Financial advisors
The Foundation will use the “Enjoy Life” phone application combined with up to 10 000 spotters to source leads for financial advisors
The Homecare Foundation develops a phone application that we will offer to an estimated 500 000 South Africans. The app will be used for lead sourcing and to support a large spotters network.
Enjoy Life App
We are busy setting up a network of restaurants, coffee shops and fuel stations where the public can purchase coffee via their Enjoy Life applications.
We can only publish the phone app after the network has been finalized. At present, we use a printed voucher structure in a controlled environment to raise funds while the Homecare team set-up the national network. We set-up small networks in different towns and cities while we prepare for our national media launch.
The Enjoy Life app is programmed to enable the public to pay for products and services that enable one to enjoy life.
We launch the application with coffee, but it will immediately enable the public to pay their restaurant bills. The application is also programmed to enable the public to pay for movie tickets, treatments at spa’s and numerous other places. The Foundation will negotiate with different companies that offer events such as cycling events, marathons, horse riding, fishing charters etc. to list their services on the phone app. We will provide marketing to these companies and the public can use their phone applications when they want to pay for services and products.
A person will be able to see on his Enjoy Life app specials and event offerings in the geographical area he visits. If a person for example goes on holiday, the offerings at his destination will be available to see on his phone app. Our media campaign is, Enjoy Life, just use your app to pay for products and services and we will be able to support bedridden patients. The Enjoy Life app is going to offer unique services and marketing opportunities to business partners.
One example is that the public will be able to book restaurant tables via their apps, without the need to phone the restaurants. Restaurants can also offer specials to a small number of people. A restaurant can for example offer 3 steaks to the first 3 people who book a table via the app at R10 per steak. There is a lot of unique marketing strategies that the Homecare Foundation in partnership with restaurants will do to ensure that the Enjoy Life app will become the most used phone app when people go on holiday, or relax afterhours.
The Enjoy Life app will also host unique offerings pertaining to a person’s hobby and sport interests. We will provide the financial advisors with a full list of services just before we launch the Enjoy Life app. It is worth mentioning why it took the Homecare Foundation 4 years to prepare for this campaign. We developed software to work with numerous industries so that we can spread the income structure needed to support bedridden patients amongst these industries. We can therefore help a restaurant partner to source many clients at such a low cost, that the restaurant is then able to offer a special such as 3 steaks at R10 per steak to the first 3 customers. Cycle shops for example will be able to offer a pair of cycling shoes at 10% of selling price to app users who selected cycling as a hobby/sport interest.
We will use social media and work through church communities to invite the public to use the app. People will know that the app is a tool that raise funds. The public will not need to donate from their own pockets.
There are numerous companies that we talked to during our research before we started the development. Even wine cellars like the idea of us using a positive method of doing fundraising. They think the theme of “Enjoy Life” will have such a positive impact on people. They are willing to offer donations on wine sales that people pay via the phone app.
Our intention is to negotiate on average 1.5% commission when people use their apps. This will be a small fee for companies as they receive clients without the need to spend funds on marketing. (It is also part of their donations to help people in their own communities)
The Enjoy Life app will be our focus to source all types of business leads for our financial advisor partners (not only disability cover and income protection). We will inform the users about our fundraising strategies. The Foundation focuses on 4 income streams to support patients:
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Commission from coffee sales and other products/services where the public use their phone apps for payment.
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Commission from property transactions
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Commission from vehicle sales
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Commission from insurance products (including investment leads)
The users will be well informed about our fundraising strategies as well as our results, and the distribution of such funds. The app users will also forward lead information to our call centre agents and we believe that a small percentage of the app users themselves will buy vehicles, buy/ rent properties and will use the financial advisors when they need such services.
Largest spotter network to help a small team
Our strategy is to build the largest spotter network ever to help a small team of sales people. The network will help the Foundation to source leads for 3 industries nationally. There are people who will help the Foundation for the greater cause. The Foundation will employ a separate call centre team (after the network has been established) who is tasked to source leads for our sales team partners. They will work 5 days per week and their only job is to grow the spotter network and source clients. It is possible to eventually work with 10 000 spotters per month, which will make this the largest network that help a small sales team.
We need to explain our spotter network strategies to help financial advisors secure new business. It is important to understand that the Foundation will succeed, purely because we source leads to support a great cause. If we sourced leads for any other reason than to help bedridden patients, it might have been difficult to help financial advisors.
