ROBIN’S BLOG
Robin has 30 years of professional and financial services marketing experience. Here he provides commentary about some of the key evolving issues within professional services strategy and marketing. The aim is to provoke thinking and provide useful information that marketers can use within their firms as they continue to improve performance.
thriving… Improving marketing, business development, client satisfaction, and financial performance.
Gaining the most from client research
Increasing numbers of professional services firms are waking up to the fact that effective client research, as well as being a cornerstone of effective strategy making, can drive immediate and long-term improvements to marketing and BD.
The questions they care about are varied, but can include
- What are the most profitable opportunities?
- What is the potential demand for new specialisms?
- How is the firm perceived by key clients and referrers, and how does it compare to key competitors in fulfilling these needs?
- How can more revenue be generated from the current client portfolio and in which clients is there untapped potential for more work? ?
- How can you reduce client loss?
- In which intermediary relationships is there untapped potential for more work?
However, sometimes firms and marketers can get frustrated by the lack of clarity they gain, and action they can take, when conducting in-house research. The following items are some of the key areas anyone considering a client or market research in a professional services firm should cover:
- Be clear about research objectives.
Doing a “satisfaction survey” because other firms do one, or from a vague interest in client views, won’t help you much. Define the most important questions you need insight on – as without it, your firm’s strategy may be founded on guesswork.
What are the real challenges and key issues for the firm? If you are considering merging, what areas are most in demand from your client base? If competitors are beginning to win more business from your clients and target markets, how and why are they able to do so?
2. Utilise the right method
You can track service performance with a paper questionnaire, but if you’re trying to gain insight into important issues, it won’t bear much fruit.
Think about your own response to questionnaires – How many do you complete? If the client is long-standing, or has just involved you in a major issue, does a standard letter with a form full of boxes show you value them?
3. Think about those who should take part
One answer is to identify “which clients we least want to lose”.
Research not only identifies the risk, but determines the corrective action which can “rescue” the relationship.
Do you think certain clients may need additional advice? Research can identify if there is extra medium term potential for you, from their future plans, and where you can win business from competitors.
4. Engage clients effectively
If done professionally and appropriately, the research will enhance perceptions of the firm.
Explaining the rationale for the research pays great dividends. Showing interest in their views, to improve client service or to inform your future strategy, is very well received.
- Engage other partners and staff
Partners and staff can feel slightly threatened by client research.
However, their concerns can be alleviated if they are well briefed about the process. Partners should be involved in contacting those you would like to take part.
Engaging with colleagues makes it more likely that the actions you may need to take – with individual clients as well as across the whole firm – will be supported. The reality is that not just the firm as a whole, but each partner, will gain benefits from the process.
- Act!
Unless you will respond to what you learn from research, don’t do it!
Participating clients expect that the insight gained by the firm is used. Their view of the firm can worsen if they believe the firm hasn’t listened to what they have said.
Gaining the return from your investment requires that you act. After the feedback is gathered, partners should identify priority actions, set accountability, and track them.
These are some of the key steps that can ensure the research effort can lead to an improvement in financial results, a stronger strategy more capable of being implemented, improved competitive positioning, and a healthier client portfolio with more opportunity.
By all means contact me at if you’d like to know about some of the other key steps.
The Legal world on its future
Winmark has published a report which includes the views of 124 General counsel in the UK, 57 Managing Partners and 18 Marketing Directors of law firms.
Its worth reading and you can get a copy from www.winmarkeurope.com . Some of the themes covered include potential changes in the business model in law firms, general counsel’s experience of innovation, and the usage of different pricing approaches.
Marketers may also be pleased to see that 42% of Managing Partners say they expect their investment in marketing to increase over the next 12 months, with only 5% saying it will decrease.
Another finding from the report grabbed my attention straight away. Managing Partners were asked to choose their top 3 areas of strategic focus. Costs and expenditure were in the top 3 areas for 65% of the managing partners, and pricing for 72%.
But the top factor with 99% including it – and over 90% including it as first choice – was client service. If that is the case, then in my opinion there are some firms who understand what is involved in such a strategic focus and some who don’t. Typically, those that don’t have not asked the right questions and not thought through the implications of what this strategic focus means. They may also believe they know what drives value for clients.
However their peers and competitors are actively and openly asking this.
Which group does your firm sit in?
Social Media – I got it wrong
About 2 years ago I was asked to contribute to an article in Legal Marketing about the impact of social media. My remarks were to the effect that marketers should consider social media as another channel and means of distribution, but it didn’t replace the importance of marketing planning and other “traditional” marketing activity.
While that’s partly right it’s (at last) “half-wrong”! That’s been brought home to me in part by the sheer impact that social media has had recently in the middle east, and the power of communication and feedback between people.
Back in the world of marketing, across many sectors the impact of “customer” reviews is now critical on-line. I have no idea what the stats are, but I bet that the number of us booking a holiday or hotel without looking at feedback from others, whether via tripadvisor or other sites, is getting smaller and smaller.
