Be Strong: Ask for Help

By Eric Jacobson, Vice President, Media Development

It takes more strength to ask for help than it does to not ask for help. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Rather, it’s a sign of knowing when to seek assistance to help you become more effective and successful.

Athletes seek out trainers. Professionals of all ages engage with mentors. Budding actors work with acting coaches.

And, in nearly every case, the associations with whom we partner had the strength to ask for our help. Each had pain. Communication pain. Decreasing meeting attendance pain. Poor vendor performance pain. Workload pain.

Rather than ignore and struggle along with that pain, they asked for help — sometimes reaching out to us, sometimes opening up during a call or meeting initiated by us.

Having worked with dozens of associations for the past 30 years, we are good at listening to the pain an organization is experiencing and then recommending options and possible solutions. Those recommendations include the best practices we witness every day as we create custom print, digital and mobile content designed to engage audiences, increase meeting attendance and build membership.

Here’s a list of the most common pain points we hear from associations. Which ones match up with your pain points?

1. Our internal staff doesn’t have time to sell ads into our print and digital products.

2. Our exhibit sales vendor isn’t communicating effectively with us.

3. We need to make our meeting more eco-friendly.

4. Our staff has been reduced and we no longer have the ability to create content in-house.

5. We don’t have internal expert medical writers.

6. We need to generate more revenue by better monetizing our journals, meetings and special events.

7. We have too many vendors and our projects feel disjointed.

8. We need to communicate more effectively with our members via texting, apps, tablets and other electronic channels.

9. My Board wants a whole new approach for our marketing and communications.

Perhaps not surprising, many of the associations who shared their pain with us recently needed assistance increasing their revenue. Then, by listening to their needs, strategizing with them, understanding their competition and fully immersing our sales team, we have produced these types of results:

• 139 percent of the goal/expectation for the first quarter of 2012, and already at 129 percent of goal for the first half of 2012 in less than two months of effort.

• 127 percent growth in number of advertisers in an association’s publications in 2011 versus 2010 when a different vendor worked on the project.

• Increased advertising revenue by 30 percent between 2010 versus 2009.

• Increased sales by 16 percent in 2011 versus 2010.

The first step when you have a pain point is to acknowledge that pain. Then, share that pain with someone you know likely can be of help. Ask for help. Listen to the options offered to you.

What are your pain points? What is preventing you from asking for help?