We first need to discuss just why it is difficult for sales people in general to manage even a small spotter network for themselves.
The main thing you as reader needs to consider is “Why will a person recommend or go out of his/her way to help find leads for a financial advisor?”
One would be that the person has become friends with the financial advisor… The other might be that the financial advisor offered a referral commission agreement, which in most cases does not work effectively. The reality is that a person (spotter) is only effective for a short period (2 to 3 months). The reason for this is that the spotter only has a limited number of friends and family who he/she can influence to support the financial advisor.
We need to explain that a successful lead is actually a “recommendation”. A person needs to recommend the financial advisor to a third party if there is any chance to success. There must be a “trust relationship” between the spotter and the client the spotter refers to the financial advisor. Without such a relationship, the lead can be viewed as cold canvasing.
Here the motive of the person sourcing leads should be taken into consideration. If a spotter source leads for money (referral commission) it will almost always end up in a disaster. The spotter cannot truly recommend the financial advisor to a third party. The spotter will often try to sell the financial advisor to people with whom he himself do not have a relationship. There is therefore no “trust relationship” and the financial advisor will find it difficult to do business.
What it comes down to is that the “spotter” with the referral contract will soon (within months) worked through his friend network and will eventually stop to source leads.
The best chance for a financial advisor is to rely on leads from people that became personal friends. But it is difficult to become personal friends with all your clients.
The Homecare board understand how recommendations work and we know for how long period a spotter will be effective. There are also other aspects that we take into consideration in our strategy to become the financial advisor’s best support structure to help him/her build a lucrative business.
How the Homecare team will manage the spotter network
We will rather commit to a financial advisor that the Homecare team will forward a small number of clients, but it will be effective information. It will not help anybody (not the patients, the Homecare team, the financial advisors or the clients) if we forward information that waste an advisor’s valuable time!
We will be satisfied if the team forward 3 clients per month, and all 3 clients were converted into business. It will be devastating if the team forward 15 leads and 80% of these people did not buy products. You cannot buy back time that were wasted on appointments.
Our management team focus on the following points to provide effective lead support:
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We need to choose the correct “spotters” (People that will recommend the financial advisors for the right reasons).
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We need to break down all the barriers that limits a spotter’s ability to provide leads.
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We need to implement communication structures that will entice people to keep on looking for leads.
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We need to manage spotters for short time periods. We know that a person can only influence a small group of friends for a short period.
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We need to distribute leads in such a manner that financial advisors will have a better closing ratio with appointments
We will now explain the 5 focus points in detail so that financial advisors can understand why it took the Homecare Foundation 4 years to prepare for this project, and why we manage the entire process so that we will only start with lead sourcing by June 2017. We will become the financial advisor’s best career building partner if we manage our support spotter network well.
1) Obtaining spotters who will help for the correct reason
The Homecare Foundation will use approximately 10 employees who are tasked to build the spotter network. The 10 employees are tasked to raise funds for the patients.
The call centre agents source income out of 3 industries. They are tasked to “sell information” to sales people. The Foundation only receive donation income on successful transactions.
The call centre agents will be backed with media campaigns to help them source information. But their daily task is to build a network of people which will help them source lead information.
Our entire strategy is to involve people who are willing to help find leads, without them receiving any financial contributions for such information. We will notify our spotter network that the financial advisors provide much more services than helping us with preventing people of becoming in need of financial support when they might become ill. The financial advisors focus on investment advice, retirement planning, estate planning, drawing up a client’s will and other services. They will be informed that the Foundation earns commission on new business that we helped source.
Remember that the Foundation will support bedridden patients with all kinds of diseases. (Alzheimer, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis and numerous serious diseases) Our objective is to share the funds raised amongst all the patients. There are people for whom money (commission on referrals) is not gratification. They thrive when they help others in need. Just think how they will get involved if they know their actions help the most vulnerable people.
Our focus is to build up a spotter network that will in three years consist of approximately 10 000 people. The network will constantly change due to the limited time periods that a spotter will be effective. It is a mammoth task but it is possible when we manage the process according to our business plan.
We manage 3 network building strategies:
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Involve family and friends of bedridden patients to become spotters
The Homecare team will within 3 years support approximately 6 000 bedridden patients. It is sad, but the reality is that a large percentage of these people will only receive support for short periods (6 months). Remember that we will fund bedridden patients who are under frail care. It is people who will soon pass on and we help family members who are under financial constraints.
