Joe Abraham

Chambers – Time to awake from your self-induced coma!

// December 15th, 2009 // View Comments // Next Gen. Chamber of Commerce, The Next Generation...

It seems like every time I write about chambers of commerce, I’m bringing out a whipping stick. I don’t want it to be that way, but I just care so much about what chambers were about. More importantly, I care about what chambers could be in the future.

I just know for a fact that if chambers sit in their current apathetic state, they will cease to exist.

Case and point, the emboldened secular progressive movement and their desire to control and eventually choke out free enterprise – replacing it with a quasi-governmental, unionized workforce with 70+% tax rates.

Health care “reform” is going to tax small business in a huge way.
Cap-and-trade will put most small businesses OUT of business.
The federal ownership and control of banks will lead to violations of small business freedoms and privacy.
Small business confidence is at an all-time low.

Why are chamber Presidents all across the country not in an uproar?
Why are they not rallying their members to get vocal and fight against this attack on freedom?
Why are they sitting by the wayside planning the next “Tuesday-night-mixer-during-happy-hour”?

Could it be that they are afraid?

Afraid to be shunned for speaking up…
Afraid to ruffle the feathers of progressives in their membership…
Afraid to lose their economic development funding…
Afraid to be fired?

I don’t know, and frankly it doesn’t matter what the reason is. Even the US chamber of commerce (that primarily caters to big businesses) is speaking out. Kudos to them.

But where is the “main street” chamber of commerce?

Hiding. Or as I would like to put it…In a COMA!

Well, wake up Mr. or Mrs. chamber President. It is time for you to take some risks (like every one of your members do every day) and do what is right to serve your members.

Sure, you are going to get some grief for it.
You may absolutely get some nasty emails and phone calls.
There is the possibility you may actually lose your job. (Call me if you do and we’ll make a public mockery of them).

But if you don’t say or do anything, you probably won’t have a job anyway.

See, the secular progressive movement does not want small business to succeed. Why? Because small business is about free enterprise, low taxes, less government intervention, tort reform and anti big labor.

So if the secular progressive movement wins, entrepreneurship and small business will get squeezed to the point where we are the minority in America. Your current members will either be out of business or so riddled in taxes and regulation that being part of your chamber will be the last thing on their mind.

So you make the choice. Stay in a coma and plan the next “social media secrets revealed” workshop or begin to advocate for your members and start a grass roots campaign to protect free enterprise and the American way of life.

If you need help getting fired up, start by joining Entrepreneurs for Conservative Values. Many of your members will probably be part of this group before you know it.

If you have already started down this path, tell me about it. If not, tell me why and maybe we can work together to figure out a solution. Use the comment area below.

Reinventing Your Chamber In Real Life

// October 23rd, 2009 // View Comments // Next Gen. Chamber of Commerce

A few months ago, I wrote a couple of posts about Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce.
Article 1 – What Happened to the Original Social Network?
Article 2 – Reinventing the Original Social Network

But I wanted to go a few steps further than just talking about it. I wanted to actually do something about it.

So let me introduce you to my guinea pig Casey Steinbacher. Casey is President and CEO of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce, a 900+ member chamber with 10 employees and a $1.5 million budget. Casey is also the incoming chair for the 2010 year for the American Chamber of Commerce. (She’s a real go-getter, that’s for sure!).

Casey and I connected after she read the first 2 articles on Chamber Reinvention. Interestingly enough, she was neck deep into transforming the strategic plan for her chamber already.

So a few phone conversations later, I caught a ride with my favorite airline and headed for Durham, NC to see if we could turn my “rhetoric” into some tangible results.

So far, we’ve spent an intensive day doing business development strategy. I simply took Casey and her team through a series of exercises that we take startups and small businesses through. We covered everything from brand positioning to customer loyalty.

The most important exercise we went through (as it turns out) was one that helps a business identify it’s target audience. It’s part of the brand positioning exercise.

You’ll hear Casey talk about it in the short video below. It was hard work for Casey and her team to get through the exercise.

