Existing clients have always been an integral part of a professional services firm’s revenue stream, and with this dark shadow of uncertainty in the economic climate looming over us we must re-evaluate how we serve these organizations. We rely heavily on our existing customer base for repeat projects and referrals as it is becoming increasingly more difficult to win new business. We need to look closer at how we meet our client’s expectations (aim to exceed them) in all areas including project quality, timeline, budget, delivery of information and customer service. Communication is extremely important to clients of professional service firms and the delivery of information needs to be quicker, more efficient and streamlined without impacting on time management and employee utilization.
How – It all starts with clients. Professional service organizations survive and thrive by acquiring new clients and retaining existing ones. To be successful in today’s business environment, Professional service organizations need to fully understand and manage the entire client engagement life cycle, from targeting, lead tracking and prospecting through to acquiring and implementation.
Target –Your CRM strategy should contain all the tools and components to successfully counteract the key challenges that Professional services firms face when targeting prospective clients. Value Proposition/Brand Recognition, Demand and Lead Generation and Customer and List Segmentation are all elements of this CRM strategy.
Value Proposition and Brand Recognition – Value proposition and Brand recognition is the most critical component of the target phase of the client engagement life cycle. Firms need to create brand awareness and communicate the value proposition to as many potential clients as possible
Lead Generation – Lead generation is an important marketing strategy when generating client interest. Leads can be generated from a variety of marketing campaigns for a range of purposes such as list building or e-newsletter list acquisition. CRM captures the whole lifecycle of marketing campaigns including lead generation, allowing you as an organization to look at leads as individuals and not as part of mass communication campaigns.
Customer List segmentation – Customer and List Segmentation is a practice that should always be up held. To become more intelligent when targeting we must define our contacts by certain criteria such as sector, business, size, location, budget or service. Without in depth knowledge of our targets, how do we expect to win their business? CRM software will enable you to segment your targets into defined categories of opportunities. We can then become smarter with the way we market and who we market to. Mass marketing is a dated trend and we now need to become more personalised in our approach. CRM gives you in depth knowledge of all targets in real time allowing you to facilitate better decision making when implementing campaigns and maximising your marketing ROI.
Acquire – To acquire business in these difficult economic times organizations need to differentiate themselves, and they need to communicate how their services map to clients’ needs. In order to improve revenue and profit a professional services organization needs to attract and retain the top end business projects. CRM software will give you an overview of projects and clients allowing you to look at revenue Vs cost. This information then enables you to know which type of projects are most profitable and should be a priority at this acquiring stage. Whilst traditional marketing methods, such as advertising and publishing articles or books, are still viable do we really know their ROI? Unfortunately, often the answer is no and we have to become more intelligent with tracking the success and failure of our marketing campaigns within our organization. CRM software contains tools that track a target through marketing and lead generation campaigns to acquiring that business, feeding back critical information to our marketing and business development managers. Smart CRMs can even highlight behavioural patterns and common pitfalls, while giving indications about where, when, and what to sell.
As customer demand grows and profit margins are stretched professional service organizations need to work harder and smarter when competing for business. Professional service organizations need to build relationships with clients, not only to win repeat business, but also to identify opportunities to up-sell or cross-sell their services. To build and strengthen client relationships, professional service organizations need CRM software to give them a 360-degree view of clients’ preferences, purchase levels, and satisfaction rates. Alexander Graham Bell quite rightfully said “Before anything else, information and preparation is the key to success”, which is the underlined ethos of CRM.
This is “The Four Critical Phases Of Using CRM In The Client Engagement Life Cycle” part 1 of 2, stay tuned for part 2 covering how to manage and retain clients using CRM…..
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Clients are the lifeblood of a professional services firm. In times where we may struggle to gain new business we turn to our existing client base. By having a company-wide focus on personal relationships, pro-active account management and using technology to support those activities, we can maximise our existing client relationships in a manner that is both profitable and mutually beneficial. Click Here To Read More..