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  At the beginning of the year, your association usually has a handful of top prospects that you want to bring into your association. And, there's a reason for that. They bring in prestige, brand, and influence in your government relations activities. They have lots of people that can participate in your meetings, conventions, and non-dues revenue efforts. They’re also likely to be in your top revenue category for membership. It makes a lot of sense. This week we talk about tips to "catch the big fish" and when to let the prospective fish go.           Transcript: Hi, it's JP Moery. I know that, at the beginning of the year, you usually have top prospects, some large multinational conglomerates, that you want to bring into your association. And, there's a reason for that. They bring in prestige, brand, and maybe influence in your government relations activities. They have lots of people that can participate in your meetings, conventions, and non-dues revenue efforts. They’re also likely to be in your top revenue category for membership. It makes a lot of sense. I'm a big fan of taking on strategic initiatives to bring in these big companies. My belief is that it has to be done a little bit differently because they haven't joined up until now and, frankly, they usually need a certain strategy or a certain set of tactics that are a different than the normal mid-cap or small businesses that you're recruiting into the organization. They need that because they're joining for a different reason than some of those smaller entities. So, I've got some tips for you and I also have some things that I may recommend that you avoid. First, identify the top 10 membership prospects for the year, by size. This doesn't mean you're not going to get another 50 in other areas but get those top 10 key accounts. The reason why I want you to focus on it is because these take more time, resources, and thought. I want to separate them out as a separate initiative and I have found that 10 is a pretty good number. If you get larger than that you start to lose your focus and you're not able to implement as well. The first thing that you do with each one of those members is determine what key problems, or opportunities, your association could solve for them. That's going to require some research and some thought. It’s going to require checking out their website, looking at their financials to see what challenges they might have, it may involve looking at statements from their CEO or other leaders about things that are important to them. Things like sustainability, workforce, industry image, or whatever it might be. Look for areas where your association connects on those issues. That's absolutely important. Why? Because they haven't bought into the idea that joining your association is a good idea for them. Participating in industry associations, attending conventions, and the CEO joining the board of directors is obviously not that compelling to them. Normal association recruitment tactics just haven't worked. This is why we've got to be able to connect with them on a particular issue that you can help them solve. Okay? Connect with an existing member that you have that had a similar problem. Let's say it's workforce development. You helped solve their workforce issues by some public/private partnerships, or whatever. Collect that story. We need to show this prospect an example of how we helped a similar company on the same issue. Then, develop your list of potential leaders to communicate about this membership opportunity. Here's what I've found over time: so many of our association lists don't go into a great deal of bench strength. We've got one or two contacts at the company but we really, in my view, need to get multiple contacts with that large prospect. Then, we're going to push out a series of e-mails, or direct phone calls, to the senior leaders in this organization.