Why?

Because Chambers (more so than most small businesses), are completely and totally confused about who their real “customer” is. The pressure to keep membership dues flowing has forced them to coral so many different people with so many different agendas that it will make your head spin.

Kudos to Chamber Presidents who have dealt with this mind-numbing pressure for so long. But it is NOT a sustainable business model. Casey knew that intuitively, but this exercise helped her confirm it.

Over the next two months, I’ll continue to work with her to prepare them for an exciting 2010 launch. Enjoy Casey’s feedback.

Call me crazy, but I’m waiving any fees for this project so that we can do our part in helping chambers succeed. If you are a qualifying Chamber President, and want to experience the same service, I’ll do the same with/for you during 2009. You just have to be willing to be a guinea pig

Those who wait till 2010 when I speak at the American Chamber of Commerce event, can dip into their pockets to access the program (and rightfully so!).

If you’d like the full version of the interview (about 23 minutes), contact me and I’ll get you the mp3 version to download.

A Chamber Membership Drive Idea

// July 24th, 2009 // View Comments // Next Gen. Chamber of Commerce

So you’re looking for ways to attract more new members to your chamber, huh?

Here’s a tip that has worked 100% of the time for the chambers that have executed it correctly.

(Yes, there are some that have botched it up by putting their own spin on it).

When it’s membership drive time, don’t just hand each current member a list of prospects and send them off into the blue yonder hoping they’ll come back with signed enrollments.

Rather send them off armed with some value. Then surprise the prospect by asking for nothing in return!

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you have recorded content from the last few chamber events. Grab the content, listen to it and pick off the best 30 minutes to 6 hours (depending on how much content you have available).

Have it duplicated and packaged nicely.

Then arm your members with this “care package” with a nice cover letter and some other goodies you can think up.

Have them drop off this care package with 5-10 businesses in their area that are not members of the chamber. Let your pitch be simple. “We just wanted to give you a sample of what we get as members of the XYZ chamber. We hope it helps your business.”

Make sure one of the goodies is certificate for a 90 day “free trial” of your chamber membership. So now when a member goes to recruit another member, they aren’t asking them to pull out their checkbook on the first visit. They aren’t asking them for anything at all.

They are GIVING them something of great value. They are GIVING the potential member a chance for a test-drive.

Does it work?

The last time this technique was used, a chamber that was struggling to recruit 10-12 members in a membership drive ended up enrolling 115 businesses for the trial and retained over 60 paying members after the 90 days.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

By the way, here are a couple of extra tips.

1) If you are going to roll out a membership drive like this, make sure the content of the care package is very high quality (both audio quality and speaker content). If you don’t have access to good content, I’ve got plenty to give you. The worst thing you could do is to do all the work, hand off cruddy content and get no marketing traction.

2) Have some systems set up to follow up with the trial members via email and social media. I’d recommend Aweber or Constant Contact. As prospects enroll for the 90-day trial, put them in an email follow up campaign so that pre-designed marketing messages can be dripped to them during the 90 days. Each message should highlight another aspect/benefit of the chamber. Some of the messages should be real-life testimonials from other chamber members about the impact the chamber has had on their business and personal life.

3) Spend 1-on-1 time with each of the trial members. Guide and advise them. Most importantly, open some doors for them through your rolodex. Show them a measurable impact so that when it’s time to part with a couple of hundred bucks, they feel it’s the best decision they have made in a long time.

Hope this helps or at least inspires some fresh ideas for you!

Your Fan

Joe…

The Buffet Line is Open…

// May 28th, 2009 // View Comments // Small business

Mmmm! Golden Corral.

Do you have a GC in your town? If not, you probably have something close to it.

I’m talking about the type of place where you walk in and grab a tray. Then you pile on as many plates as will fit on that tray, pay a grumpy cashier a few bucks and then head toward islands and islands full of food.

Think of the last buffet restaurant you visited.

It’s been a while for me, but the memory is still quite vivid. I can still smell the pungent odor of the deep fat fryers in the back cooking up everything from popcorn shrimp and chicken fingers to mystery dishes I don’t even know how to pronounce.

