Wholesale vs Retail Marketing – Efficiency 101

Wholesale and Retail “Twins” Are Not Identical

Are you operating at maximum efficiency? What is your target audience and how do you reach them?

Measure your marketing efficiency by the amount of time you spend reaching your target audience and the amount of sales you close on account of your efforts. Are you focusing on retail and missing wholesale opportunities?

An example of retail marketing is what many long-term practitioners frequently refer to as “word of mouth” referrals. Senior practitioners will often refer to that method of marketing as their primary source of business. This is understandable as they opened their practices at at time when yellow pages and newspaper ads were the most commonly employed methods of reaching potential clients. As they became more established, existing clients would refer others to those attorneys who proved to be effective and to provide great service. But the yellow pages and newsprint is no longer the most effective way to reach newer generations of potential clients. Those outclassed modes of advertising wane in comparison to more efficient digital methods of marketing today. And many older attorneys, unwilling to adapt to the digital age, continue to rely upon “word of mouth” advertising. Indeed, they continue to get referrals – but at an ever decreasing rate.

Retail marketing is also manifested in direct contact with potential clients through one on one contact through membership in church groups, fraternal organizations or other social interaction. However, your time to do that is limited. So, how do you expand your sphere of influence with greater efficiency?

Some of this is intuitively obvious – use the internet and blog, connect with Linkedin, Tweet, Facebook, etc. There are other ways to reach multiple potential clients. And if you can link your contact to a personal endorsement you will most likely beat the competition. There is another form of wholesale sales that can be even more powerful than internet referrals.

FindLaw 2014 Consumer Legal Needs Survey Marketing Powerpoint demonstrates the power of personal referrals. What are the most important influencing factors? Price was only a fraction of the equation influencing buying decisions, whereas expertise, personal recommendations and creating a sense of trust outweighed cost by a wide margin if all three were combined. All three of those factors can be enhanced by a referral from another professional such as a CPA who recommends you to his or her established client.

The entire PowerPoint can be found at FindLaw 2014 U.S. Consumer Legal Needs Survey from FindLaw Lawyer Marketing at Legal Needs Survey

You will see that even though the focus of this survey is on the use of internet resources for searches, personal relationship building is the essence of long-term growth and results in the greatest success in closing the deal ultimately.

Instead of going to the end users, one by one, seeking their business, go to a business that deals with the same clientele that you engage and establish relationships with them. Encourage them to refer clients to your office from their client base. For example, if you are an estate planning attorney, CPA’s, insurance agents, social workers, financial planners and even funeral homes serve many of the same people that you seek to represent. Do you spend time cultivating relationships with those individuals in your community? This has potentially greater reach and a multiplying effect as compared to end user contacts. There may be a significant lag time between your outreach and a referral, but don’t be dismayed as it is “all numbers”. The more quality relationships you establish, the greater your likelihood of success later on.

Now carry the efficiency of one CPA as a referral source working for you and selling your services beyond that one more level. Have you considered doing presentations to gatherings of those individuals? The recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriages for instance is an example of an opportunity to reach out and provide guidance on how that decision may affect them and their clients. What are you waiting for? Provide information that will help them appear better informed among their client base. Put together a fact sheet concerning IRS rulings and how this recent decision may affect possible outcomes as the recent Supreme Court decision works its way through the courts. Give something of value to them, and they will repay the favor.

As a result, they may refer clients to you for the effort you expended on their behalf. A crowd of CPA’s has the potential to send you numerous clients whereas a meeting with a single CPA might yield clients, but not in the numbers you can cultivate through a presentation before a group of CPA’s. Meeting with a single CPA is wholesale, but not on the scale that a crowd would yield. That is even more efficient use of your time and once you prepare a fact sheet for one CPA, it can be distributed to multiple CPA’s with very little additional effort.

So consider the multiplier affect of one on one client contact which is enhanced by one on one professional referral source which is enhanced by one on several referral sources and spend your time expanding your sphere of influence using the multiplier effect and sell more wholesale.