Corporate strategies for association success.

Borrow ideas that work - and remake them to suit your members.

What do associations have to learn from fast-food chains, luxury hotels, cosmetics and insurance companies, and the like? Among other things, know and serve your primary market, "test" your customers, admit your mistakes - even if they aren't yours, and incorporate work and play. In short, take risks and then follow through according to customer reaction. If Corporate America's trial-and-error successes with consumers offer any advice to associations, it is this: We cannot continue to approach marketing, member services, and membership development in the traditional, "safe" manner. We have to move to the edge if we want a sharper perspective.

Associations can take small steps or giant leaps toward redesigning corporate ideas as bold new association successes. Before you read more, take the "Creative Idea Scorecard" quiz accompanying this article. After you finish this article, pick up a copy of Inc., Entrepreneur, or Forbes to See what the hottest areas of corporate interest are today. The media show that healthy employees, customer service, quality, and team building continue to be important topics.

Great ideas in Corporate America result when people take good ideas and enhance them, redesign some to suit a specific audience, and generate new ideas. We in the association community often play it safe and implement only ideas that have been successful for other associations.

There is no big secret to adapting great corporate ideas and making them work for associations. What it takes is an environment of creativity and empowerment, an open mind, and sometimes a little nerve. As we look at several examples, consider four basic questions about the association environment:

* How do members perceive our association?

* What is our customer service approach?

* Do we consider our audience when making decisions?

* Is our staff empowered?

How do members perceive the association?

Customers remember the experience, not the product. In 1955, McDonald's Speedee Service, Des Plaines, Illinois (now McDonald's Corporation, Oak Brook, Illinois), was just a new idea in food service. Today, there are more than 8,300 McDonald's in the United States and 11,200 worldwide. Who are the most frequent customers for fast food? Children. Surveys show that parents allow children to make the choice when eating out, and one third of McDonald's 20 million customers are children. With that information, McDonald's created a meal-plus-fun-in-a-box called the Happy Meal and made history. To a child, which is more important: the hamburger or collecting the third Disney character in a set of six?

Like most associations, the National Association of Home Builders, Washington, D.C., holds an annual leadership orientation day at the national office, complete with a tour of the facility. Realizing that the traditional building tour could be more exciting, NAHB repackaged it as a memorable event involving staff and volunteers. The 1993 road rally and 1994 treasure hunt sent teams of volunteer leaders and association executive officers charging through the headquarters building in search of member product and services information needed to complete a game staff had devised. In 1994, we tied the game's theme to the annual membership development plan: Teams arrived at the "S.S. Member Ship" and were greeted by staff decked out in pirate gear.

If it works for someone else, make it work for you. Have you noticed how many hotels have adopted a customer service creed? We first observed employees of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, headquartered in Atlanta, carrying pocket-size creeds. NAHB took this idea and adapted it into a set of membership-based customer service principles that we strive for as a team. Each staffer has the principles posted in his or her office, and we review their relevancy every year at our staff retreat.

Turn complaints into opportunities. Complaints indicate a need that you are not meeting. Rubbermaid, Inc., Wooster, Ohio, occasionally gets complaint letters about products that aren't theirs. The company uses each complaint as an opportunity to send a comparable Rubbermaid product along with a note that sympathizes with the customer's bad experiences and invites him or her to experience Rubbermaid's quality.

What is our customer service approach?

Give members "drive-in" convenience. Associations traditionally have operated like grocery stores, but they increasingly realize that members are looking for the convenience and service of a drive-in. Rather than browse for products and services that might be interesting or helpful, as in a grocery store, today members look for specific information and help on targeted issues. The American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, began offering online conferences in January 1994 so that committees and task forces can share files and information. NAHB uses fax-on-demand to service information requests on conventions, educational programs, and selected industry topics. We also established NAHB-Net for 800 chapters, volunteer leaders, and the national office.

Admit when you've made a mistake. If you make a mistake, admit it, then fix it. T. Scott Gross, in his book Outrageous Customer Service, advises, "Apologize even if your customer doesn't know you goofed." The Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, misjudged customer preferences and launched New Coke in 1984. The company turned a marketing fiasco into a positive consumer experience by returning "old" Coke to store shelves as Coke Classic.

