Last week, AccountingWEB ran a breakfast seminar entitled: efficient client management. The report says that much of what was discussed centred on building existing relationships:
Indeed, the point was made a number of times during the morning that existing clients are the most important source of new opportunities. It is also far cheaper to cultivate existing clients that continually have to recruit new ones.
But from here on in, it went all over the place and, in my view addressed the issues in an odd manner. Des Greene of Vantis for instance talked about networking and winning new business. But I saw nothing in the report that addressed the question of researching potential client needs. Brian Coventry MD of APS talked the big database game saying:
Only with sufficient levels of data can a firm hope to establish its right to talk to clients or prospective clients about their products and services.
Sorry – don’t agree. Research and information is the starting point, not data. But then I didn’t see anything about picking prospects. Here, I believe Brian Sommer has a great line:
Take this test, if you believe your firm has superior people and solutions but prospects are demanding you cut your fee estimate, chances are your marketing materials and sales approaches are not extolling your unique value proposition and the extra benefits your firm delivers. While any prospect will ask you to drop your price, most will agree to higher fees if the perceived value is worth it. If your prospects aren’t willing to pay the additional premium, then either your Marketing is underpowered or your people/solutions aren’t really that special.
In fact Brain’s entire post and others he’s written should be required reading IMO. Finally, Adam Soames of Grant Thornton was rolled out. He said:
“A relationship with a business should not be a relationship between one individual and another.” Firms have to think about how they manage that relationship, and who is involved, he said. Build cross relationships, so there is more than one contact to a client, and if necessary refresh the team on a periodic basis. “The more cross relationships that you have, the more switching costs you build in,” he said.
Here’s the crunch. This sounds like abusive client relationships – ACR. I’m sure it’s not what Adam meant but the effect is the same. Can you imagine being a client and feeling that you’re ring fenced? I can certainly understand if clients wish to have different parts of their business attended to by different subject matter experts. But whether any of us like it or not, people tend to want relationships on a one-to-one basis, not one-to-many. Unless you’re into polygamy that is.
Of course there will always be those exceptions where decision making at the client end is something that has to go through proscribed steps or where there may be a number of vested interests to satisfy. But for most firms, those will not apply as that type of client will likely be a Big Four incumbent anyway.
I’d have been a lot more impressed if the speakers had said just three things:
- CRM is the wrong term for all the technology and techniques we’ll talk about. It’s about SELLING.
- Client relationship management needs partners committed to that one thing – managing relationships, not cross-selling opportunities.
- When your clients tell the world how great you are, then you don’t have to advertise, market, seek out and sell in the same way. Because you’re continuously engaged with clients as an integral part of doing business.
None of which requires expensive CRM systems. It only requires a weblog and, for knowledge gathering and management purposes – a wiki. Better still, a bliki.That’s a bit radical.
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