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PM Forum - London

CRM best practice and how to get there

There is no doubt CRM is firmly at the top of the agenda. Around 80 people signed up to hear Tony Reiss of Sherwood PSF Consulting speak to the Forum in London on aspects of best practice from the results of a short survey he conducted among accounting, legal and not-for-profit organisations and, most interestingly, a food manufacturer. For the sake of clarity we are talking about evolving relationships with clients and not CRM databases.

All too often CRM becomes an internal challenge around the process of gathering and analysing the feedback. Tony's research was a good reminder that we are dealing with individuals with whom we have to build and sustain one-to-one relationships at different levels. The challenge for business development is encouraging fee earners to step back from transactions and make emotional or personal connections with their clients. The grocery manufacturer said it focused on clients where they had shared values, something in common to build on. In another case a firm builds empathy, dialogue, trust and secures long-term buy-in of its key clients by producing joint business plans. Remembering relationships are formed at all levels, one firm encourages its PA's to meet their counterparts on the client side while another encourages its staff to make regular contact with people they know.

Tony also pointed out that it is easy to measure how many connections you have made with a client - how many times you have mailed them, invited them to a seminar and so forth - yet we fail to measure rapport. In one case, a firm only rates likeability at 5 out of 10, an instructing client a 7 and a client willing to make a recommendation a 10. The challenge henceforth is finding out which clients are not loyal and doing something about it.

Coaching is important and it was evident that sometimes focusing on fewer key clients - and thereby a smaller number of internal stakeholders - might be more effective than dealing with every client and every fee earner.

The final point that stood out was that you have to make it happen. I'm a great believer that too much process stifles good intentions. In one example the client team said they met for just quarter of an hour and really made things happen.

Milan Dalal and Jake Tyler
Brook Intelligence Centre

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