Sticking to the plan
by Peter Hindle MBE, Chairman of the Builders Merchants Federation
8 June 2017
One of my key roles as BMF chairman is to help shape our strategic plan and then to ensure that it is implemented.
I believe we have a good strategy in place and have introduced a number of excellent initiatives that clearly benefit BMF members, but I also have a duty to pose the question, “what could we be doing better?” Essentially, that means measuring performance against a number of KPIs.
In that regard, to someone like me who has spent a lifetime in business a trade association can seem a strange beast. Its purpose is not to make a profit, which means that one of the main KPIs of the business world is straight out of the window, so for each activity we have to start by asking, “what does good look like”?
I also have to consider that “good” may not look the same to everyone. The purpose of a trade association is to serve its members but if those members are quite diverse – and the BMF is a broad church – we know we have to satisfy many different requirements. It’s a truism that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but if the BMF is to continue to succeed, we need to engage most of our members most of the time.
To help us get to know all of our members better we are investing over £130,000 in a CRM system, which comes on stream later this year, that will help us engage more fully with every member.
It should also help us to form a better understanding not only of what they perceive as “good” but also what they want from a “great” trade association – which is what the BMF aspires to.
Member engagement stands at number one on my key criteria of success, so I would also like to invite members to write to me personally with their views. I’d like to hear what you think we are doing well, but even more importantly I want to know what you think we could do better. To start that conversation I’d like to throw in a couple of discussion points.
I want to see members attending the regional meetings, conferences, training courses, specialist forums etc. that the BMF runs on their behalf. If you have attended one or more, then tell me why you value them. At the Forums, for example, do we offer the right balance of education, discussion and networking? And if you haven’t yet attended any BMF events, we also need to understand why that is.
To make it easier for members to travel to meetings and training events, we are currently opening BMF Regional Centres of Excellence around the country. We have been extremely fortunate that a dozen members have already agreed to open their facilities to host BMF events on a regular basis, but we are still looking at ways to ensure that these excellent facilities are put to good use. On this subject, I would like your views on who should take responsibility for arranging and running those events. Do you think that that the Regional Chairmen and other members in each area should drive the content they want to see, or would your prefer the BMF’s own Regional Managers and head office team to decide what is required?
There are, of course, a great many other ways in which the BMF works to support members and I’d like to hear your views on those too.
The BMF is your trade association and I want to see it deliver value to all members. Please help us to understand what “good”, or better still, “great” looks like to you. By working together we can make your BMF work for you.
Contact Peter at: [email protected]
This article also appeared in the April 2017 issue of Builders Merchants Journal