(Introducing myself here is funny, because I am introducing myself to a bunch of old friends, who don’t know we are old friends. I have never met/corresponded with most of you, but have spent a great deal of time over the years reading, learning from, arguing with myself about, and in general enjoying your discussions on the Old Forum and more recently the Member Forum. I only recently became a member of both the Old Forum and the Member Forum. Thank you to all of you for the information you have shared with me over the years.)I am a welding teacher and
CWI. I teach for the Workforce Development Division of the Colorado Community College System.
I provide on-demand welding training/testing designed to meet the specific needs of each company I teach for.
If a company needs an employee trained to weld a new widget made out of X material with Y process to Z code, the company calls the school, the school applies for a government grant, and then sends me.
(It is a lot like Welfare… except there is more work involved between the time we ask for government money and the time I get paid. On that same note, I am a lot like an expert… but with less expertise and more questions.) I have been a member of the AWS for 2 years, a
CWI for 2 years, and secretary of the Southern Colorado Section of the AWS (Section 146) for 2 years.
I did not join the AWS during the years I worked as a professional welder because, after much study on the subject, I came to the conclusion that membership in the AWS offered nothing that was a benefit to me as a welder. (Those of you who just started sharpening your knives and grinding your axes, bear with me on that last thought as it ties into what I need help with.) At my employer's request, I joined the AWS 2 years ago and shortly thereafter earned my
CWI. My employer paid for both expenses. My employer also asked me to become involved with the local Section of the AWS in an attempt to further the goals of the Workforce Development Division.
The first AWS Section meeting I ever attended happened to be the meeting held to elect Section Officers for the next 2 years. Not knowing that I had walked into an officer election meeting, I volunteered the information that I was looking to become more involved with the AWS… and was promptly elected secretary.
(What better way to learn the ropes and be involved?)To summarize all of the above,
I only joined the AWS because my employer requested it and paid for it. In all the years I worked as a welder, I was fully aware of the AWS and never once saw any membership benefits compelling enough to motivate me as a welder to join.(I need to add here that if I had known when I first started welding that membership in the AWS gave me free access to the entire AWS publication library through my local section of the AWS, I would have joined the AWS in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, the existence of a section library was not something that anyone else, including the AWS, felt was important enough to publicize to welders; and as a result, I did not actually learn such a thing existed until I had been secretary of Section 146 for almost a year. When I found out, it was like discovering hidden treasure. I mention this, but also have to say that even though I would have seen the section library as a benefit worth spending my money on, I don't know any other welders who would feel the same way.)This brings us to the present. I have been secretary for 2 years. There is very little interest or participation from the community, and the AWS still provides me with no leverage to help me entice welders to join.
(My attempts at organizing an AWS Codes & Standards book club did not pan out. Apparently getting together on the weekends to spend hours reading code books to each other out loud and discussing their hidden meanings was not every welder's dream. Who'da thunk it?) How do I sell the AWS? More specifically, how do I sell the AWS to Welders?Before I continue further and before any of you rush off to write an answer to that question, I need to say that the very existence of the Southern Colorado section of the AWS
(and my continued involvement in this section) is due to the hard work and stubbornness of a handful of men who love welding, and believe in the idea that the AWS represents. They have simply refused to give up trying to make the section work, in spite of the lack of interest from the community, and the lack of AWS membership benefits for welders.
I also need to mention that in the 2 years I have been learning the ropes as an officer with Section 146, I have made a royal nuisance of myself with a constant barrage of questions to AWS headquarters. They have gone above and beyond to help answer my questions and provide me with the information I need. Thank you, Rhenda, and all the others I have bothered.
(If my picture is on the wall at AWS headquarters and you all are throwing darts at it, make sure you printed it out really big… I don’t want to add to any of the stress my phone calls and emails may have caused you by making you try to hit a passport sized photo of me.) Furthermore, please don’t view the tone of my writing in the following questions and discussion of those question as being upset or angry, or attacking the AWS. That is not my intention. I love welding and the idea of what the AWS stands for, and I am trying to figure out how I can help my local section grow.
This is a call for help.
The only way I know to get the answers I need is to state the problem as directly as possible from the perspective I see it. If I have the wrong perspective or am addressing the wrong problem, please help me change.