Golden Coral is an interesting buffet restaurant because you can walk in, pay your 7 bucks or so and then dive into a whole host of food types. From Mexican to Italian and Chinese to All American.

Oh by the way, don’t forget the enormous salad bar.

And just so you don’t leave disappointed, there’s the dessert bar (which shouldn’t even be called a bar. It should have it’s own zip code).

So think of the last buffet restaurant you visited.

Do you recall being just a bit overwhelmed about what you were going to fit on your miniscule plate during the “first course”?

Do you remember saying to yourself, “I’ll try a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.” “If I don’t like item #1, I’ll just go back and try item #6.”

45 minutes later, you had tried everything they had to offer. If you’re like me, you probably leaned back toward the end of the meal and rubbed your midsection in delight.

An hour after the belly rubbing though, do you recall how you felt?

A bit lethargic, somewhat groggy and ready for a long nap. That’s my guess because that’s typically how I feel after an experience like that.

Hey, think about this for a minute…

Could that be exactly what is happening in small business today? I happen to know this is the exact reason why most entrepreneurs are frustrated with their business’ growth.

They’ve been eating at the buffet. The buffet of business strategy.

It goes a little something like this. You attend your local chamber meeting and hear the local social media expert (essentially a web designer) tell you how to build a social network. You get excited and start working on that. (Okay, let’s call that the chinese food on your plate).

Meanwhile a friend in your networking group tells you how coupon mailers are working out really well for them. Italian food.

Then, you attend an industry trade show where they talk about the best yellow pages ads to implement in your business. That’s the All American food part.

So you combine the web designer’s strategy with the coupon mailer idea and toss in the yellow pages strategy. Not to mention a few other things you pick up along the way.

Do you see where i am going with this?

If you keep doing that, your business will feel the same way you and I did after the over-the-top buffet meal. Your business will feel slow, lethargic and sleepy.

A few months and years later, you’ll find the business really has no focused direction. It struggles to stay ahead of the competition and typically finds itself reacting to what competitors are doing rather than proactively marketing itself. Left unchecked, this “eating at the buffet” will hurt your business, diminish it’s market value and be a constant source of headaches for you, the entrepreneur.

So what can you do if you find yourself having over-eaten at the buffet of business strategy?

It’s simple.

Step 1: Take an intensive look at your current business development strategy and find the conflicting strategies in your business development systems. You can request a complimentary copy of our Marketing CAT SCAN. It will help you do just that. This process is not for the faint of heart. You’ll spend several hours over the course of an entire week going through this strategic process yourself. If you’re not willing to take this time to work ON your business, then stop now and go back to what you were doing.

Step 2: Once you’ve identified the conflicting strategies in your current plan, pull them out from the roots. The CAT SCAN will show you how.

Step 3: Replace the conflicting strategies with fresh and healthy ideas that are consistent with the rest of your business plan and entrepreneurial type.

If you need help along the way, there are lots of free and paid resources I can point you to. But no point talking about those until you do step 1 first.

I hope you follow these simple steps. Your business will be the better for it.

Reinventing the Original Social Network

// May 24th, 2009 // View Comments // Next Gen. Chamber of Commerce

This post is in response to some questions and comments I got from the post I made on April 28th. If you haven’t read that post already, do that first by clicking here.

Ok, so we agree that Chambers of Commerce need to reinvent themselves to survive this changing marketplace.

But if you’re a Chamber leader, how do you go about re-inventing and re-energizing your Chamber…specifically?

Here’s an idea…

They say the proof is in the pudding right? So where’s your pudding?

We all know the #1 reason an entrepreneur joins a Chamber is so their business can grow.

Are your members businesses growing? If so, let’s highlight them. If not, let’s help them grow! (I know, I know. I’m not a rocket scientist).

Let’s show current and prospective members that business growth is part-and-parcel of chamber membership.

In other words, let’s show them some proof.

