Wills Probate & Trusts
www.willsprobatetrusts.co.uk
Background
Wills Probate & Trusts (WPT) is a long established legal firm which specialises in writing wills, administering probate and setting up trusts. The business had been growing steadily, principally organically, for a number of years when SmartGrowth were appointed to help it develop and execute a 3 year growth strategy.
Issues
The target market is broad for all of the services WPT offers and this makes identifying a core target a difficult job. The key task was to identify and prioritise, from the distinct and discrete client base, which sectors offered the best return on effort and investment.
In doing this it became obvious there were a number of third party introducers. Whilst the make up of the source of business differed enormously, these feeders represented a significant percentage of revenue. Further investigation of these parties suggested not only was there considerable head room and potential within the companies WPT already had a relationship with but there were many other similar companies that WPT could develop relationships with.
A decision was made to focus on one particular source of business and to develop new relationships with similar companies in the e-catchment area. However, when investigating the relationship it became obvious it was informal, arms length and there was little contact or communication with the introducer. WPT had no idea how it was perceived, obviously they were considered to be good at what they did otherwise they wouldn't have been recommended - but other than that little was known about how they were sold or the circumstances that prompted the referral.
This made it difficult to e-sell WPT to potential new sources because we had no insight to leverage nor an understanding of the need that it fulfilled.
Action
SmartGrowth developed an in-depth qualitative research programme and with an introduction from WPT undertook a number of interviews with a long standing introducer.
The research helped SG to understand how WPT was perceived, identify its strengths (interestingly the only weaknesses acknowledged and accepted to be on the part of the introducer were where they didn't prepare the prospect properly or brief WPT about the situation and the individual) understand the circumstances and situations that led to the referral and the way that WPT were introduced and e-sold.
Following the research debrief SG developed an insight led proposition (which underwent additional research with the interviewees to validate the thinking and the expression), marketing collateral for WPT to use with existing third parties to help improve the sell and an Integrated Communications Strategy to open up new relationships with previously identified sources of business.
The Coms. Strategy included DM/eDM, outbound telemarketing and marketing collateral. Additionally, SG developed a sales presentation and script for the occasions when WPT were asked to go to a meeting and coached the WPT staff for the presentation and subsequent questions.
Results
In less than 6 months results were extremely promising. One new third party partner has been added and it is already producing revenue. (Interestingly, having undertaken the research referrals from the company that were engaged in the programme have increased as WPTs profile was lifted and they appeared on the radar) In addition, conversations are talking place with a number of other new prospects and the expectation is that the target number of new recruits will be exceeded.
The success of this programme has meant that it will be rolled out to other new and existing third party sources of business.
The ROI to date is 200% and if targets are achieved it will be several times this over a 3 year period.