Managing your client relationships

A CRM system is not just an MS Outlook repository for client and prospect contact details. One of the primary goals of a CRM system should be maintaining and increasing revenue. This is accomplished by leveraging many aspects of an effective system, the most important of which are:

• Communication

• Collaboration

• Enabling follow-up

• Reporting

• Predicting

An effective CRM System should:

• Be the corporate Client Database

• Track and measure Business Development efforts

• Remind you to follow-up in a couple of days, weeks, or years

• Become a central repository for notes and information on a given client or lead

• Manage qualified leads and keep them from falling off the radar

• Manage and track outstanding fee proposals, including forecasting revenue

• Manage prospect customer interactions

• Identify Business Development Tasks that need to happen and whether they are actually happening

• Notify Client Managers about interactions everyone else in the company is having with their client

• Provide feedback on projected revenues and actual revenues

• Report projected revenues by group/department/company

• Increase collaboration between groups and departments through information sharing

• Alert Client Managers and management when revenue is declining for a given client

• Provide a historic record of projects and submissions for the client and prospect

• Be a central repository of information on other firms, e.g. architects that are winning hospitality work that we can team with to pursue future work

• Report on Business Development activities: “That which is measured is improved”

• Manage conferences — costs, exhibiting, attending — and relate it back to specific employees

• Answer the question: what happens to someone’s contacts when they leave?

• Provide historic Information on prospects, marketing events, e-mag distributions, lunches, relationships, and more

A Great CRM should do all of the above and more including:

• Integrate with existing project and client data, allowing for cross reporting related to current revenues and past revenues and how these relate to future revenues

• Identify opportunities that aren’t moving/progressing

• Report on the effectiveness of the Business Development staff

• Identify who and what efforts result in new work

• Integrate with a Client Retention Program (e.g.: survey feedback loop to measure success)

• Become a measurable part of the employee review process