Do the unexpected for your customers. KinderCare Learning Centers, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama, stays open until 9 p.m. one day a week to give parents time to go out to dinner, run errands, or just find some quiet time. Why don't we treat our members like customers? If we believe in the concept of customers for life, what about members for life? Associations that encourage their staff to resolve member concerns and enable employees to be creative problem solvers build an environment of trust among co-workers and satisfaction among members.

Do we consider our audience?

It's not enough to know your audience - consider them. How about the story about the Chevrolet Nova? Chevy tried to sell it in Latin America, where marketers discovered too late that in Spanish, "no va" means "it doesn't go." Did they know their audience? Sure. But it's "no go" when you don't consider diverse aspects like culture and language. NAHB designed a recruitment tips list for easy reference. Its design was large, cumbersome, and unusable. Did we know our audience? Of course. Did we consider them? We do now: The list became a pocket-size card.

Fill a need in your market with a good idea from another. Cobra Golf, Inc., Carlsbad, California, borrowed a great idea from the ski industry to demonstrate that the company's latest clubs provided a new experience for golfers. Cobra sent free clubs to pro shops around the country and asked the pros to try them and lend them to their customers. It worked, and the pros recommended and sold lots of Cobra clubs.

Laugh at politics and dethrone the naysayers. If you assume that a new idea will cost too much, that the board or chief executive officer won't approve, or that it's too new for members, you will never get beyond the same old approach. The Body Shop International, Littlehampton, England, took on its critics when the company launched a socially responsible and largely unadvertised product into the competitive cosmetics market. Ignoring the negative allowed this company to expand to 1,136 stores internationally and build sales to more than $600 million in 1993. NAHB also stopped critics cold when we proposed starting education programs for a new exhibition at 7 a.m. Naysayers predicted that few registrants would attend that early. A packed house proved that if they had ruled, we would have missed a great opportunity.

Is our staff empowered?

Look internally for great ideas. Remember the McDonald's Happy Meal? A marketing manager in St. Louis thought it up. Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York, staffs a suggestion office dedicated to taking action on employee suggestions. Equifax, Inc., Atlanta, asks employees what they would do differently if they were president of the company. The staff at Resource Information Management Systems, Inc., Naperville, Illinois, meets with the four principals over lunch just to talk about new ideas. NAHB assembled groups of employees into design and implementation teams that have made changes in employee orientation, the performance management system, and how we communicate with members. Get the team involved; ask staff for their wildest ideas.

Don't reject ideas just because they've never been tried before. The concept for Federal Express overnight delivery was first explored in a college term paper that earned a "C" grade. Energize the association team by involving the team members in the solutions. Corporations form teams, task forces, and committees to look at new ideas and explore options.

First care for the troops, your means to success. The concept of healthy employees and the healthy company is gaining credibility. This idea includes caring about people's time, health, and well-being. Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Companies, Kansas City, Missouri, adopted flexible scheduling nine years ago; now 90 percent of the employees use flextime, and employee turnover has dropped 45 percent. Control Data Systems, Arden Hills, Minnesota, instituted a variety of wellness programs that associations could adapt and redesign, like "stay well bake-off" healthful recipes for the company cookbook; "holiday weigh-in" with prizes for weight maintenance; "congratulations cards" sent when someone does something healthy; and a "quiet room" for employee meditation. Stevens Real Estate, in Lawrence, Kansas, encourages employees to use mini-trampo-lines while listening to sales training tapes.

Like many associations in Washington, D.C., the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc., relaxed its dress code during the summer, encouraging employees to dress casually. The association has broadened this policy to the rest of the year, allowing employees to decide when a professional look is more appropriate. Consider corporate memberships in health clubs, healthy choices in vending machines, short Friday schedules, and lunch-hour workshops on health and well-being.

At NAHB, we began to discover successful corporate examples every day, once we started looking for them. Remember that it takes practice to be creative and requires some nerve to introduce Play Doh and puppets as training tools or suggest that staff share how their jobs contribute to membership recruiting by writing it on a wall. Ask for input from your staff, involve your membership, get creative, and see what happens.

Recommended Reading

* The Popcorn Report, by Faith Popcorn, 1992, HarperCollins Publishing, Inc.

* Positively Outrageous Service, by T. Scott Gross, 1991, Warner Books, Inc.

