What should I expect if I am joining SIMA for the first time?

Summarizes the amount of time it takes to join online, some of the information you should have ready, and how to think about your employees engaging with SIMA as contacts in the system.

Before you join consider these questions:

• Are you willing to put some of your time/your employees time into leveraging the member benefits?
• Do you have a good idea of the various SIMA members-only benefits? If no, check out our Join page to make sure its a fit first, or reach out to us via our chat online.

Process to Join
Once you are ready, simply visit sima.org/join to get started, you'll need either your existing SIMA account login details or you'll need to create an account with us. If you can't remember, you can request a password reset in our customer portal.

Plan on about 20-30 minutes of time to create a full account, provide us some necessary information, and purchase a membership.

Get your info ready
We do ask for quite a bit of professional information from both the individual creating the account and the company they represent or own. Here is a list of items we collect, and why:

Annual Snow Revenue: We collect this to help organize our information, report overall industry trends in company size (anonymously), and to tailor your membership experience

Personal info: We will ask for your work phones and email address for communication purposes

Company info: We ask quite a bit of detail about your company and its existing services you provide and products you sell to customers. This is mainly related to our searchable web directories [link to that segment of KB]

Additional items to consider
As you get through the account creation process and select your membership, we strongly encourage you to look at the following options:

• Multi-year Memberships: Especially if you have never joined, we recommend a 2 year membership in order to get the full effect of SIMA and provide your company time to utilize benefits, network effectively with peers, and see the results.
• Auto-renewal: We do have an auto-reneal option that can be agreed to as you join, this will simplify the renewal process for you in the future. Typically, auto-renewal charges will occur 2-3 months prior to your expiration. If you opt in and then have second thoughts, you can simply contact SIMA and we'll turn that feature off for you.

Individual Contacts tied to Company
For SIMA membership, the company is the entity that actually joins, and any contacts associated with that company automatically receive member benefits, which include member pricing on events/products and ability to access members-only courses and content. As you go through the process, you'll have the option to add more contacts in the system for your company. The three types of contacts in our system to choose from:

Primary Contact: We generally recommend 1-2 people be listed as primary contacts, these individuals will be able to update the company account, join/renew, and receive timely updates from SIMA on membership benefits and programs. By defualt, primary contacts also receive notices for membership renewal. If you are creating your account and joining for the first time, you will be designated the primary contact automatically.

Billing Contact: This is standard for companies who may have a Primary Contact assigned (say, to the owner), but need someone else to handle the billing/renewal process. They have the same permissions as primary contacts, with the main difference being they will receive notices for membership renewal as well.

Secondary Contacts: This is for employees at your company who do not need permissions to edit the company account, but would like to access members-onlly courses or go through our credential programs, be registered for SIMA events, and more.