Mr. Abhishek Dubey, Head - Strategic Business Development Unit
Abhishek Dubey is the Head of Strategic Business Development Unit and part of NJ since last 10 years. Abhishek has played a key role in building the policy, process & system structures at NJ. He is the Chief Policy & Communications officer and also responsible for publications and the front-end - websites & on-line desks at NJ.
The importance of new customer acquisitions or additions can never be overstated. For any business, new customers provide the momentum, the business opportunities necessary for growth. No one today questions the need for adding new customers but there are some really interesting and specific advantages for doing so. In this article we will explore these reasons and also go in depth into one such reason...
Need to add new Clients:
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Scale: With growing influence of technology on all aspects of business, there is now more room to accommodate larger number of clients within the existing manpower and infrastructure. With efficient and optimum adoption of technology, your existing resources may be underutilised and thus there is need for increasing your clientele.
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Business Opportunities: The existing clients may not be offering great avenues or opportunity for cross-selling and up-selling of your financial products. You may have reached a saturation level with many of old customers and hence it would be necessary for you to find customers who would provide newer opportunities for sales.
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Replacement / Sustainability: It is not wise and reasonable to believe that your customers are and will be under your control and will be loyal to you forever. With increasing awareness, growing competition it is likely that some of your clients will shift to other advisors and platforms. Having a part of your business focus steady on new customer acquisition will make sure that your business is protected from this risk of loosing clientele.
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Profitability: With today's business challenges of lower product margins on one side and increasing business expenses on the other, it has become imperative that we focus on increasing scale and volume to maintain profitability of the business. Technology can help you manage scale and volume today unlike in past. Hence, it has become a critical need today for business to acquire new customer and keep adding new customers steadily.
The SIP Picture:
Let us now delve more on one specific benefit of adding new customers. As we already well aware, SIP is at the heart of our business and increasing SIP book has been the key focus of our plans. We did a small study on our top performing NJ Partners on SIP and there are some interesting facts that come to light. The universe had covered top Partners who did net SIP sales of over 10 Lakhs in the FY 2018-19.
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Customer Acquisition: The top performing Partners on Net SIP do every other activity normally done by almost all good partners but what them makes a part / separate from others is their focus on customer acquisition. On an average, these top Partners had nearly 20% of live investors today newly acquired in the last year itself. In other words, the growth of live investors was nearly 24% in last year.
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New Partners: Interestingly within this group, over 20% of Partners had clientele of less than 300 investors and for them, the client acquisition average was nearly 35%. This shows that even new Partners who had focussed on client acquisition, gained not only in clientele but it also boosted their SIP business tremendously.
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New SIP count: An interesting picture also emerges when we see the new SIPs added. On an average, 1.45 new SIP is added by a newly acquired investor in last year. Compared to this, an existing old investor only added on an average 0.68 SIP count last year. Simply put, the new investor is twice likely or can given twice the number of SIPs compared to an existing / old investor.
As a universe, thus we can see that the 20% newly added investors contributed to 34% of the new SIPs added. And the rest of the old investors added the remaining 66% of the new SIPs added during the year. We can thus safely conclude that one third of the fresh SIP business is driven by new customers.
Conclusion:
The conclusion based on our small study is very clear and is also supportive of the understanding of the business we run.
New Clients = New SIP = Better Business performance.
It is very evident that increase in investors helps bring in new SIP easily. Thus, Partners finding it difficult to increase their Live SIP figures should perhaps focus on increasing their clientele and acquire new customers. Success and growth of your SIP book is directly proportional to your client acquisition efforts.
Client Acquisition Methods:
Now that we have clearly discussed the need for Client acquisition and also evidenced its benefit in terms of business success, let us now discuss a bit on how we can go about acquiring new clients...
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Branding & Marketing: There can be no divergent view on the fact that focus on branding and marketing is crucial for business success, especially for those who are new to business and/or trying to focus on growth. At NJ, we provide our Partners with the best platform for this purpose through BizMall. The kind of solutions on offer really would meet any requirement or need you be expected to have. Just, to highlight we would like you to explore these solutions...
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BizMall products that help in active /on ground /physical promotion like – Flyers, Danglers, etc.
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Mobile Communication Solution (MCS) – digital or mobile communication resources like images and Short videos delivered with your branding with good ideas /stories
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Digital Marketing Service (DMS): A solution wherein NJ supports you for client acquisition through social media platforms by using in-house expertise
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Webnest: Your virtual or online presence through a comprehensive and content rich website
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Client Meets / Investor Awareness Programmes conducted by sales teams.
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Natural Market: For New Partners, the importance of natural market cannot be underestimated. The idea is to draw a list of all your friends and relatives, without any prejudice and record them. A natural market of at least 50 or 100 just prospects should be ready with each new Partner. Even old Partners who haven't really worked on natural market should focus on it.
After defining the natural market, the idea is to properly work on it first, by announcing / introducing yourself and your business. Next by keeping them posted with your ideas and services on a regular basis. Share your MCS, newsletter and such other branding/marketing resources with them. You may also seek appointments and meet them one to one to share your ideas on how you can help them in their financial well-being.
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Reference: While branding and marketing is more of a direct client acquisition activity, gathering reference and approaching prospects through your existing clientele is another very effective method. Always remember that your client is not your only client – his family and friends are also your future clients.
Reference can be asked politely if you believe you have a good relationship with any client and have served him well. Most happy customers will also be more willing and may give your references without you even asking for same. This is were your service and advice quality will speak for yourself. Partners who have reached some scale in their business can choose reference as a key client acquisition method and work towards creating a proper strategy to work /leverage same.
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FLIP: Mr. Ankur Marfatia recently talked about FLIP or Financial Literacy Internship Programme. This programme can be one strategy of client acquisition and growth which is suited to big established partners. We would request you to kindly read more on FLIP on E-Saathi.
Growth Strategy:
The next question after why and how on client acquisition is who? Who should do the client acquisition? Is it you as a Partner who should engage directly in client acquisition activities? Or should you add new sales employees or trainees / free-lancers to support you in client acquisition/service?
New client acquisition may not be easy and may also prove to be time consuming. While new Partners may have to go about acquiring client themselves, the relatively established and old Partners, should take the next step and act as supervisors or leaders instead of being doers themselves forever. Preparing a strong team of doers under you and making appropriate usage of technology + digital / marketing support will perhaps be the best approach to client acquisition. The combination of technology + team to acquire new clients and service your clients should be the future of your business – your path to the next scale of business.
We can today see the dawn of a new age of business, with new challenges and changed environment. To succeed in this new world, we perhaps have to question few of our old, traditional thinking. We have to think ahead and adopt our business practices very quickly. We have to start thinking like entrepreneurs too. Fortunately, we are perhaps best placed in the industry and are more empowered than anyone else to make this transition and strike success. The odds are in our favour, but we have to play the game to win it...
All the best for your success in this new financial year !!