* The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations, by Tom Peters, 1994, Vintage Books 

Available from ASAE (phone: [phone]; fax: [phone]) are the following:

* The Healthy Company, by Robert H. Rosen, with Lisa Berger, 1991; catalog number AMR210725; $14.95 for ASAE members, $17.95 for non-members.

* Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service, by Chip R. Bell and Ron Zemke, 1992; catalog number AMR210771; $17.95 for ASAE members, $21.55 for nonmembers.

* Sustaining Knock Your Socks Off Service, by Thomas K. Connellan and Ron Zemke, 1993; catalog number AMR 210772; $17.95 for ASAE members; $21.55 for non-members.

* Total Customer Satisfaction: Putting the World's Best Programs to Work, by Jacques Horovitz and Michele Jurgens Park, 1994; catalog number AMR 210839; $25 for ASAE members, $30 for nonmembers.

RELATED ARTICLE: Creative Idea Scorecard

Assess your association's approach to generating new solutions. Rate the accuracy of each statement by circling always, sometimes, or never.

1. We look at products, services, and events as opportunities to provide an experience for our members.

Always Sometimes Never

2. We redesign ideas that have worked for someone else and make them work in our market.

Always Sometimes Never

3. We laugh in the face of negativity and try new ideas.

Always Sometimes Never

4. We take complaints seriously, follow up, and use them as opportunities for new ideas, products, or services.

Always Sometimes Never

5. We are open to all staff involvement in the suggestion, planning, and implementation of new ideas.

Always Sometimes Never

6. We are willing to try ideas that have never been tried before.

Always Sometimes Never

7. We consider the needs of our audience before assuming that they want, need, or can use a new idea.

Always Sometimes Never

8. We admit it when we make mistakes.

Always Sometimes Never

9. We do the unexpected for our members.

Always Sometimes Never

10. We take action to care for employees' time, health, and well-being.

Always Sometimes Never

Scoring: Few, if any, associations can answer "always" to all of these questions. If you answered "always" to at least six, you are well on your way to creating a successful environment for your members and staff. If your answer were primarily "sometimes," you are headed in the right direction, but perhaps your organization isn't as willing to take a risk as others. If you answered "never" to a majority of these questions, the authors volunteer to bring Play Doh, puppets, and Happy Meals to your next staff meeting.

RELATED ARTICLE: The "Happy Meal" Method

Before you launch any new or redesigned ideas at your association, examine how corporations create their successes. The principles of corporate success are the same as principles of membership development. We call it the "Happy Meal" approach.

* Prospecting. Identifying an audience for a new idea, product, service, or approach is the first step. McDonald's Corporation, Oak Brook, Illinois, acted on the Happy Meal idea because its biggest potential audience was children. McDonald's knew that children already responded to Ronald McDonald and play areas. Look for new audiences and untapped potential. Identify who will use or benefit from your idea. What are their unique needs?

* Recruitment. McDonald's recruited children and their parents to try the new Happy Meal by appealing to what both audiences wanted. Kids wanted the games and toys, and parents wanted a hassle-free choice that engaged children's attention. It's no different when recruiting a member or launching a new idea: Show members how new association services will benefit them, and you will see positive results. Identify how your new idea will increase members' success.

* Orientation. Packaging and presentation are critical. McDonald's packaging (games, colors, and riddles), toys, and special orange drink all contributed to children quickly becoming comfortable with the Happy Meal concept. Your delivery is as important as your product. Help your members become acquainted with any new idea before you judge its success.

* Involvement. McDonald's involved children - and delighted parents - with a continuing series of games, riddles, and stories on the Happy Meal box. In membership development, involvement leads to commitment. Launching a new idea is no different: Involve your members in the new idea, engaging them in the process and including them in its success.

* Renewal. Ultimately it's not hamburgers that keep kids coming back to McDonald's. It's the toy or collection of toys - their hot buttons. Kids choose McDonald's because they want the next toy in the series. Higher perceived value of association services increases the probability of member satisfaction and renewal. Convince members they need your new service, and they'll come back for more.

Steve W. Swafford is senior director of membership marketing and Jill W. McCrory is senior director of training and education services at the National Association of Home Builders, Washington, D.C.