SALES & MARKETING
By Paul Watkins
The pharmacy approach to being a mortgage broker Paul Watkins on how to carve out a niche that you or your brokerage can become famous for. A road our pharmacies are also traveling.
I visited my local pharmacy today to pick up a prescription and an over-the-counter retail item. I walked past various dump bins of items, discounted at between 30% and 50%. At the counter I was offered smaller discounted items in counter displays, and the assistant asked if I had seen their amazing special on fish oil. Except for the restricted pharmaceutical products, almost all their big selling retail lines were discounted. I do some work with pharmacies, and when asked why so many do this, their answer is invariably that since nearly all their retail lines are available elsewhere, such as supermarkets, health shops, department stores and some are even at $2 shops, they need to be seen to be competitive. These competitors don’t include mail-based sales from some very aggressive online discounting retailers. Pharmacies don’t offer any unique or proprietary products. To add to their challenges, the suppliers
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of those products are forever trying to find new distribution points, so you could argue that their suppliers are one of their biggest problems. So how do they compete? How do they stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace? How do they drive up customer count and customer spend? (While maintaining gross profits.) In the same way that mortgage brokers can. The fundamental difference between pharmacies and other retailers offering the same lines is advice. The reason for writing about this, is that I have had smaller brokerages contact me in recent months, asking how to compete against the larger well-branded, high-profile brokerages. Mortgage brokers may be able to learn from pharmacies. You do not offer any unique products. While you can search out great rates for clients (price), so can all brokerages and even direct contact with lenders can usually get the same result. So, what do you offer? The answer is advice or guidance or whatever you choose to call it. But then all brokerages say that. Come back to lessons learned from pharmacies. As a rule, they cater for customers within a notable radius of their store, with most being deemed “community”
The pharmacy has had to make changes in light of fierce and increasing competition and it's working for those who have responded. pharmacies for that reason. When they put dots on a map of their customer’s home addresses, the dots are often tightly grouped in specific suburbs. Most enjoy high levels of customer loyalty. Many pharmacies have chosen to be specialist stores for groups of customers such as young mothers, retired people (home care products), sports-minded (offering supplements and workout powders), those with addictions or chronic illnesses requiring close care or other such niches. Brokers can do the same and I’m sure you agree with that. However, what I rarely see is evidence of this. Advertising, websites,