Could this become more “normal” in professional services too? Given the role of word of mouth to date, yes I think so! While there is no equivalent of tripadvisor the future could well see a site blending some of LinkedIn, the “good lawyer guide”, and directories like Chambers (which at the moment are still very “old school” in the way they gather and report on the performance of firms).
The financial and reputational penalty for firms who do not provide consistently good client service at that point will get sharply higher. So the time to get coherent and well executed client service strategies in place is now!
CRM – The Truth in Professional Services
We’re beginning to plan the 2011 version of the benchmark study into CRM in professional services, that we do in conjunction with Professional Marketing Forum. 273 people participated last time and gave the most robust sense of “what’s happening out there” that we believe exists. You can get an electronic copy at https://www.thrivingcompany.co.uk/improvedResultsFromCrm/
The study can and should evolve. If there are questions and ideas you have about what you would really like to know about driving successful results from CRM in the sector, reply to this blog or email me at
We’ve had some early input suggesting that more insight into key areas of value gained from vendors, vendor performance, expected timescales for ROI and success in motivating fee earners would all be useful.
What do you think?
Incumbents, fees and the implications for professional and financial services firms
At Thriving at the moment, we’re just completing a study on the ways in which major companies select and evaluate suppliers (in a particular professional/financial service sector).
In a good proportion of cases, even if there is an explicit tender process, the incumbent firm is successful. In these cases, the decision makers note that the length of relationship has enabled them to better evaluate the technical expertise, and business knowledge of the supplier. Moving to another firm creates uncertainty. Thus there is a material (though undefined) “switching” cost.
This perceived risk gets greater if the incumbent firm has been flexible in its dealings with the client, based on understanding needs and a real ability to tailor what it does.
The role of “price” in the decision is also interesting. When participants scored the importance of 10 factors, price only came in 9th of the 10. HOWEVER (and its a big however) when participants were asked about the key difference between the firm they chose and the “next best”, price – together with flexibility – was one of the two most commonly mentioned factors.
How so? On several occasions participants said that where they cannot differentiate between suppliers based on their performance in all other aspects, price becomes the “de facto” driver of the decision.
What does this mean for firms?
Firstly, think about whether you are exploiting the advantages of incumbency with your clients consistently enough. The best way is through driving value for them, building a hurdle which is difficult for competitors to overcome.
Secondly, unless you can differentiate by performing better than competitors on one or more key areas when tendering, you are damning yourselves to win only on price. Fine if that’s your strategy and on a sustainable basis, you are more efficient than any other competitor, but a recipe for decline if not. You’ll need to drive performance on what your targets truly value.
What does the LegalWeek Intelligence 2010 Client Satisfaction report tell us?
First, some excerpts…though click on to https://www.legalweek.com/legal-week/blog-post/1930261/-poor-advice-poor-service-expensive-clients-arent-getting-happier-law-firms for more of the detail.
One (of several) of Legal Week’s articles on the results includes the following:
“…though clients remain generally impressed with the quality of legal advice and service they get …general satisfaction has declined across the board against 2009, and particularly on cost issues.
This lack of satisfaction also comes during a period when the report suggests that clients are becoming more demanding. In 2009, clients on average rated the importance of ‘quality of legal advice’ as 9 out of 10, a figure that rises to 9.4 this year even as average satisfaction rating has fallen.
There’s a similar pattern for other criteria with ‘cost/billing practice’ and ‘service delivery/responsiveness’ being rated as more important than in 2009 while satisfaction levels have again dipped.”
It’s also interesting that the top rated of the top 20 firm’s achieves an average satisfaction rate of 7.7/10.
Frankly, this ain’t great. There are few sectors of the market place where the highest scoring provider would get an average of 7.7 for customer satisfaction. The flip side of this is the sheer prize for any firm that does differentiate…and, eventually, some will.
Think of the 3 broad areas that Legal Week refers to.
Quality of legal advice. Potentially a “given” in some minds, but most of the clients of law firms we talk to incorporate the applicability and commerciality of legal advice into “quality”. Are firms doing enough and communicating properly here?
Service Delivery/Responsiveness. Some law firm clients rave about the accessibility and responsiveness of their key contacts and the insight they have into progress on transactions. Other’s don’t – and we find that it is one of the areas which most regularly determines whether a firm is retained…or not.
Cost/Billing Practice. Its easy, but potentially dangerous to equate this to “level of fees”. That is only part of the story. Law firm clients we speak to are more concerned about the predictability and transparency of fees, rather than getting the “lowest cost” job. Firms who can effectively describe the value of what they do and react effectively to the demand for clearer billing practice gain a financial reward.
It is a brave firm which doesn’t gain objective feedback from a representative set of its clients. While Legal Week’s research is insightful, each firm needs to respond to what its clients are saying, and manage its engagements with clients effectively.
Some readers may find the “CRM – the Truth in Professional Services” benchmark study, available from www.thrivingcompany.co.uk or www.pmforum.co.uk useful in thinking through how to manage this – and how to avoid the risks clearly shown by Legal Week’s report.
