What’s the difference between a member, a client and a customer?

What’s in a name? Well, there seems to be some confusion in the market place around the terminology used to describe those people who pay us money for goods, services, experiences, donations, etc.

Different industries can have different terms for the consumers of their products and/or services. We see terms such as customer, client, patient, guest, patron, member, subscriber, donor, etc, used to describe a person who buys our products or services and intends to use them directly. In short, these terms are referring to the same person – the ‘end user’. However, not everyone ‘consumes’ our products or services or is the intended ‘end user’. Some people or businesses buy our products or services to ‘on sell’ them to another party, often the final end user, but not always.

Many industries might have a chain of buyers and only one will be the end user. For instance, if we follow the chain from the manufacturer who sells via a wholesaler (partner or client) who then sells to a retailer (client or customer) who then sells to the end user (customer or consumer), we can have several terms to distinguish who’s who.

If this is your situation, it does help to define who is who by having specific terms such as ‘client’, ‘member’, ‘customer’ or ‘consumer’ so you can keep track of your actions and key messages as each of them may want something different from you, and as sales people we need to know who we are working with.

For instance, you may use ‘client’ for the retailer and ‘consumer’ for the end user to keep roles and communication clear. Marketing and advertising agencies use the term ‘client’ for their direct customers since marketers also have to refer to the consumers of the client’s products.

So where does ‘member’ feature?

Some businesses, often retailers, use ‘member’ to distinguish between those who buy regularly from them compared to those who do not. They want to set up memberships so as to attract and retain regular users of their products/services and reward them with greater benefits or discounts so they keep coming back. It’s a way of building up your database to build a tribe of followers or a community of users or supporters which, if done correctly, can make future sales that much easier to attain. Retailers often have membership cards and reward programs for regular purchasers of their products or services. There are usually benefits and special privileges to being a ‘member’ but essentially a member is a ‘customer’, ‘end user’ or ‘consumer’ of your business. This means you can have customers and members in the same business.

When having ‘members’ can be a problem for sales growth

To avoid any challenges, you need to make sure that before you embark on a ‘membership’ program there are very clear definitions and actions in place that distinguish membership from customers. However, do not make the mistake of thinking once a person is a ‘member’ that you do not have to sell.

We are seeing a trend in some businesses who claim to be there for their ‘members’ or ‘member associations’ dissociating themselves from the function of ‘selling’ when their members are customers.

Because these people choose to be ‘members’ of these businesses there is an expectation of being kept informed of the latest trends, best buys or ‘right’ options for them, or why would you bother being a member. You expect the membership team to keep in touch with you and to help you make good ‘buying’ choices and decisions. You trust them to offer products and services that meet your needs. After all, they should know your current preferences and buying patterns. Members expect to deal with people who are skilful in client-centric consultative sales practices even if they do not know to call it that.

However, when speaking to some of these membership businesses we find a deep reluctance to acknowledge and admit that the skills they want their membership teams to be competent in, such as prospecting and client centric consultative sales communication practices, are indeed selling skills.

By denying this practical reality, member organisations can end up developing teams who are reactive, passive and reluctant to engage in proactive, problem solving and solution-based interactions with members. The number of membership-based businesses that swear that being a member and a customer are mutually exclusive, are fooling themselves, and are doing a disservice to themselves and their members. By telling their people “we are not sales people, we do not use the word selling, we have members” creates cultural and competency issues.

I am happy for people to call their ‘end users’ members, patients, guests, donors, patrons, subscribers, customers or clients, as long as they recognise that serving the end user of buyers of your products and services properly means employing ethical, consultative selling skills and processes if you mean to exchange something of value, ie. money for your products or services.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett practices as a coach, advisor, speaker, facilitator, consultant and writer and works across all market segments with her skilful team at BARRETT. Sue and her team take the guess work out of selling and help people from many different careers become aware of their sales capabilities and enable them to take the steps to becoming effective and productive when it comes to selling, sales coaching or sales leadership.To hone your sales skills or learn how to sell go to www.barrett.com.au.