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Yesterday we had a representative of the (old-school) local Chamber of Commerce & Industry visit our office in an attempt to get us signed up. I wasn’t intrigued, but posed him the question “What are the benefits of joining?”.
His response: We have 4600 local businesses as members and they can’t be wrong.
Suffice to say, if that their best sales pitch, I’ll pass on signing up. Thank you very much. Everyone of those business could potentially be wrong and if becoming a member isn’t valuable to me, I’m not missing out am I?
You most certainly are not missing out. Orgs that make a pitch like that deserve to be relegated to “old school”
Basically you are just getting access to the list of people who signed up. Sometimes by being a member you might get discounts or a “friend” price on services or goods of the other members. However each chamber of commerce is different every city state country etc.
At the same time just because you are on the list with everyone else this does not mean they have to like you or vice versa. Its a whole pile of rubbish if you ask me.
Have a great day.
Lame pitch, yes. And no, I’ve never been a member of a CoC. But, I think what you find depends greatly on the Chamber itself.
I just read an account of someone whose business is taking off because of their involvement w/ their local Chamber… http://www.crossfit.com/cf-affiliates/2009/08/thursday_090813.html
Your point, though, Adii, is well-made. That rep obviously didn’t have a clue.
You hit the nail on the head right there, man. Sometimes — often times — everyone else is wrong.
If he’d made that same pitch to me I would have said, “Oh, so you’re using the same logic as the Nazis to try to convince me to join? No thanks.” People always act like I am some horrible jerk when I say things like that, but it’s true.
Well, Woothemes only has 3900+ followers on Twitter. So I think it’s a great deal! not.
Completely agree. Just had a call two weeks ago, a company who sells (quote) ‘Kind of the same like Adwords, but better.’ I can’t figure out what people think when they make statements like that…
Yeah, I joined a Chamber when i started my business and i think it gave us a good start since we were completely unknown but after about 6 or 8 months it really lost all effectiveness and i couldn’t for the life of me come up with a good reason to stay so we didn’t renew our membership. I really think that these organizations are just of the mindset that “this is just how its done” and that is no way to run a business.
besides didn’t your parents ever tell you that “everybody’s doing it” isn’t a good enough reason
Reminds me very much of something that happened to me recently: I got a call from the Yellow Pages new(ish) web service; Yell.com. For anyone outside the UK, the Yellow Pages is basically “THE” Phone directory, and used to be the place where absolutely all businesses would advertise.
So this guy calls me up trying to sell me a paid position on their online directory, Yell.com. He said very similar things with respect to bragging about their membership figures, but when I asked him what the typical conversion rate was, his answer was 3%.
For £250 a year ($500) I could do many, many more effective things.
I have to laugh Adii… I see that the Chamber of Commerce in your town is the same as they are in the states. They have little or no marketing and certainly lack tangible products or services (aside from the typical “networking opportunities”). I’ve worked with chambers before and found that they usually suffer from bureaucracy on a grand scale, as a bunch of folks sit around “the board” wondering what to do next.
The question is, how do they appeal to only one when they try to appeal to everyone?
Chambers would do well to figure out what exactly they can offer besides membership and a place to glad-hand people and drink martinis. Networking isn’t bad, it just shouldn’t be the only thing they offer. They need contextual products and services in my opinion.
For a number of years my company was a member…all I got was a magazine I never read and a mailbox of spam from fellow members!
Funny thread. I’ve been contemplating joining the local chamber here for months. It’s about $400 and they have lots of “functions” throughout the year. To me it seems like that’s where the membershop money goes – to fund all the schmooze-ups.
But I hate schmoozing. And I can’t see what else it is that they do.