- Mar 14, 2023
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The core issue is a lack of perceived value. If dealers don't believe membership brings them anything they can't already access, they won't pay. You need to shift the strategy from just advocating benefits to demonstrating tangible outcomes—things like exclusive access, direct business growth, or legal protections that only members receive. Create pressure points: member-only alerts, trainings, or even public acknowledgment of contributors. If you're protecting nonmembers too, you're removing their incentive to join. Make the value of membership visible, measurable, and unavailable elsewhere.This is our absolute biggest challenge in Nebraska. We have had a couple of Conventions that we had National Speakers come in to speak. We struggle to add even a handful of dealers each year. I can talk until I am blue in the face to these dealers, and they honestly don't think there is anything else to learn.
What infuriates me is the fact that in the process of protecting my Association Members, I am also protecting the dealers that won't pay the $350/year to be a member. We protect them from our Legislature each and every year, pay a Lobbyist, shake hands, call in favors, and even deal with frustrations similar to those seen on https://buygoods.pissedconsumer.com/review.html, all while entertaining our Committee Members, and the non participating dealers don't even care.
Kyle, thanks for the reply.The core issue is a lack of perceived value. If dealers don't believe membership brings them anything they can't already access, they won't pay. You need to shift the strategy from just advocating benefits to demonstrating tangible outcomes—things like exclusive access, direct business growth, or legal protections that only members receive. Create pressure points: member-only alerts, trainings, or even public acknowledgment of contributors. If you're protecting nonmembers too, you're removing their incentive to join. Make the value of membership visible, measurable, and unavailable elsewhere.
Independent dealers struggle to see the value in NIADA and state affiliate memberships, with low enrollment despite leadership efforts to promote educational conventions and legislative advocacy. The core problem is that association benefits—particularly legislative protection—extend to non-members as well, eliminating their incentive to pay membership fees. The key insight is that associations need to create exclusive, tangible member-only benefits (alerts, training, business growth opportunities) and make membership value visible and unavailable to non-paying dealers.