Your members decide whether to stay long before the renewal notice arrives.
We work with REALTOR® associations to find out when that decision actually happens, and to build the member experience that changes the answer.
Members rarely leave over price. They leave because they stopped noticing.
This is the most challenging moment membership associations have faced, and most leadership teams are working from a renewal report that says what happened rather than what is happening. These numbers hold across the association world, not only in real estate.
Median first-year renewal, against 82 percent overall. New members are where associations bleed.
MGI Benchmarking ReportOf associations name lack of engagement, not cost, as the leading reason members do not renew.
MGI Benchmarking ReportAssociations that call their own value proposition very compelling. The rest are not sure they are making the case.
MGI Benchmarking ReportWe start with your members' own words, not with our opinion.
An association that delivers well and one that delivers nothing look identical on a renewal notice. The work is finding the moments where members form a judgment, then making sure those moments land. Darryl spent this year listening to association executives directly. We emailed 835 executive officers, 101 wrote back, 57 answered every question in full, and ten more spoke with us by phone. That research informs how we look at every association we work with.
Your data
Three to five years of membership records, segmented by tenure, office, and join channel, with lapse timing mapped so you can see when disengagement actually begins.
Your members
Direct conversations with the people who did not renew in the last 24 months. Consistently the most uncomfortable and most useful part of the work.
Your experience
We join your association as a new member and document every touchpoint through day 90. What arrived, what did not, and what the silence taught us.
Bring him the problem you actually have.
This is not a packaged program. It is direct access to Darryl, by the hour or in blocks of hours, pointed at whatever your association is wrestling with right now. Some executives use it for a single decision. Others keep standing time on the calendar through a full year of change. Here is the range of what those conversations cover.
Membership
- Membership recruitment and retention
- First-year member onboarding
- Member engagement strategy
- Member value receipts and benefit tracking
Revenue
- Non-dues revenue development
- Sponsor and affiliate programs
- Event and seminar design that fills the room
Programs and People
- Training program development
- Increasing agent productivity
- Customer service and SMILE Moments
- Volunteer and ambassador programs
Leadership and Strategy
- Transformational consulting
- Strategic planning and board retreats
- Change and crisis messaging for members
- Member survey design and interpretation
Book a single conversation when you need one, or a block of hours to draw down across a project or a board year.
Every hour is with him directly. Forty years in the industry, six years of weekly coaching calls with agents, and this year alone, research with more than a hundred association executives.
Tell us what you are working on and we will tell you honestly how many hours it takes, or whether you need us at all.
Retention compounds. So does the lack of it.
A metro association of 12,000 members, taking first-year renewal from 74 percent to 85 percent. Not a projection, just what one cohort is worth when it stays.
Darryl Davis, CSP
Darryl has spent more than forty years in real estate and has trained over 600,000 agents and association leaders. He is a bestselling McGraw-Hill author, a columnist for Inman and HousingWire, and a longtime voice in the industry's conversations about where the profession is heading.
He also runs live coaching calls with agents every week, which means the membership problem reaches him from both directions at once: from the executives trying to hold a dues base together, and from the members deciding whether it is worth paying for.
- Keynote speaker, 2026 NAR Leadership Summit, on recruiting and retaining members
- 101 executive officers responded to our research outreach this year, 57 in full, plus ten interviews by phone
- Author of How to Become a Power Agent in Real Estate, McGraw-Hill
Tell us what you are trying to solve.
Consulting conversations go straight to Darryl. Tell him what you are working on and he will come back to you within a couple of business days.
Prefer to reach out directly?
Darryl Davis
darryl@darrylspeaks.com
Looking for a keynote or a session for your members instead? Book Darryl to speak.