All the small things

Earlier articles in this series have considered how best to adopt a 'back to basics' approach to build and strengthen your business and withstand the challenges of recessionary times; i.e. to achieve maximum gains for minimum financial investment. We have considered strategic analysis, objective setting, integrated management and branding as building blocks on which to clarify your position and differentiate yourself from the competition. However, it is now imperative that we visit the very heart of what drives your business activity: your relationships with clients. What should you be doing to ensure that in their eyes you can do no wrong?

Approached logically, client relationship management (CRM) fits naturally into every business. If leadership is doing the right things, and management is doing things right, then client relationship management is the embodiment of both of these activities through the process of requiring everyone within the business to do ordinary things extraordinarily well. The saying that excellence is made up of many small things done well is probably the best framework to adopt when considering how to build and consolidate relationships with clients, prospective clients and other stakeholders '“ including your own colleagues and staff. Overlay that with the proviso that all those small things must be done extraordinarily well and you end up with a clear and compelling manifesto of how you and your people should conduct themselves.

CRM and communication

Within professional services much lip service is paid to the notions of 'client care' and CRM. Unfortunately, the grand claims for excellence made in promotional materials and on websites are often not borne out in practice, with many firms simply measuring their performance in these areas by the number of complaints they do or don't receive. Regrettably, many partners and support staff seem to regard clients as a bit of a nuisance. How much easier life would be if it weren't for their incessant need to be consulted and kept in the loop. How unreasonable and demanding they are with their phone calls and questions!

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it's at that very basic level that the heart of CRM lies. Once you strip out all the plethora of activities that surround it, ultimately CRM is founded on just one thing: communication. How, when and how well you do it, and the acceptance that not only is effective communication a two-way process but that fundamentally good communication and client care is based on clients' standards and expectations '“ not your convenience.

Analysing your approach

The idea that CRM is complex and costly has been fuelled by the sophisticated IT software systems which have been developed to support it. Under the right circumstances, these can be very useful but if, so far, your firm has not made a formal CRM programme a priority, then you need to start at a much more basic level. First, categorise all your existing relationships according to their importance to you: high, medium or low? It's unrealistic to provide a Rolls Royce service to those of negligible value, so identify key clients and prospects whose needs should always be prioritised.

You then need to analyse your conduct in connection with these relationships by considering every encounter in terms of before, during and after. For example, do you clearly communicate in advance what you will cover in a meeting with a client and what will be achieved, how this is reflected in the way you conduct that meeting, and what you will do to follow up? These categories may sound absurdly simple '“ but just try applying them to any relationship or encounter you can think of and you'll be surprised at how it improves your insight.

Putting it into action

CRM is one area where you can make a huge difference with very little effort or expenditure, because it's all about doing many small things extraordinarily well. It has numerous benefits; for example, it can make a huge difference to client retention rates and referral rates and can cut back drastically on the time spent 'sorting things out' when client communication has failed to live up to expectations. At a basic level, to help you take things forward, follow these simple steps:

1. At a strategic management level decide the benefits that the firm wants to achieve through focusing on CRM.

2. Communicate and consult with all staff at all levels to get their input and buy-in. You'll achieve nothing without it.

3. Focus on a few key areas for improvement; for example, response times to phone calls, or the content of contact letters.

4. Set measurable targets for improvement and monitor them internally. If possible, use a mystery shopper to help you gauge how much things have improved.

5. Ask each team or department to nominate a CRM champion to cajole and remind people at ground level '“ unfortunately sustained improvement rarely happens by itself.

6. Once you've achieved improvements in those areas, move on to others '“ but take care that no one slips back into their old bad habits.

CRM involves devoting resource to improving the quality of your relationships with existing clients to increase the amount of business they do with you and prevent them defecting elsewhere. Bearing in mind that it costs between five and ten times as much to win new business from new clients as it does from existing clients, CRM makes undeniable sense.