www.tenandahalf.co.uk

Tenandahalf’s A-Z of winning more work from

your existing clients

helping smarter professional service firms grow

Z A

How do smarter firms win more work from their existing clients? By approaching client development in a systemised and organised fashion. When it comes to winning new work and generating new fees, your clientbase represents the path of least resistance. These are people who have already bought you so don’t need convincing. They are also the people you are already in contact with which allows you to sidestep the age-old frustrations of cold calling and circumventing the ‘gatekeeper’. However, all too often firms are criminally under-utilising this rich vein of opportunity! In order for you to maximise the value each of your client relationships delivers, all you need to do is approach your targets with confidence and focus. Confidence will win your clients over; focus will allow you to use the time you have available for client development in the most productive way. The following 26 practical tips are designed to give you some of this confidence and we hope that over time, this little white book will become your very own trusted advisor.

A is for Action You will have heard this before but when it comes to client development, cross-selling and up-selling, there is no magic wand and no fairy dust. If you are going to retain your clients and win more work from them you are going to have to do something. You can have the best intentions - not to mention the best client development plans in the world - but the fact is if you don’t take action, you won’t win work.

B is for Be interested Growing client relationships is all about establishing trust. The easiest way to establish trust is to understand your clients’ current situation, the issues they face, what they want to achieve and in what timescale. The easiest way to uncover that information is just to chat. Be genuinely interested, ask nice open questions and the opportunities you need to grow your relationships will appear.

C is for Confidence If you are to win more work from a client they need to see you are totally confident in your ability and in your firm’s abilities. After all, why should your clients continue to pay upwards of £200 for your advice if you don’t appear to be totally at ease with them, their problems and how to find the required solution? Confidence can manifest itself in things as obvious as your smile, handshake and the level of eye-contact you maintain. Additional confidence can be built up by embracing ‘soft skills’ training.

D is for Deliver If you are providing everything you’re paid to, the chances your clients will look elsewhere will pretty much disappear. To help you deliver exactly what is required, maintain regular contact, review your work and your clients’ objectives at regular intervals (set by your clients) and be ready to suggest alternative ways to realise these objectives. One other thought you may want consider, it’s not just about what you deliver it’s also about how you deliver it. Asking how your clients like to work, like to be billed and like to communicate will pay dividends.

E is for Enthusiasm Why should people be enthusiastic about working with you if you don’t seem enthusiastic about working with them? However bad your day has been, the meeting you have, the phone call you answer or the email you respond to may be the only point of contact your client has with you on that day. Make sure it is positive and at that moment the client is made to feel like the most important thing in your world. Enthusiasm spreads easily and you will not only make the client feel better, you will also create an atmosphere in which they are more likely to ask you to apply your enthusiasm to other potential opportunities.

F is for Focus Everything becomes easier when you focus. What may have seemed like an unmanageable, amorphous task is made easier when you select the targets most likely to offer additional fee earning opportunities and focus your attention, time and efforts on them. Before you embark on any CRM/client management/client development programme apply your chosen focus - spend, opportunity, geography or sector – and stick to it.

G is for Goals It’s almost impossible to get anywhere if you don’t know a) your destination and b) how you’re progressing. Set measurable, realistic goals for each of the clients you want to develop. Think about the additional services you want to sell those clients, the timeframe in which you’ll make contact and introduce those services and the level of expenditure you want each client to reach. Once you have your goals, the tactics required to reach these goals will be more apparent.

H is for Home visits Or office visits. Or factory visits. Or any sort of visit where you place yourself at the heart of your clients’ world and place yourself in the perfect position to be interested. Go and see your clients where they are most comfortable; that comfort will add an extra dimension of openness to your discussions which should lead seamlessly to new opportunities.

I is for Insight Not insight into the client – that’s covered in detail elsewhere. Insight here relates to the ability to provide insight based on similar experiences and similar situations with similar clients. You need to brazenly apply that insight to help your clients achieve exactly what they need to achieve. This is what your clients want and need. It’s what builds trust and underlines your value to the client. It is also the best foundation upon which to build the type of trust that will lead to introductions to your clients’ colleagues and invitations to pitch for new practice areas and new projects.

J is for Jokes The client review work we do for professional service firms points to one thing - your clients just want to get on with you. Injecting a little bit of humour helps. It doesn’t mean you’re underestimating their situation or taking things lightly, only that you realise that your clients need human beings first and professional advisors second. A huge part of your job is to create an atmosphere your clients will naturally gravitate towards when they need help.

K is for Know your client We’ve touched on knowing what your clients do, what they want to achieve and what they have at their disposal. While the value of knowing all of that cannot be underestimated what we’re talking about here is the more personal stuff. I was once told by a very experienced sales director if you know about family, football and holidays you will always have something to talk about. And do you know what? He was right! Take an interest in the personal side and you’ll not just have something to talk about, you’ll also have an instant Brownie point generator that will mark you out from the other professionals courting your clients!