At this point, it is important to understand that the Foundation will deal with middle and upper class income people as well. We will not only support previously dis advantaged people.
People are often caught in difficult financial positions by diseases such as cancer and motor neuron diseases. It often happens that one brother or sister needs to resign from work to provide frail care support for a short period (6 months) or in some cases with motor neuron, it may be between 2 years and 8 years.
We know about numerous families where they become under financial constrains because they couldn’t sell their properties in time, or they thought that the caretaking process will would have been for a shorter period.
We forecast that the Foundation will monthly replace approximately 500 patients who will receive financial support. (people passed on and new applications has been approved)
The Foundation will work with all the applicants’ brothers and sisters. There is a separate team that will work on average with 2 000 people where we talk to them about the Foundation’s support towards the patients, and we talk about the importance of looking at income protection and disability cover.
We expect that 100 patients will be people who’s family members are middle to high income earners. These family members (between 400 and 500 people) will be asked to download the “Enjoy Life app” and we will work closely with them to look at income protection and disability cover.
We will also ask them to become spotters for a short period, to help find leads that can earn income so that the Foundation can support patients (theirs included).
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Use the Enjoy Life app to find spotters
The app will be used by middle to high income persons. People that can support restaurants and that have income to pay for hobby and sport interests.
This is to the benefit of financial advisors and other sales teams.
Remember that we will work through social media and church communities to invite up to 500 000 app users. We know that most likely 95,5% of the app users will use their apps to help fund patients via the coffee campaign structure. They will not get involved to help sales teams.
We however know that the app users can already be categorized as people who want to assist patients. We can therefore rely on our assumption that at least 0,5% of the app users (2 500 persons) will systematically become active spotters. Our intention is not to just approach users of the app and ask for support. We use the app to monitor how many people do forward leads out of their own. When a person (user) forwarded the third lead, we will contact that user and ask them to become an active spotter.
The Foundation will eventually work and reward 2 500 app users with additional coffee vouchers etc. We will build such a strong relationship with these people and they will not be limited regarding lead information they can help source. The estate agents, motor sales executives and financial advisors in partnership will increase business, because the Foundation will use the largest middle to high LSM Income team of people to secure donation income for patients.
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Work with networks of sales teams to build a larger spotter network
The Homecare support team will build up personal relationships with the financial advisors, estate agents and motor sales executives for whom they source leads.
Each estate agent, motor sales executive and financial advisor do have their own smaller support networks (family and friends)
To help the estate agent better, the Homecare client relationship manager will contact the family and friends individually and explain to them just how important the estate agent is to help the Foundation in its drive to support bedridden patients.
The personal contact will help the estate agent. Family and friends will realize that the agent is doing more to help people in the community and do not only work to enrich him/herself.
We forecast to support 1 000 estate agents and 800 motor sales executives before June 2017. The Foundation will work with about 3 000 immediate contacts of these sales people and they will help us to help their own family members.
It will help the financial advisors when we work through the other industry partners’ contact lists. We will pick up insurance leads.
2) Breaking down lead barriers
Breaking down lead barriers will benefit all the sales teams we work with. The fact that a person can help source information that will help bedridden patients and that these information is not limited to a small geographical area, or only one need, will eventually create such momentum that our financial advisor partners will receive much more leads.
We need to explain how people “spotters” think and why they support in general for short periods.
When a person (spotter) wants to recommend a financial advisor to a friend or family member, they want to be sure that the person referred will receive exceptional service. In their minds, they think that it is important for the financial advisor to be able to meet with the family member/friend in person.
This limits the spotter’s support base. He/she cannot or do not think to refer the brother living in Cape town when the spotter and the financial advisor are both Pretoria based.
The Homecare team will break all the barriers when we work with spotters. The first thing is that the spotter will know that the Homecare team work with dedicated sales teams (including financial advisors) nationally. We can assist the brother in Cape town by arranging that a financial advisor from Cape town contact the brother.
The fact that we source leads for three industries also break down barriers. A person does not often hear about an insurance need. They might hear about a vehicle need first and they become active spotters due to our well-planned communication structure.
3) Communication and feedback
We implement communication systems. It is important for the Foundation to notify any person who forwarded an insurance/investment lead about the results of such a lead. We will notify the person if the financial advisor could see the client or not. Most importantly, we will send a mail to the person who referred and thank him/her when the Foundation received a donation from the financial advisor after a successful transaction.
