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Commercial Property

By November 3, 2010August 15th, 2018Law firms

Case Study – Commercial Property

The Client

An award-winning, multi-discipline, 20-partner practice with over 200 staff spread across three offices in the Home Counties. Having no formal marketing & business development function, the firm’s board of partners adopted a strategy of appointing a single departmental head on a rotational basis to devise and oversee activity geared toward winning new business.

The Services

The firm’s complete suite of Commercial Property services

The Brief

The firm had developed a strong reputation in the South East for the strength and depth of their commercial property offering, and, as a result, had gained several high profile national “brands” as clients. They were recommended to contact Chartered Developments by a local accountancy practice who recognised telephone marketing as being the quickest and most effective method of opening dialogue with potential clients. They made it clear that they wished to increase their commercial property client base, and were prepared to trial telemarketing because they had no prior experience of the service. The Client also wished to establish how companies go about engaging advisors, and on what basis they subsequently review advisor performance.

The Target

It was agreed that a database would be constructed consisting chiefly of national retail organisations with multiple high street outlets, or where they held interests at public transport hubs such as airports, train stations, and bus/coach & tube stations. Being a wholly national campaign, the database, as it transpired, comprised companies based at locations as diverse as Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Southampton. The relevant decision makers, who were identified in advance of the “mail and call” strategy commencing, included:

Commercial Director         Finance Director

Head of Estates               Property Director

The Campaign

Upon consultation with Chartered Developments, the Client was supplied with a list of around 250 retail companies, from which they identified 100 prime targets. The remaining 150 companies were held in reserve. The core list of 100 was verbally “cleaned” to confirm the identity and location of the key decision maker, so as to ensure that all subsequent marketing activity was highly targeted.

The next stage of the recommended process was to devise an effective mail-shot, which was constructed with input by Chartered Developments. It consisted of:

  1. The firm’s commercial property brochure
  2. A separate, glossy PDF summarising the firm’s general corporate & commercial services
  3. Brief covering letter, containing bullet-pointed messages, and referencing existing client names

The final component of the strategy was the telemarketing campaign, the agreed objectives of which were to:

  1. a) Initiate dialogue with the identified decision maker, to: evaluate awareness of the firm; discuss issues surrounding their historic and present use of commercial property services; establish their review process
  2. b) Secure an informal meeting for the Client with decision makers, principally on a relationship building footing where no current need existed, or where an specific need was divulged during conversation

The Result

The client engaged Chartered Developments to undertake 20 hours of telemarketing per month, initially on a three month trial basis. Given the agreed strategy detailed above, an estimate of 3 appointments per month was set, with the possibility of extending the trial on completion of month three in order to focus on the remaining 150 companies. The trial actually yielded 12 fully qualified appointments, with companies including a chain of sports shops, and a brand

operating franchised hot beverage kiosks in train stations. Both prospects provided the Client with trial pieces of work during the initial phase of telemarketing which, as a result, was judged a success, and extended indefinitely to focus on the wider database, and to capitalise on other agreed “callbacks” to prospects with whom contact had been made during the trial phase.