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October 23, 2003 at 08:00 PM
Celebrating 75 Years– And Looking Ahead To The Future
I love birthday and anniversary celebrations, and this 75th Anniversary year of the Society of Financial Service Professionals certainly has been no exception. Commemorations such as this are a time for dreams. Theyre an opportunity to warm our souls with memories of celebrations past, of both the special as well as the ordinary in our lives. But this is also a time to look ahead, or we will not see where we are going.
As I look ahead to the future for the Society, I see several areas of growth, starting with membership.
While there are certainly good financial reasons to build the membership base of an organization, the best reasons go well beyond cash flow and operating capital. With each new member comes a fresh set of eyes, new thinking, and new vitality. An increase in membership means the pool of volunteers is deeper, so work gets spread out and there are continually new faces among Chapter leadership.
The Society must, and will, seek new and creative ways to recruit members in both the short and long term.
But to get to a future that includes an abundance of members, each member has to start by doing his or her part today. Each member needs to make it his or her personal responsibility to tell our story to at least three prospective members annually.
There are so many candidates for membership in our own personal universesthe attorney or CPA to whom we refer clients; the CFP, CLU or ChFC at our office, or with whom we may have studied; the student whom we are mentoring, who aspires to be a credentialed professional. Organizations grow when the people who belong invite other people to join them.
Theres no magic here, just time-tested and proven practices. It works the same way many sales professionals built their practices10 prospects, four appointments, two closing interviews, one sale. With the Societys value offerings, the effective ratios shrink dramatically. From what Ive seen, 10 prospects will yield eight excellent membership candidates which will likely yield five new society members. I sincerely hope this theory gets tested.
In the future I see continued growth in the array of benefits members enjoy. As time goes on, the Society will continue to review and improve its product offerings, both to stay in step with technology and to serve the diverse needs of a varied and growing membership.
This is not just a mission for the future but has always been a goal of the societyusing cutting-edge technology to provide members with value-added benefits.
For example, consider the Societys video conferences. When video tele-conferencing was introduced, the technology was state of the art. We had the capability of reaching all of our members at the same time via a nationwide satellite broadcast.
