Getting Value Out of a Chamber Membership

What the membership actually buys

A local chamber of commerce sells three things a service business can use: a directory listing on a site the whole town links to, a room full of the people who send referrals, and a name attached to the town’s events. None of the three produces a job on its own. The shops that get jobs out of a membership treat it as a channel with work attached, and the shops that do not are the ones that paid the dues, attended nothing, and concluded that chambers do not work.

The listing first

The chamber directory is one of the few local sites that Google reads as a real reference for a business in that town. The listing needs the same name, address, and phone number as the Google listing and the website, exactly, down to the suite number and the way the street is abbreviated. A different phone number on the chamber site than on Google is a small mismatch that costs the business credibility with Google in ways nobody sees. Add the website address and the trade, and keep it current when anything changes.

Who in the room sends work

The other members are not the customers. They are the people the customers ask. For a service business the referral sources in a chamber room are specific:

• Real estate agents, who get asked for a plumber, an electrician, or a septic inspector every week.
• Property managers and landlords, who need the same trade every month.
• Insurance agents and adjusters, who see the water damage first.
• Accountants and bankers, who know which businesses are growing and need a bigger building serviced.
• Other contractors in adjacent trades, who get calls for work they do not do.

The goal at an event is not to meet everyone. It is to be the one name each of those people has for the trade.

What to say at the table

The town and the trade, in one sentence, and one thing that makes the shop easy to refer: “We do plumbing in Holland and Sylvania, and we answer the phone on Saturdays.” Not the mission, not the history, not the certifications. A referral source needs to remember one fact and one number.

Counting it

Put “chamber” on the fixed intake list, and tag every job that traces back to a member referral or the directory. After a year the row on the ninety-day sheet says what the dues bought. A chamber row of three or four jobs a year at a service business’s average ticket usually covers the dues several times over, and a row of zero after a year of attending nothing is not the chamber’s finding.

The events worth attending

Ribbon cuttings and the annual dinner are where the room is. Committee work is where the relationships form, because sitting on a committee for a year with the real estate broker produces more referrals than a hundred handshakes at mixers. Pick one committee and one event a quarter, and put both on the calendar in January.