So back to my question…
How do I sell the AWS to welders?To phrase it another way, what benefits does a welder get from joining the AWS?
(No need to refer me to the AWS benefits webpage. I have read it and did not find it helpful.)
Most people I have talked to boil the benefits down into 4 areas:
1. Networking
2. Discounts
3. Education
4. The Opportunity to Give Back
Let’s define the term "benefit" so we are all on the same page before we get too far into this discussion. For the purpose of generating revenue, let’s assume that for something to be considered a sell-able benefit, it has to pass two tests. First, it has to be exclusively available to those who spend money to get it. (The exclusivity test is fairly easy to quantify.) Second, it has to add a perceived value to the buyer that is equal to or greater than its cost. (The perceived value test is much harder to quantify, but also gives us the room to manipulate customers' perception to our advantage. This is the reason it is possible to sell a $60,000 pickup to a welder making $40,000 per year.)
Let’s use the exclusivity test and the perceived value test to evaluate the “benefits” that I listed.
Networking: I don’t know how other sections do it, but we invite anyone who is still breathing to attend our section meetings, which means they can get the benefit of networking without the cost of membership. So networking fails the exclusivity test and thus cannot be considered a sell-able benefit. If we only invited members to participate, we would have almost no participation. (I would like to point out that I do believe networking can easily have a perceived value that is much greater than the cost of membership in the AWS, but without exclusivity it is not sell-able.)
Discounts: The discounts offered by the AWS very easily pass the exclusivity test. After all they are only available to members. The problem with the discounts is that they do not offer a perceived value that is greater than or equal to the cost of membership. I can see some of you winding up to hit me with the whole list of discounts and incredulous comments, wondering how I can’t see their value, but remember we are talking about value as perceived by welders. Go back through the list of available discounts that are listed on the Membership Discounts Webpage
https://www.aws.org/membership/Individual, and tell me how many of them would actually motivate a welder to part with his money. I can’t find any.
Education: Once again this easily passes the exclusivity test, but fails the perceived value test. Let’s say that I am a welder who just graduated from a 2-year college program. I will ask two questions when presented with the opportunity to purchase AWS educational material. Can I afford the material, and will it help me get/keep a job? Well, I just finished a whole bunch of classes with the same names as what the AWS is offering, and the person looking at my resume still seems to think I only have entry levels skills in those areas. So what’s the point in paying the AWS money to let me
study the same information again? Besides I learn best hands on.
(I have taken some of education programs offered by the AWS just to see what they were like, and I thought what I saw was excellent.) I am also going to slip the
Welding Journal in here and mention that, as a welder, I did enjoy reading it, but I never knew any other welders who did. The welders I knew all thought it was over their head.
The opportunity to give back: Once again we can look at this through the tests of exclusivity and perceived value, but since it is more a matter of altruism, let me put it this way: How many welders do you know who have received so much benefit from the existence of the AWS that they want to pour their time and money back into it just to benefit others?
I can’t sell the AWS to welders with the selling points I have been given. Without the participation of welders, my section will continue to struggle. I don’t know how to get welders involved. My section faces many of the same problems other sections face all across the West, probably the biggest problem being the large geographic dispersion of members. The barrier to participation is much higher, which means the motivation to join must be higher as well. The current participating membership is made up of company owners/management and
CWIs. The several hundred welders that this section could easily reach have no interest because they see no value.
I have searched through this forum and the Member Forum and think I have read every post that even mentions benefits to membership
(it took a really long time, almost as long as writing this post )
, but none of the benefits that are mentioned actually fit the benefits test. I can't sell them.
(I have also read every scrap of information available in the Section Tool Kit concerning promotions and activities that other sections have used to bring people in.)
I need help.
How do I sell the AWS to welders?How do I help my section grow?Thank you once again for the many years you have already spent providing me with valuable information. I look forward to your replies.
Seth
P.S.
If you have survived reading this extremely long post, please don't take this as an opportunity to rail on the AWS--that is not my intention here. If the local section is the grass roots of the AWS, then from what I can see, the roots are dying. I don't know how to advance the science, technology, and application of welding if none of the people who apply the science and technology of welding ever show up. Help me figure out how to get them here.