Across 109 private clubs, follow-up consisted of 72 emails and 11 phone calls. Nine clubs picked up the phone. Here is what that reflex is costing them.
Over four weeks in July 2026, we submitted a genuine membership inquiry through the websites of 109 private clubs across more than 30 states, then logged every response. The full findings are in our private club inquiry response study. One number in that data has stayed with us more than any other.
Across every response we received, clubs sent 72 emails, made 11 phone calls, and sent 3 text messages. Just nine clubs called at any point. About one in twelve.
Consider what that means in this particular industry. A private club sells belonging. Connection. Being known by name. It is arguably the most relationship-dependent purchase a family makes outside of a home. And yet at the very first moment a prospect raises a hand, the near-universal reflex is to send a number and wait.
Roughly three-quarters of the clubs that replied to us included pricing in that very first response. Not a question. Not a conversation. A dues figure.
The first cost is qualification. A price sent blind teaches you nothing about the person who inquired — who they are, what they are looking for, whether they have children, what they would actually use, or whether the club is even right for them. You have spent your first interaction transmitting information instead of gathering it.
The second cost is larger, and it is the one clubs rarely account for. Leading with price forecloses the conversation that actually sells a membership. A dues figure answers a question nobody leads with. What a prospect is really asking, underneath the form, is whether this is a place for them and their family — whether they will fit, and whether it is worth it. None of that gets answered by a number sitting in an inbox.
Worse, the number now anchors everything that follows. Every subsequent conversation is a negotiation about cost rather than a discovery of fit.
The clubs that called stood out immediately, and not because they were aggressive. One club logged three calls and three emails to a single inquiry. Not pushy — present. That prospect knew within a day that a real person was on the other end and actually wanted to know them.
That first call is where you learn what this person values. Whether they are joining for golf, for their children, or for somewhere to belong on a Friday night. What they are excited about. What they are quietly unsure of. You cannot discover any of that from a pricing email, and you cannot build a relationship without it.
It would be easy to read this as clubs not caring. That is not what we found. At most clubs, membership is a one-person department, and that person is carrying prospecting, tours, onboarding, member events, and board reporting simultaneously. Nobody is covering the inbox while they are out giving a tour.
An automated pricing email is what happens when there is no one positioned to make the call. It is the default that fills the gap, not a decision anyone made deliberately.
The fix is not a bigger advertising budget. It is a defined rule that a human conversation is attempted before a price goes out, and enough coverage that the rule survives a busy Tuesday.
For most clubs that means one of three things: an instant first response that qualifies the prospect before your team ever engages, which is what an AI Club Concierge is built for; additional sales capacity so someone is always positioned to make the call, through membership sales staffing; or training your existing team on the discovery conversation itself, which is the core of membership sales training.
The cheapest membership win available to most clubs right now is picking up the phone before sending a price.
Generally no. In AshGro’s study of 109 private clubs, roughly three-quarters of responding clubs led with pricing in the first message. Sending a price before any conversation qualifies no one and anchors the relationship to cost rather than fit. The stronger approach is a brief discovery conversation first, with pricing shared once the club understands what the prospect is actually looking for.
Very few. Across all responding clubs in AshGro’s July 2026 study, follow-up consisted of 72 emails, 11 phone calls, and 3 text messages, with only 9 of 109 clubs calling at any point — about one in twelve.
As quickly as coverage allows, ideally the same day. In the study, clubs either responded almost immediately or never responded at all, with very little in between. Because prospects typically inquire at several clubs the same evening, the club that starts a real conversation first has a structural advantage.
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