Members are calling each week, presenting their problems, their self-doubts, their questions about the strategy, their fears about whether the program works — and if it does work, whether it will work for them. Although it’s important to challenge your members to expand beyond their comfort zones, if your calls are one doubt after another, you are sowing discontent, frustration, and disappointment.

I am constantly reminded how lucky I am to be in this line of work at this time. The number of subscription businesses is growing exponentially each year. At the same time, there is a huge knowledge gap regarding how to engage and retain subscribers. The number of companies who need what I deliver is exploding!

Each time, I’m working with an awesome team, the best marketers in the world. Some are generating hundreds of millions of dollars. And I’m able to provide a little bit of insight, perspective, and strategy to improve their retention to help them double and triple their recurring revenue in months.

I had one of these opportunities this month. I found myself sitting with three of the smartest marketers you’ve ever met. And tremendous givers.

Their core product today helps their customers launch a new side hustle business using one simple social media tool. To make it as easy as possible for their members to succeed, they offer weekly group coaching calls.

Each week, many of their customers dial in for the opportunity to get personal answers to their questions or eavesdrop as other members get their questions answered.

Members love this opportunity. They get to ask questions about where they are getting stuck, overcome roadblocks, and have someone challenge their thinking.

And there’s no doubt that the opportunity to ask questions one-on-one with an expert who has successfully used this system is a huge reason why so many people buy this product. This benefit is great for conversion.

However, for their business, this is a terrible deliverable, and I recommended they immediately discontinue these calls for two reasons.

First, the calls don’t allow the company to scale their business to the size they aspire to. It takes a tremendous amount of time to deliver these calls. And for the person taking these calls and answering questions each week, it becomes a chore. While it’s always rewarding to engage with new members excited about what you deliver, the answers become repetitive very quickly. You begin to answer the same questions over and over again as new members join your program and reach the same roadblocks other members overcame weeks ago.

Second, when you host group member calls, and several members use this opportunity to express their problems implementing what you teach, their self-doubts, and the roadblocks they’re encountering, you may see this as your opportunity to demonstrate there are easy answers to any challenge or concern. But what your members hear are the problems, doubts and roadblocks.

You do create relationships with your members. But, rather than inspiring belief that your program will work for them, these calls erode belief, causing confusion, frustration, and Retention Deficit Disorder™.

You can cure Retention Deficit Disorder™ by making these calls and member communications celebrations of client success, breakthroughs, and results.

For instance, if you are delivering training or content, encourage members to submit their work for review. This helps conversion on the front end as buyers like the idea that you’ll give them feedback on their work, and this will help hold them accountable for getting it done. Plus, it generates a steady stream of examples you can turn into success stories for member videos, newsletters, and your new member marketing.

Remember, your members giving you their examples is a lot like your kindergartener coming home with an art project. For your son or daughter, you are going to be so impressed that you’ll put their art on your refrigerator to show how proud the family is. This is the same thing. Your members won’t implement as well as you would have, but because they took this step, they are learning and engaged. They will get there.

This allows your customer service team to take care of the questions, praise, and story collection. Have them load these questions and stories into a Google Sheet you can mine for success stories. Provide them with answers to common questions so they can copy and paste in answers for those members. And make the answers refer back to exactly where within your training they can find the most complete answer so members learn they already have the answers they need.

There’s a lot to unpack here. If you are doing group onboarding calls with new members, bless you. I know you are doing it to help them be successful. And those calls can be quite a challenge.

Make sure all that work you are doing isn’t causing Retention Deficit Disorder™. Instead, make your membership an ongoing celebration of success. Show members examples, stories, and results other members have achieved from what you deliver. And you’ll cure Retention Deficit Disorder™!

About Robert Skrob

The problem with subscription membership programs is that members quit, I fix that problem. For more than 20-years I have specialized in direct response marketing for member recruitment, retention and ascension in diverse subscription members environments including non-profit associations, for-profit publishers/coaching, subscriptions and SAAS companies. For an evaluation of your current churn rate and how I can improve it, contact me here. I discover there are often two or three quick wins you can implement within a week to lower churn immediately, let’s talk about your quick wins.