by Erik Cofield in Articles
2/8/2009 11:55:00 AM
By Erik Cofield, CGA
It was my privilege to be tasked with managing the education department for the Greater Houston Builders Association. We took a curriculum of nearly 30 courses per year, to 110 courses per year. Not only did we offer tremendous value to the membership, help internal departments grow, but obviously significantly raised non-dues revenue for the association. Whether you already have an education department, or are considering one, we hope you find the following information helpful as you seek to provide the highest level of service and professionalism for your association, while making more money of course!
1) Use CertificatesCreate certificates of completion for all courses other than NAHB courses since NAHB sends their own. Hand these out at the end of the class. Keep in mind employees like to have things to show their boss. Business owners like to have things to show their consumer customers. The HBA should get templates as well as gold embossed seals professionally printed. This allows the HBA staff to manually write in the person’s name and class title, or to print these out, customized for every class. Applying a pre printed gold embossed seal makes the certificate more prestigious.
2) Survey SaysBeyond the NAHB form, create your own survey form, with as few as 5 questions or as many as you feel will be tolerated. Make it obvious the form should be anonymous. Communicate about the survey forms before the class, and be there at the end to collect them. You are trying to find out: was it easy to register, did the class meet the stated objective, was the instructor competent and prepared or did they sell their products and services. You also want to know if the price was correct, or if they have any suggestions for future content, types of food, location, hours, etc. The education department must be continually developed and created to serve the membership.
3) High Energy HBA Staff The HBA staff person should always be at least somewhat involved in not only introducing the speakers, but also be in the class at the closing to thank the speaker, ensure forms are properly filled out and completed, and to communicate the next upcoming classes.
4) Good Food MattersGive them decent food. Make it specific to the demographic of the course attendees and commensurate with the price paid for the course. For example, if you have construction superintendents coming in at 4:00pm for a course they have not paid for, but their company wants them to be at, minimize no shows by offering a larger quantity of a higher caliber pizza, and include drinks and cookies. Another example is if you have a 3 day CSP course where attendees are sales professionals and have paid a fairly large course fee, you should be able to have a caterer come in with more than one entrée as a choice. Include salads and light entrees for this demographic. Another great way to give them a feeling of being important is to create a lunch sign in sheet. Put 4-6 lunch options on the sheet and have each person select what they want at the beginning of class with their name. This gives the HBA staff time to place a customized order from a sandwich shop, deli, or restaurant. Food is a very personal thing. To minimize the importance of it, or throw a tray of sandwiches out there, will reflect to the attendees this is just a task. Make them feel special by wanting to please them and going one step beyond. Upgrading this one element starts getting the word out that it is a good program.
5) You must have alliesStart with a list of any current members who have NAHB designations. Ask those members to go to the meetings of your various councils and committees to share the value of not only the NAHB designation, but other content you provided as well. Show these allies appreciation in the form of recognition in your magazine or newsletter. The bottom line is your program will see higher attendance if there is peer to peer networking about getting people in to the classes.
6) CustomizeMany companies simply don’t want their employees to take off an entire day, or mingle with the competition. Don’t be afraid to bring the content to them. You can bring content, even customized content, to the member company directly. For NAHB courses, there is a per person fee associated with this. For content outside of NAHB, many times the company pays a flat fee regardless of number of attendees. Either they have a small staff, or perhaps they have a large staff and the flat fee is a great deal for them. This works with all types of content from short segments (30-60 minutes) to long segments (entire day). This also allows company information to be shared at the class, which would not be the case if coming to the class along with the general membership.
7) Show the speaker some loveGive the instructor(s) not only their choice of meal, but a certificate as well. If they have volunteered their time for free, or for example, only charging you travel, show appreciation with a simple gift valued at $20. This will go a long way in making them want to come back to your association. People want to be wanted, and like being appreciated. Further, if your agreement was to have a check for them at day of presentation, give them the check at the end of the day. Making an instructor wait to get paid not only makes it more challenging to get them to come back but they DO speak to other instructors. Instructors will turn down an HBA for a bad reputation. You have the choice to make your HBA stand out as a class act, or not.
8) Content is KingYou can offer NAHB courses. I highly recommend you ensure NAHB staff are your strongest allies and to use and leverage what they can do to help you. However, there are hundreds of other course titles you could provide. Think of things your superintendents need such as storm water solutions, water intrusion issues, and more. Business owners need updates on codes, standards, green building, industry trends and cultural things such as selling to immigrants. You can invite consumers with topics such as home buying 101, build on your own lot, and much more. Your sales and marketing staff need content such as Effective Lead Marketing, Using Warranty as a Pre-Sales tool and much more. Create it and they will come.
9) Negotiate and CoordinateNo matter the size of your HBA, but especially if you are a small HBA, consider going together with another nearby HBA. You can also ask instructors if they will do 2 short seminars in the same day so you can maximize your attendees, or if they will provide content for an evening event, followed by a morning event the next day. You can also negotiate the speaker’s fees, especially for non NAHB content. As a speaker myself, there are many reasons why I would lower my fees in exchange for something such as being advertised as a co-sponsor.
10) Leverage the Sponsorship OpportunityEvery HBA has the potential to get a group of education department sponsors. You can have an education sponsor banner at every one of your meetings, even the non education meetings. The sponsors can each get a turn introducing their products and services at events. The sponsors can hand out literature at your education events. You can easily profile them in your newsletter or magazine. There are many ways you can leverage publicity for a fee from them as education sponsors. Naturally the best sponsors are those who wish to get in front of every segment of your membership and potential attendees. Fees are whatever you want to set them at. By starting or growing your education department, not only are you raising the bar for our industry, but you are helping your members grow their business, which will in turn, help you the HBA grow your membership and help retention. It is true these suggestions take a little more money, more time and effort from HBA staff, and may seem trivial to some. However the cost will be recouped easily, even in a small HBA. I was successful for the GHBA and you can be too! Develop! Serve! Educate! Keep them coming back for more, telling their friends, and pulling in attendees from nearby metropolitan areas through advertising with your state HBA. This article provided complimentary by Erik Cofield with BuildTopia. For a digital copy, or to publish it, or for a list of 10 more, please contact Erik at ecofield@buildtopia.com.
Erik Cofield, CGA has leveraged technology and provided business management consulting for all sizes and types of builders, developers and Remodelers since 2000, including volume, multi-family and custom, to help them improve their business. He is a VP with BuildTopia (www.buildtopia.com), a widely used international construction management software company. He can be reached via ecofield@buildtopia.com.
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