Resource Partners launch finance product
Resource Partners provided access to expansion capital for government mandated supply of services. Starting with pharmacies they wanted to accelerate their growth into related markets of domiciliary care, care homes and poly-clinics. Sales were not as strong as expected and initiatives were underway to increase the face-to-face selling effort. At the same time, customer-service was mainly manual. This meant growth would prove challenging unless operations were standardized and became simplified just like operations for pharmacies.
interventions
First, I set out to look for insights. I interviewed the CEO, top management, the field staff and customers. I filmed them as they talked about what they did, what they wanted and what they thought each other expected. The edited footage was played to the board and it highlighted distinct gaps – I concluded that not only was the strategy not aligned with customer expectations, but that the staff were not aligned to execute what had been decided. Customers had many options and chose Resource Partners, and to stay with them, because of the bespoke service they (accidently) provided.
I analyzed the customer data checking acquisition cost, conversion rates and profitability. Most was spent on face-to-face selling and less than 8% on indirect marketing. While more than 30% of converted customers first self-identified via in-bound calls, they represented less than 3% of initial “suspects”. Conversion rates for this group were close to 75%. Face to face leads ran at conversion rates below 5%. Customer acquisition costs were higher than the cost of retaining existing clients. Incentives could be offered in year 2 when defection rates started to climb. Extending the average life of the customer base from 4-5 years added many millions in value. A new FRAME was agreed and led to a decision to increase indirect marketing spend, to focus more on tracking the conversion of inbound leads, to invest in customer retention and to rethink the drive towards standardized service offerings.
With the FRAME agreed, I helped with internal roll-out, stakeholder management, marketing messaging and the design and automation of CEO KPIs based on customer journeys and life-time value to complement the normal management accounting metrics already used.