Lessons for Professional Marketers from the 2018 World Cup Bid
Quite an emotive subject for many of us! But nonetheless, some points come out of it that are useful “refreshers” in our overall business development and “pitching” efforts.
Of course, there are a number of variables that we may never know about. That said, three things stand out for me which definitely have relevance for professional services marketing too:
1. The technical merits of each bid weren’t the deciding factor, and the precise scoring didn’t have that much of an influence. It seems likely that (whether explicitly or otherwise) each bid had to meet a minimum level of quality and have an “acceptable” level of risk that the voting members of FIFA felt was manageable.
I’ve seen this in much of the research we do where clients of professional and financial service firms respond. Firms have to meet minimum criteria to be short listed but their precise performance on technical criteria rarely “wins the work”.
2. The real decision was made from a mix of more qualitative, strategic and emotional factors. In this case, the “strategic” imperative was probably about “bringing the world cup to new locations” . So, the detailed technical criteria were of less importance than this. Again, we regularly hear about clients wishes to have “trusted advisors” or “business partners” who demonstrate that they understand what the business and stakeholders are aiming to do. Understanding the strategic drive is key
3. Relationships counted. Put bluntly, 22 “voters” (as we all are) were influenced by relationships, whether they liked the various people in the bids, and what was in it for them. I don’t mean the latter based on alleged “bribery” – who knows whether that happened – but based on their own agenda and what was important to them. Building relationships and being trusted enough to gain insight into these agendas is a real art that not all professional services fee earners have.
Referrals and strategic introducers
Probably sheer coincidence, but both Accountancy Age and The Lawyer reported recently on two different approaches to gaining referrals from professional networks and partners. See https://www.accountancyage.com/aa/news/1863593/accountancy-firm-offer-free-services-regular-referrals and also https://www.thelawyer.com/freshfields-mills-and-reeve-kick-off-network-plan/1006007.article
I wonder what the thinking is in either of these cases, but at least in part they demonstrate that the firm in question is thinking about ways to enhance its acquisition of (hopefully, quality) business through intermediaries and introducers, or “adjacent” firms.
I’d argue that the question needs to be thought about more strategically, but the fact these firms are doing this should be a gentle nudge to others. Most times, when we talk to professional services firms (and law firms in particular) they can begin to fairly easily describe their strategically important client relationships. However, often they are less able to describe their strategic introducer relationships or outline how they are managing these.
That’s slightly ironic perhaps? Building mutually beneficial strategic relationships with introducers and opening up an honest dialogue with them has the potential to create a bigger stream of revenue than managing most client relationships. So shouldn’t you be thinking about how your firm defines and then manages the relationships with key intermediaries and introducers?
Don’t shy away from measuring success
I was reminded of a very important point when speaking at an event last week, and reviewing the results of the “Client Relationship Management – The truth in professional services” benchmark study.
This is that only 28% of firms covered said they made serious efforts in setting success measures for their CRM programmes and activity. The setting of success measures was one of the factors which had the highest association with gaining real benefit from CRM. So, if you’re in one of the 72% of firms that don’t do this, its worth rethinking for a variety of reasons – including:
- Defining success criteria makes any CRM strategy or vision real – it determines what is important and makes people think and focus on how to achieve that. Lacking measures of success just leaves any CRM vision as a nice description of a wish list
- A set of success criteria keeps momentum going. This is particularly so when allied to milestones and an effective plan (not just of tasks but of outcomes). It gains ongoing commitment.
- Effectively engaging with senior stakeholders in a firm on measures of success, and demonstrating you are serious, often gains a greater level of ongoing support.
- It drives real focus and reduces the real risk of “success being declared” as soon as fee earners can access “the new system” – which of course is just part of the deal.
- It encourages accountability from all those who should be engaged in making CRM work in a firm.
At the same time of course, there can be reluctance to commit by any of us in marketing or IT who are centrally concerned with CRM programmes. Does putting our heads above the parapet in this way consign us to greater risk?
Well, no, not really. Not putting metrics in makes it much less likely that the CRM effort will succeed and be seen as a success by the firm. The outcome will be pretty clear to most even if not formally measured by metrics. Conversely, using metrics to show leadership and accountability for success will improve the overall result – for the firm as a whole and those centrally engaged in the effort.
What do your clients think?
Recently I compiled a short synopsis of some of the key things that law firm clients say, when they describe incidences where they are either beginning to use, or considering using other firms for more of their business, or where they discount a firm for certain types of work.
(BTW, if you’d like a copy of the short paper “Preventing client leakage…” just email me on )
Some example comments are:
“If [named partner] is not there we go elsewhere because they lack depth of expertise.”
“Not sure if they have certain capabilities”
“They must not assume that people know what they do”
“Their response times leave much to be desired”
“For service, I would rate them 8.5 out of 10…for strategic value I would rate them 2/10”
“They always try to sell to us on price – but what we really want is to have a good job done at a reasonable price”
In our experience about 15% of law firm client relationships are at risk and another 30% represent hidden opportunity, if only the firm knew what was key for that client and how to identify the need and communicate their capability.
What do your clients think of you?