Recruiting new COM members, YOU can help!

[xstar]

Even after various efforts to lure people to become new members of COM, it has been difficult to find a meaningful method to attract new members. However, there is a great way of finding new members to try COM, and it is:

Word of mouth

For me, I remember back in early 2003, I was contacted by James Snow to give this COM club a try in a place called Summit Point, WV. There were hours of track time to be had! I went and had a great time chirping my tires through the track. I was often "puckered" in the braking zones and trying to handle a high-speed corner in my soft subaru at the time. At the end of the second day, I had a scary face-off with a woodchuck under the bridge! Thank goodness it changed its mind and ran back. Those two days, I also met many people, such as Andrew Lewman and Mike Demopoulos, for the first time.

Maybe your path into COM was something similar and memorable as mine was. I hope you will do the same for your friends who are interested to try driving on the track. Bring them out with you.

COM is a club that thrives on people and member participation at the track events. Please help make this club florish by bringing new people into the club.

Thank you ahead for your efforts.

Alex Teng
COM President

[Mario Fallas]

As a 8 yr. member of Comscc & 4 other clubs in as many years, i believe Comscc to be the best! IMHO the quality of the instructors & the school structure are a cut above, not to mention the members of the club

After all this years i often wonder why Com does not make fliers like EMRA & distribute them among the members so as when we do the "word of mouth" thing, we can pass the fliers along to the potential new members, these fliers should have track dates, website & email address, pictures of cars on track as well as novices being instructed, track day approximate cost, included should be information of how easy it is to try it the first time with minimal car preparation & gear.
i find that the misconceptions of being able to drive a car on track are huge! & a flier like this shold go a long way towards recruting new members, a small investment once may prove to be wise......or not
Just a thought!
Mario

[6PAK72]

Alex and all,

Far be it from me to dare to dispense wisdom since I've not even been in a classroom with you all yet, but perhaps I'm one of the demographic we need to reach out to, and in my story perhaps we can learn ways to expand the network. Also, I'm on a BOD for a substantial business-related non-profit and have a number of years experience in membership development and fund raising.

My wife and I have invested time, money, blood...you know...in restoring a 1972 TR6. We decided that we'd build it into as close to a 2000's level sports car that could be attained on a 75 year old design. (Ask me how much that decision cost me...). So, we've ended up with a track-ready car. Pretty hot (old) engine, robust suspension, safety, etc.

And, we want to drive it, safely, fast, and have some fun without being stupid. Besides, I don't need to rebuild any more parts!! So, we went looking for "How To Get On The Track in 6 Easy Lessons". Does NOT exist!

We never heard of the COM club. We Googled, went to Watkins (and ran a great day at GOOD track speed), asked around...nada. The club is unknown in the British car circles, and we never heard of the club from any member of the BMW club circles. All we heard about was SCCA. And, we're probably not hard-core enough to do the SCCA thing.

I finally found the club via a web link off a random web connection for a repair shop when I was Googling "Dyno tuning New England."

Bottom line is marketing, and make it easy for people to know about us and to become involved.

Perhaps one strategy is to reach out to the non-racer level clubs, and wean people into COM on a series of "rookie" days - classes, safety, strategy runs either solo-instructor or herded on the courses.

Another good one is Time Distance Speed rallies. The import clubs love these. We run 2 with NE Triumphs, and British Car Club of NH. At least on the Brit side, I know many of us love to drive the cars. We push them pretty hard on back roads and in Funkhana events. Most of the Brit owners I know have brought their cars up to safety spec, if not to modern performance possibilities.

The club out at Watkins "Stone Bridge Drivers" is pretty aggressive in chasing members, and they run a number of hi-performance oportunities through the year at Watkins. Maybe we dialogue with them, invite their members to "our" track day at Louden, etc.

Another could be to place membership packs - take-ones, poster, door decal, etc - at the shops of your members with some kind of positioning statement like "You bought it to Drive it, Let us show you How". I suspect there's legal involved in that one, but you get the idea.

Links to and from all our web sites, and shared links with all the car club web sites. Same theme.

For what ever it's worth, from the guy who's so new he hasn't a number yet...

Happy Holidays.

[brucesallen]

Jeff and Liz Baker,
Please come to a club/Board meeting with your ideas.
Please take on the marketing job.
January is the only month we don't meet at the usual chinese place. We have the annual banquet in Nashua. Please come to that too.