90p Admin

I'm pretty much out of ideas as to how to promote vendor members. It's not sustainable to invite vendor members into our group for a high fee - wall them off from our content - then have members shit on them. Increasingly our opportunity is likely to sell booth space and say the heck with interaction through the year. Either that or get rid of VM and jack up the annual dues to $2,500 a head and sell tickets to MOTM for $1,250. Everyone have a good chuckle but sit back and think about who pays for our boat cruise, dinner and hotel during these conferences.

I think it just takes time. We just introduce the concept of vendor membership this year. Let's let it play out before throwing in the towel. Just my 2 cents.

I agree with Peter. This takes time to gain traction. If vendors think they are getting a one month ROI, then they are in for a surprise. We need to execute on what we promised them (webinars and other member interaction) and continue to improve our offering. I do think that some will not find their ROI good enough to merit renewing at some point, but that is to be expected. IIG may not be a good fit in the long run, but that will be their decision. We just keep moving forward.

Also I think we need to keep sight of our mission here - and maybe that mission needs to be properly defined but I have always felt is it to help our members be more successful through collaboration and community. That doesn't mean members are forced to go the direction of vendor members and I don't think it's our place to push vendor members down regular members' throats. It's still a free market. I think that vendor members will be more prominent in members minds over time and start to build mind share over non-vendor members. Some of these companies have tarnished reputations and will need to see this as a longer term commitment. I don't think that will surprise any of the vendor members.