MEMBERSHIP SELLING AND
SALES MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS

Holman Brothers’ Top 7 Reasons to Utilize Prospecting Message Maps - Part 1

In last week’s Insights Post, we outlined why Prospecting Calls are Alive and Well for membership sales. You just can’t afford to wait for the phone to ring. It’s essential to proactively reach out to begin relationships with the businesses who aren’t currently interacting with your chamber.

If you want to up your prospecting game, nothing will get you there faster than a well-practiced game plan. And it all starts with prospecting message maps. 

Regrettably, the vast majority of chamber membership reps and membership teams don’t utilize any form of prospecting message maps.  

Here are the first three of our top 7 reasons why we think you should…

1. NO TIME TO WING IT

Many membership reps believe that winging it is a more genuine approach. However, there is a very small window for you to make a possible connection on prospecting calls. Let alone create enough interest for your prospect to want to learn more. Clearly not a time to try to do something without much practice or preparation.

Instead of stifling creativity, membership reps need to know that well-crafted message maps make your job easier. Knowing what works best helps you to stay on track and paves the way for inspired engagement with potential members.

Chamber leaders need to know when membership reps ad-lib their calls, they can’t pinpoint what works and what doesn’t. And you can’t help them improve. Even worse, winging it may be attracting the wrong members.

2. CONSISTENTLY BENEFICIAL CONVERSATIONS

Message maps are a powerful way to manage your message; however, they are NOT a script, and you shouldn’t deliver them verbatim. The key is to add your personality and adapt your chamber’s messages to fit your conversational style.

When we provide message maps for the chambers we work with, we format them with bullet points as opposed to paragraphs of information. The bulleted format makes it easier for individual membership reps to fine-tune and adjust the messages to their natural style. Key messaging coupled with creative licensing to make the message their own, empowers memberships reps to consistently engage businesses leaders in more beneficial conversations.

3.  SOME DAYS YOU'RE "ON," OTHER DAYS, NOT SO MUCH

Prospecting is arguably the most important stage of the recruiting process. It’s also the toughest. Even top performing membership reps experience a difficult day now and again.

There are a myriad of internal and external factors that can influence performance. Worries at home, difficulties with a member, an upcoming event, the list goes on and on. Life just gets in the way sometimes.  

Most of us are more inspired and creative on good days. But what do you do on bad days?

Prospecting message maps provide safe sanctuary when a rep just isn’t on their game. Tried and true messaging delivers a consistent baseline that helps diminish the impact of outside influences.

Like most things in business, lack of preparation leads to wavering results. With prospecting, little or no planning leads to frustrated membership reps, shorter calls, and fleeting results. In short, your chamber doesn’t grow.

Message maps fully prepare membership reps to lead and foster productive calls.  Prospecting conversations become second nature, and your recruiting pipeline grows. You won’t enjoy the same results when you try something different on every call.

Need more convincing? We'll have four more reasons you should be using prospecting message maps in next week's Insights post.

HOLMAN BROTHERS VIRTUAL LEARNING SERIES

Have your heard about our new LIVE Virtual Learning Series? Register now for the first session, Overcoming Prospecting Roadblocks, Thursday, January 21 at 11 a.m. PST.