The following explain:
A person might hear about a vehicle lead before an insurance lead. The spotter will notify the Foundation about such a lead.
As mentioned, the Foundation will focus on communication. The dedicated call centre agent will first mail the spotter to thank him/her for forwarding the information. We will update the spotter on information such as if the motor sales executive could contact the potential client, and if the client agreed to a quotation.
We will update the spotter on if the quotation were accepted. (We will not disclose personal information such as how much the vehicle was quoted for, just that the sales executive could forward a quotation)
We will update the spotter if the client bought his/her vehicle and we will notify the spotter when the Foundation received the donation income from the motor dealer. We will thank the spotter for the information that helped secure funding for patients. We will update the spotter on where these funds will be utilized.
The Homecare Foundation developed a reporting system and an instruction system of where funds needs to be distributed. The motor sales executive might request that the Foundation distribute the commission amongst Cancer patients in Durbanville area.
It is however the donator’s right to request if his/her donation must be utilized to help a specific group, or patients in a specific area.
The Homecare call centre agent will for example e-mail the spotter that the Foundation received R1 500 from Barloworld Toyota Tygervalley and that Christi Roux (motor sales executive) requested that the funds must be shared amongst Cancer patients in Durbanville area. Thank you for helping the 6 patients in our database. Herewith a link to our distribution report.
It is this detailed communication that will result in enormous success for the sales teams we support. People will become more active in sourcing new information if they see that the team is working on the information and that results are communicated.
4) Manage spotters for short periods
Our best policy would be to manage communication effectively, and not to bother a person for too long period.
We know that spotters are effective for up to two months, before their circle of influence has been exhausted.
We will use 10 Client relationship managers who are each tasked to source 100 new spotters per month. They will use the 3 focus points to find new spotters as explained under point 1.
This will result in a growth of 1 000 new spotters per month. We will eventually work with 10 000 spotters. The reality is that 2 000 (the last two month’s recruits) will be highly effective, because we approach with their help their circle of friends.
We will manage the communication in blocks.
Block A is communication to the 2 000-active people.
Block B will be communication to spotters that are on the database for up to 4 months. This is people that we will contact once a month via e-mail, just to keep communication open. Communication will be where we send a monthly report on our fundraising stats.
Block C would be to all the registered spotters in our database. Communication will be every three months to update them on our progress and how many patients were helped.
People might in six months’ time meet new friends or colleagues at work and they can perhaps still support the Homecare team.
5) Distribute leads on a well-planned structure
A lot of energy will go into finding a lead… It is therefore important to ensure that the lead is turned into commission earnings for the patients.
Here we manage a process where our client relationship managers will pass on a lead to a motor sales exec, estate agent or financial advisor based on the age gabs between clients and sales person, and we also consider language preferences.
We will know the estimated age of the client we want to refer. We also know language preference.
For estate agents, we will select an agent working in the specific area of interest, and we will choose the agent with the same language preference and thereafter the agent closest to the client’s age category.
For motor sales execs, we will select the nearest sales exec that sell the vehicle brand the client is interested in, and we will choose the sales exec with the same language preference and thereafter the sales exec closest to the client’s age category.
For financial advisors, we will select the nearest financial advisor to the client’s work address, or the nearest financial advisor to the client’s home address, depending on when the client preferred to be seen. We will also choose the financial advisor with the same language preference and thereafter the financial advisor closest to the client’s age category.
The reason for all these planning is to ensure success. Selling is about winning Trust. It is just easier for a client to instinctively trust a person with whom the client can relate to.
This structure will also benefit the sales teams in the long run. It is better to have a client base with whom you can become friends for future referrals.
Conclusion
You will now have a better idea of why we only implement our lead sourcing strategy after the network has been completed. We want to engage the public without any lead barriers.
You will also realize that drinking coffee from our coffee partners will be the best business decision you have ever made!
There is one thing that the Foundation can commit to sales teams… This project to help the Foundation is a once in a lifetime opportunity offered to a small number of sales people. There will most likely never be a project where so much planning and energy goes into providing business leads to help sales people.
The Foundation do this for a noble reason… We do this to help people in serious need. Fortunately for sales people, the Foundation needs to provide quality leads if we want to earn donation income for patients.
You will within a few months be backed with a dedicated team, whose sole purpose is to help find clients that you will be recommended to. Our support strategy will ensure a higher closing ratio on appointments. You will be able to focus on what is important, to provide financial advice and to donate funds to people in need.