A mid-sized social care provider was making a difference to the lives of people with learning disabilities and wanted to expand its services. They had traditionally been getting most of their clients through block contracts with the local authority. A change in the external environment also meant that, instead of people being assigned a service provider, many individuals were now receiving a personal budget to spend on the type of services they wanted with a provider of their choosing.
The client recognised that a strategic shift was needed for them to attract end users and the family members who were often the decision makers. My client found the thought of shouting about what they do (and therefore their service users’ private lives) unpalatable. At the same time they recognised they would need to develop marketing and sales skills that they didn’t at the time possess. After having seen me speak at an event they contacted me to help.
My task was initially to help my client to create a sales and marketing strategy. Once I’d done that, they asked me to develop an implementation plan and to assist them in recruiting a marketing manager with the skills and experience required to take the project forward.
My work with the client over a 6 month period also involved overseeing the implementation of a new website, developing and implementing a new enquiry management process and making changes to operational role descriptions.
Effective sales and marketing required the organisation to reach end users via family members and other third parties. As well as being visible when people searched online or asked around about a service in the local area, it was also vital that staff recognised people who could be of influence as they went about their day-to-day activities. This meant having processes in place to capture people’s contact details, evidence good work, share stories and manage enquiries. And it meant configuring the IT systems so that data was captured and made available to support evidence gathering, the sharing of information and managing the sales process.
The first thing I needed to understand was how things currently worked and where the gaps and opportunities were. Amongst other things this involved:
- running workshops, interviewing a range of staff and reviewing job descriptions to understand who did what, how things worked and where the gaps and opportunities lie
- analysing financial data to work out how much could be spent to acquire a new customer
- analysing telephone call data to see what type of calls were being received and how many were being dropped
- reviewing website content, analytics and enquiries to see how well my client’s key messages were being communicated and how effective the site was at generating enquiries for potential service users as well as staff
- reviewing key internal processes and supporting IT systems to identify how these could be tweaked to more effectively capture and share important information
- carrying out some online research to see which competitor organisation were most visible and where the best opportunities were for my client to increase visibility
- mystery shopping the organisation to experience the organisation as a potential customer would do
Using the outputs from all of this I put together a sales and marketing strategy and budget that was approved by the senior management team and board of trustees. This was followed up with a detailed implementation plan. I worked alongside one of the senior managers as a critical friend whilst she was reviewing job roles, updating internal policies, creating a new customer satisfaction survey and identifying staff training requirements.
The client had already appointed a company to manage its new website and I was asked to act on their behalf to ensure the site was effective at generating enquiries from across several regions.
The mystery shopping and telephone data analysis identified that calls from potential clients were being missed and that changes to the call management process would be needed to ensure potential clients had a good initial experience. A new call management process was implemented so that enquiries were handled in a two-part process, with initial information captured and then the enquiry passed to the most appropriate person who could follow-up immediately. We took this opportunity to make additional changes that would improve the process for callers with different types of enquiries.
Alongside reviewing current roles and responsibilities I wrote the job description for the new marketing manager role that would be introduced. I worked with a recruitment agency and helped my client with interviews, before inducting the appointed candidate and handing over.
The client was very happy with the approach I recommended and the support I gave them throughout the process. They felt that they had learnt a lot throughout the process and following my involvement they were confident they had the systems and processes in place to make a success of things going forward.