keeping our current members happy? I needed to develop a scalable process that would be easy to follow.
THE VALUE OF THE CRM
I spend 85% of my day sitting behind a computer managing leads in the CRM. But I wouldn’t be able to keep it all straight without it. From the time a potential member makes contact, we create a record in the CRM. We use A, B, C and D leads, to know where he or she is in the sales funnel. All leads start as a “C” Prospect.
Within the CRM, we can keep notes on when we communicate with these people, what their USGA handicap is, what kind of car they drive, what beers they like to drink, and more. This information is then shared with department heads to personalize every interaction.
I also use the CRM to set proper followup tasks, so as not to lose contact with these leads. We have found it takes seven “touches’’ before a potential member is ready to commit. However, there are prospects we’ve been trying to connect with for years who just aren’t ready yet. But when they are, we will welcome them with open arms.
“NO” MEANS “NOT RIGHT NOW”
If a potential member says, “No,” do you delete that record in the CRM, or do you set a follow-up task to contact them in three, maybe four months from now? The way I see it, “No” means “Not right now.” Just because they didn’t join our club doesn’t mean we just forget about them. They may not be ready to join today, but if we keep in touch, who knows if or when they will be ready to join.
Hopefully this gives you an overview of what the day in the life of a Membership Director looks like. I start my day with 10 or more CRM follow-up tasks, responding to e-mails, making phone calls, working with the leadership team to plan prospects’ visits, and working with the golf shop to book tee times for those visits. It never slows down, and I love it.
When I got to the property in April 2019, we had 224 golf memberships. As of May 1, 2021, we had 349, with another 16 going in front of the Board of Directors for a June 1 start. If you do the math, that means we will be sold out and starting a waiting list with the June Board Meeting. And keep in mind, we will go from 224 to 368 without a clubhouse—our new building won’t be ready until later this year.
To come in, having never sold memberships before, quite frankly having no idea what I was doing, working with a leadership team focused on the member experience, and to get to a waiting list is something everyone on our team should be proud of.
