Core members and non-core members?

In a couple of discussions I’ve had recently owners and managers have referred to “core members”. One owner commented… ”we don’t worry too much about the young male market, they’re not really our core members, we are more of a family club.”

Here’s the problem I have with this attitude… with so much competition in most markets today losing even “non-core” members can hurt you… even ruin you.

Lets say you have a club with 1500 members and your non-core members make up 10-15% of you total membership or 150-225 members… now lets say these non-core members are paying $50 a month for their memberships… that’s $90,000-$135,000 in revenue per annum (not including non-dues revenue, direct referrals, word of mouth etc).

The fact is that those non-core members can represent a significant chunk of your profit margin… sometimes even all of it.

Sure you are entitled to run your club with a particular focus but my recommendation is to treat every member like a core member [note: that doesn’t mean treating everyone the same]… sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.