Here’s a step-by-step plan on how to go about putting the proof in the pudding:

1. Take 20 committed entrepreneurs who are serious about their business growth. Invite them to participate in a 90-day business accelerator program. (Bonus Tip: Depending on how you structure the program, you can probably generate an extra infusion of non-dues revenue from the participants).

2. During the 90 days, track everything! From starting revenues to ending revenues and everything in between. Have each participant submit weekly detailed information on the impact the program is having on their growth. (Bonus Tip: set up a social media network around the 20 participants and let the rest of chamber membership “listen in” as the results pour in).

3. At the completion of the 90 days, have a marketing campaign ready to launch that highlights the stories and successes of these 20 entrepreneurs. Include PR, local radio, blog articles, grass roots efforts and promotions. Follow it up with an exciting membership drive.

4. As prospects hear about the transformation of these 20 companies, offer them a no-fee, no-obligation opportunity to sit down with one of the 20 campaign participants for a meet and greet. These 20 company owners will end up doing all the “selling” for you.

5. Have some creative “packages” available for prospects that allow them to test drive your chamber membership with little to no risk to them.

That’s it! Just deploying this one strategy could set your chamber on the fast-track to growth and set you head-and-shoulders over the competition.

More importantly, it will legitimize the organization and the value you promise your customer, the entrepreneur.

These 5 steps are “out-of-the-box”.

It takes a focused and determined team to execute.

However, if it results in a 200-500% increase in new membership while having a significant impact on retention of existing members, wouldn’t it be worth the time and effort?

Of course it would.

There are only 3 reasons you would not roll out a strategy like this.

1. You think it’s a silly idea that would never work.
2. You don’t feel that things are going just fine the way there are in your chamber.
3. You don’t have the bandwidth and expertise to pull off the actual program (not to mention ensure that these 20 businesses actually grow).

If you’re in category 1 or 2, you can stop reading now. Go back to whatever else it was you were doing.

If you are in category 3, then don’t let that be a hinderance or excuse any more. Post your concerns and questions below. My team and I will roll up our sleeves and help you deploy this from soup-to-nuts. (And don’t worry, it doesn’t have to cost you a dime to have our help).

Got questions or comments? Ask or comment away!

What Happened To The Original Social Network?

// April 28th, 2009 // View Comments // Next Gen. Chamber of Commerce

Survey respondent #1: “Oh yeah, I’m a chamber member. But I don’t think I’m going to renew my membership this year.”

Survey respondent #2: “I am a member of my chamber, and the networking has been good. But I can’t say it has grown my business in any tangible way.”

A survey of small business owners shows that 72% of them say that they are not getting any measurable commercial benefit from being involved in their chamber of commerce.

It used to be that you couldn’t survive in business without being part of a chamber. It used to be an entrepreneur’s safe haven and lifeline.

It used to be that I could join a chamber, and it would impact my business. I would have access to proven education that I could implement in my business. I could meet other business owners and be encouraged through the ups and downs of business. I would have such a positive experience both personally and financially, that I would have no choice but to tell every business owner I know about the chamber.

After all, I was a satisfied customer of the chamber. More than that, based on the positive impact it was having on my business, I was a fanatical customer of the chamber.

Question: Are there any fanatical customers left in your chamber of commerce?

I’ve attended a few trade shows in the past few years. From the wellness industry to the Gospel Coalition and everything in between. It is interesting to see the glaring difference between the well-planned successful events and the not-so-successful ones. The unfortunate exhibitors at the latter, end up doing more business with other exhibitors than they do with the attendees.

“I spent $1,500 on a booth and made more money selling my products to the other exhibitors than I did to the attendees.” says the disappointed exhibitor.

“I paid my $175 membership fee and ended up with a couple of new clients from my chamber membership. Now I keep renewing just out of obligation so I don’t lose those two clients.” Says the burnt-out chamber member.

Hmmm…

So essentially what the “customers” in both cases are saying is that their expectations are not being met.

As with any national organization, there are exceptions of course. Around 5% of Chambers do have fanatical members who are getting tremendous value from their memberships.

