Melissa,
Congrats for offering a sales bonus for your front line people who sell memberships. That is a best practice that we recommend to enhance membership sales. But the 10% you are offering is generous and more than some places offer. In general, our KPI on what your sales numbers should be is 2% to 4% of the total number of visitors to your museum should be converting to membership. So if you have 10,000 visitors a month, you should be signing up about 400 of those people. If you take out all the members and children from those visitation totals, then you should be selling about 2% of the visitors a membership.
Depending on what your percentage of sales are, maybe the issue is not the bonus amount, but a staff training issue. Are you providing good solid sales training for your front of the house people? Periodic training is necessary to keep their sales skills sharp and provide them with the information they need to make the case for membership.
FYI, Membership Consultants has focused on On-Site Sales for over 20 years. We help museums analyze their sales efforts, can provide training, and we have our own team that goes out to various sites to sell memberships on behalf of our clients' programs, so we have experience with exactly what you are trying to do. Not to be a commercial here, but we know the value of what you are doing and the fact that it takes the right mix of bonuses, training and motivation and reporting to make a sales team successful and adequately supported. And FYI, we typically pay our sales people a bonus of $8 to $12 or $15 depending on the level of membership they sell.
Take are and good luck on improving the productivity of your team! Dana Hines and Karen Mariani
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Dana Hines CFRE
President
[Membership Consultants]
[St. Louis] [MO]
Dana@Membership-Consultants.com][314-574-1185]
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2024 12:37 PM
From: Art Manask
Subject: Membership Commissions for Visitor Services Team
Hi Melissa,
In years past and Museum leadership changes a number of times, I am very familiar with the Museum and have seen the Museum store and Museum Cafe (that was not operating when I was last there working with the Museum.
We consulted with Museums of all sizes in the U.S. and a few in Canada (over 400) specializing in the cafe, catering/events, the store and online presence for the store. Some of these areas are Museum-self operated and some of the areas are outsourced.
I have always advocated doing cross-marketing for the store with the cafe and visa versa and based on your request recommend similar cross marketing for museum memberships with the store, online store if one, the cafe (if open and operating) and, yes, with rental events as many rental clients, when asked or offered by the Museum when selling and booking events, like to have gifts, sometimes, that can be taken home by the guests as remembrance of their Museum visit.
Hope the above information is helpful. You can contact me through my website at www.artmanaskconsulting.com and/or call me if any questions, If you do, no worries, no cost or obligation.
Best wishes,
Art
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Art Manask
Founder/Principal
Art Manask Consulting
artmanask@gmail.com
818 358-3588
www.artmanaskconsulting.com
Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2024 04:15 PM
From: Melissa Tincopa
Subject: Membership Commissions for Visitor Services Team
Hello,
I am thinking of restructuring our Membership Commission policy for our Visitor Services team. Currently, they receive 10% commission per new membership and per lapsed renewal. If anyone can share their membership commission policy that has been working well for their team that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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Melissa Tincopa
Museum of Latin American Art
Long Beach CA
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