By Mark Enfield, member of APCO’s Commercial Advisory Council and the Member & Chapter Services Committee

Achieving a healthy level of commercial involvement in your chapter starts with having an understanding and appreciation for the role commercial members play. While APCO’s primary focus is on strengthening the knowledge and effectiveness of public safety communications professionals, commercial members play an important role in helping to achieve those goals.

Commercial membership in your chapter is important for a variety of reasons, but the financial aspect usually comes to mind first. As with all members, a portion of their membership dues is paid to the chapter each year. Typically a good portion of the costs of your events and conferences is provided by your vendors. You may have noticed that I said vendors on the second point rather than commercial members—we will come back to that.

Beyond the direct positive financial impact the vendor community can bring to your chapter, commercial involvement can be healthy for the chapter in other ways. At the basic level, no PSAP could operate without the products and services your vendors provide. The larger the pool of vendors you associate with, the greater your awareness of the products and services available to you. Commercial members can also offer a different perspective on technological issues and provide insights on what vendors need from customers.

As technology continues to change at an ever-increasing pace, your vendors are there to help educate you and your staff on these changes and the virtues of the offerings available. Your vendors are also well positioned to provide training for your staff, and will usually provide this training at no cost.

While there are other benefits to strong commercial involvement, let’s bring the focus to how increased commercial involvement and chapter membership can be achieved. More than likely, you joined APCO or renewed your membership because you saw a commensurate benefit to that membership. The same is true with commercial members, but some of the benefits they seek are different. Fundamentally, vendors want to sell their goods or services, but this is not a quid pro quo arrangement. It must be apparent to vendors that joining your chapter and becoming involved brings the benefit of being treated the same as the rest of your members. They should be encouraged to attend all chapter activities and also be included in chapter communications.

If you are in the market for a product or service offered by one of your chapter’s commercial members, engage them. You don’t necessarily need to buy what they offer simply because they are a member, but it can be disheartening to a commercial member if they feel they are not being given a chance to do business with fellow members of their chapter. At the very least, you will be doing the right thing by considering all the available options before you make a decision.

Vendors and commercial members are all from the same group. You can turn vendors into members by welcoming, engaging and encouraging them. This part is not much different than with any other member. To be effective, however, commercial membership outreach should not be a campaign, but a culture. We may have different roles, but we are all have the same goal of maintaining and improving the effectiveness of the PSAP community. Fostering strong commercial involvement will serve to strengthen your chapter.

Please feel free to contact me at me@westekmarketing.com with any questions, suggestions or for assistance in these matters.