Most chambers however, are simply feeding and entertaining their members each month. At best, the members are involved in an incestuous “you pitch me your offer and I’ll pitch you mine” cycle. The members are picking up the scraps of business they throw each other. Meanwhile, these chambers are watching the hole at the bottom of their membership bucket get bigger and bigger.

The original social network that was supposed to stimulate commerce and empower entrepreneurs has been reduced to a monthly tea party.

On the other side of the fence, the chamber’s original social networking business model has been taken by young punks with high society MBA’s and duplicated into fabulously successful online networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They are the next generation of social networking and they are here to stay. Permanently!

My fear is that if Chambers don’t wake up and make some dramatic changes to how they operate, they will be reduced to a heap of ashes. That’s not just my opinion, the facts as they relate to chamber memberships can speak for themselves.

So what now? The world is changing. There is a whole new definition of social networking. How can the first social network re-invent itself and thrive in this environment rather than be reduced to a museum artifact?

It all begins with this question…

Do you even care? In other words, do you sense the urgency to change? Or do you feel that you are much better off staying the course?

If you do care about the future of your chamber and the success of it’s members, then here are some tips on how to get started toward what I call the “Next Generation of Chambers of Commerce.”

1. Revisit the original vision: Why did the Chamber start? What was it’s goal? What was your vision for the chamber when you came on board? Go back to the movie that was playing in your mind the night you decided to step into a leadership role at the chamber. What did you chamber look like in the movie? How many members did it have? What was the energy level in the room? How many success stories were being shared?

2. Evaluate the current reality: Take a snapshot of your last chamber board meeting and your last chamber event? What was discussed in each meeting? What was the energy and excitement level in the room? Were there any success stories being shared? Is the focus on growth or preventing attrition?

3. Plot the chart: On a piece of paper, plot your vision as a series of points. Then plot your reality. Are your vision and reality coinciding yet? Is there a point in the future, based on your current activities, where your vision and reality will definitely coincide? Are the two plotted lines going to intersect, or are they running parallel to each other? Worse yet, are they heading in different directions?

4. Make a leadership decision: The choice to stay the same is often cheered on by mediocre minds. If you have a weak board, they will not want any change. They will buck even the thought of doing things differently. If so, my recommendation to you is to fire them. If your board gets just as excited about change and improvement, then you’ve got the right team. Sit down as a group and chart a course for a better future. Don’t do it in a vacuum. Ask for help. Chart a course that allows your vision and your reality to coincide as quickly as possible. Start that re-engineering process today. Even if it requires some pruning and pain.

Here are some questions to ask during the re-engineering process:

Question 1: How can I impact the revenue and profits of my members?
HINT: Think past the same old incestuous mixer events. Think BIGGER. Results begin with better education. How can you provide a more robust educational platform to your members?

Question 2: How can we eliminate confusion of the educational message? If we hire a different speaker each month, how do we keep speaker #1’s message from conflicting from speaker #4? Think BIGGER. What if we had a 12 month curriculum that was pre-built and guaranteed not to conflict within itself?

Question 3: How can I improve the personal lives of my members?
HINT: Get past hiring the local motivational speaker who wants to sell his books to your people. Think BIGGER. Personal growth comes from accountability not just hearing. How can you build and facilitate mastermind groups to ensure true change in the members?

Question 4: If we do start to impact the revenues and profits of our members while also impacting their personal lives, we will have a bunch of fanatical customers in our chamber. How can we take these successful men and women and now impact the local community for the better?
HINT: Get past the annual charity “feeder and auction”. Think BIGGER. Empowered entrepreneurs are the same group that has brought this great country out of the last 6 recessions. They can do much more for the community than an annual bake sale.

The chewing gum called “The Chamber of Commerce” is losing it’s flavor.

I don’t believe it is because the good folks running these chambers don’t care.

I do believe it is because the good folks running these chambers don’t know HOW to turn the off-course battleship around.

There is help available…

But only if you are willing to do thing differently than before…