Building the Membership Team to Support BESA’s Next Stage of Growth

When the British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) wanted to build on strong member retention while putting greater focus on proactive membership growth, it needed two people with very different but complementary skill sets.

Membership Bespoke helped BESA recruit both its Membership Growth & Retention Manager and Membership Coordinator, strengthening the team across commercial growth, member relationships, CRM, data, and day-to-day member service.

our client - The British educational suppliers association

The British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) is the trade association representing the UK educational suppliers’ sector, with a heritage spanning more than 90 years and a membership of around 400 organisations.

Its members include manufacturers and distributors across equipment, materials, books, furniture, technology, ICT hardware, and digital content, collectively generating more than £2 billion in revenue each year. BESA supports the sector through research, events, advice and insight across both UK and international markets.

With a five-year strategy focused on making membership essential to educational suppliers, BESA had already established strong foundations. Its membership function had been professionalised, a new CRM implemented and retention was running at a healthy 88%. The next opportunity was to build on that progress by becoming more proactive about membership growth and making even better use of data and technology across the member journey.

THE BRIEF

BESA partnered with Membership Bespoke to recruit two permanent roles within its membership team: a Membership Growth & Retention Manager and a Membership Coordinator.

Although the roles would work closely together, BESA deliberately needed different strengths from each appointment.

For the Membership Growth & Retention Manager, the priority was increasingly commercial. BESA already had a healthy pipeline of potential members, so the challenge wasn’t simply generating leads. It needed someone who could convert existing interest, proactively identify the right organisations, confidently have sales conversations, and ultimately grow membership while protecting BESA’s strong retention performance.

The successful candidate would own the recruitment journey from initial lead through to closing and onboarding, manage the membership pipeline and KPIs, oversee renewals and use CRM and data to identify members at risk of non-renewal. They would also line manage the Membership Coordinator.

BESA therefore needed someone who understood membership, but who was also comfortable with targets, numbers, networking, conversion, and the commercial side of growing a discretionary corporate membership proposition.

A DIFFERENT SKILL SET FOR THE MEMBERSHIP COORDINATOR

The Membership Coordinator brief required a different profile.

This person would be on the front-line of BESA’s relationship with its members, responding to enquiries and helping ensure they received an excellent service, but the role went considerably further than traditional membership administration.

With a new CRM in place, BESA wanted somebody who could take real ownership of its day-to-day operation, maintaining accurate member records, managing member journeys and automated communications, capturing leads and helping ensure engagement activity across the organisation was properly recorded and informed by good data.

The brief combined membership administration, customer service, CRM and data, with BESA particularly interested in somebody comfortable exporting and turning data into reports, supporting the implementation of Microsoft Copilot, and helping colleagues adapt to the new CRM.

The Co-ordinator would also contribute to weekly, monthly, and quarterly membership reporting, giving BESA stronger visibility of membership activity and performance.

TWO ROLES, ONE MEMBERSHIP JOURNEY

What made the assignment particularly interesting was how deliberately the two positions complemented one another.

The Membership Growth & Retention Manager needed to look outward: developing relationships, converting opportunities, growing the membership base, and maintaining strong retention.

The Membership Coordinator needed to create much of the infrastructure underneath that activity: accurate CRM data, efficient processes, responsive member service, reliable reporting, and well-managed member communications.

Together, the appointments would give BESA greater capability across the entire membership lifecycle, from the first prospect conversation and application through to onboarding, engagement, renewal, and retention.

It also meant that simply finding two good “membership people” wouldn’t be enough. The two searches required quite different candidate profiles.

OUR solution

Membership Bespoke approached the two roles as connected searches, recognising that while each required a distinct skill set, together they would strengthen BESA’s overall membership function.

For the manager appointment, we focused particularly on candidates who could demonstrate genuine membership growth experience alongside the confidence and commercial instinct to manage a pipeline, convert prospects and work towards measurable targets.

That was particularly important because BESA operates a discretionary corporate membership model. Organisations actively choose whether membership represents sufficient value, so the successful candidate needed to be able to articulate that proposition and build trusted relationships while still being comfortable asking for the business.

For the Coordinator search, the emphasis shifted towards strong CRM and data capability combined with first-class customer service and a proactive, hands-on attitude. BESA wanted someone comfortable working with Excel and CRM administration, while an interest in emerging tools such as Microsoft Copilot was also valuable.

Our expertise in membership recruitment enabled us to look beyond job titles and assess candidates based on the specific skills, experience and strengths BESA needed across its evolving membership function.

BUILDING FOR GROWTH, NOT SIMPLY REPLACING PEOPLE

An important part of the brief was understanding where BESA was heading rather than simply where it was today.

The organisation already had strong retention and had welcomed 44 new members in the previous year, with a healthy flow of inbound interest. The ambition was now to increase proactive growth, improve conversion and continue pushing retention beyond its existing 88% level.

At the same time, its investment in CRM created an opportunity to become increasingly data-led in how it understood and managed the member journey.

That made the combination of appointments particularly important: commercial membership growth supported by stronger data, systems, and member service.

Rather than simply adding capacity, BESA was creating a membership team equipped for its next stage of development.

OUR RESULTS

Membership Bespoke successfully placed specialist candidates into both the Membership Growth & Retention Manager and Membership Coordinator roles, giving BESA two complementary appointments with the skills needed to support the next stage of its membership strategy.

The new Membership Growth & Retention Manager brings the commercial membership experience and relationship-building skills needed to develop BESA’s pipeline, convert new opportunities, and continue strengthening retention, while the Membership Coordinator adds dedicated capability across CRM, data, reporting, member administration and customer service.

Together, the appointments give BESA greater capability across the full membership journey, combining proactive growth and retention with the strong systems, data and day-to-day member service needed to support it.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“We were recruiting two quite different roles within the same membership team, so it was important that Membership Bespoke really understood what we needed from each person. They took the time to understand BESA, the direction we’re heading in and the different skills we were looking for and introduced us to some excellent candidates.

As a result, we were able to make two very strong appointments. Both team members hit the ground running, and their complementary skills ensured a smooth transition to the new team structure. We are very pleased with both appointments which matched our vision for the team.”

Julia Garvey,
Deputy Director General,
British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)