L is for Lapsed clients On top of your current clientbase you have another potential gold imine – your lapsed clients. Identify clients who used to use your firm, research in which areas and develop a strategy to reconnect. These are people who know you, have trusted you in the past and may only require a minimal nudge to use you again.

M is for Multiple points of contact The more points of contact you have between your firm and your clients’ organisations, the stronger your relationships will become. Identify everyone involved in a piece of work and make sure they have counterparts at the same level within your firm. Effective client management simply cannot be limited to a partner. Also, think about the support staff. Get your accounts team talking to theirs, know the people who answer the phone and manage diaries. More importantly, understand exactly who is involved in purchasing decisions and make sure you are able to remains visible to them. Taking time to establish these multiple points of contact also make it more likely the client will move with a specific fee earner which will deliver its own benefits in terms of stability and retention.

N is for Never need to network again How do you feel about networking events? About working the room? Unsurprisingly most of our clients are distinctly non-plussed about it. Well here’s the good news, get this client management stuff right and you can knock it on the head. Not only will effective client management win new opportunities from your clients, it will also generate new introductions and new referrals.

O is for Often The more often you are in front of your clients, the more work you will win. This needs to be a mix of face time, phone calls, email, direct mail, workshops/training and social time. Each touchpoint should also add value to the relationship. There is nothing worse than a vacuous courtesy call. Similarly making every point of contact the same will soon lose the client’s patience. Design a ‘little and often’ client management model that allows you to stay in touch, be useful and add value at the same time.

P is for Pareto Pareto analysis is essential ahead of and repeatedly during any client management or client development programme. For the uninitiated (and surely there can’t be many) Pareto’s rule suggests 80% of the return comes from 20% of the opportunity. In almost every case, it is a frighteningly accurate assumption. When it comes to existing clients, the application is simple. 80% of your turnover will come from 20% of your clients. Take time to examine your clientbase and identify that 20%. This is where the bulk of your efforts have to be employed as it is where the bulk of your return will come from.

Q is for Quality of service Let’s face it, if your clients receive the highest level of service – manifesting itself in both the quality of your advice and the speed and ease with which it’s delivered – why would they go anywhere else? And when we say go anywhere else that counts both towards retaining your clients and building a platform from which to successfully cross-sell other practice areas.

R is for Referrals Referrals need to be a primary objective. And that means external referrals as well as internal referrals. Looking after your clients and making sure they receive the best possible service will make it easier for you to encourage them to introduce you to other people within their organisation. These referrals will make it easier to open up new divisions or subsidiaries and to introduce new practice areas. Looking after your clients will make them more likely to refer friends and business clients. Achieve both and you have a growing business with a much lower dependence on new client acquisition.

S is for Stocktake It doesn’t matter if you call it a stocktake, an audit or a review. If you are to keep providing the right advice and keep your client moving towards their desired outcome, you need to have a way of finding out where your client is and where they want to go. This not only keeps you on the right track - increasing your value to your client which itself will improve client retention - it will also uncover more fee earning opportunities and give you the chance to introduce your colleagues into the mix where appropriate.

T is for Trust Without trust you’re not going to get anywhere. Sounds a bit black and white but it’s true. How you establish trust will vary from client to client but the key factors are straightforward. You need to provide a high quality of advice that does

exactly what the client wants it to.

You need to be responsive and approachable at all times.

You need to be prepared to talk about things outside the immediate brief

You need to be able to demonstrate an innate understanding of your clients’ situation and sector

You need to be yourself

U is for Understanding Understanding manifests itself in a few different ways. It can be an understanding of a client’s business,

objectives, ambitions and current situation.

It can be an understanding of a client’s personal or family circumstances and the security they want to put in place for the future.

It can be an understanding of your geography or of a specific industry sector.

It can even be – and yes, we’re veering into the touchy-feely side again! – the ability to display genuine understanding to support or sympathise with your clients during very different times.

All different. All equally vital if you’re to retain and grow your clients.

V is for Value Talk to your clients and work out what really represents added value to them. The more things each client considers to be important you can provide, the stronger your relationship will become and the more likely it’ll be that you retain that client. The default for the professional services seems to be that seminars will suffice. It needs to be more than that. Look at online information repositories, out of hours advice, invitations to specialist sector events or flexible billing tariffs. It may just be that you’re able to use your knowledge to pick a matter up and crack on rather than having to spend time learning the context. One other point about added value, if it’s important to one client, it’ll be important to others. Once you’ve designed and introduced something innovative, roll it out to the masses to maximise the return from your investment in its creation.

W is for “Were I in your shoes …” In order to provide the highest levels of value you need to be prepared to give definitive and singular advice. They have come to you – and are paying you – to find out what to do to reach their desired outcome. Instead of looking at what could be done, advise what needs to be done. Moreover, don’t express that advice in a range of suggestions ranging from high risk to low risk via medium risk. The words every client wants to hear are “if I were in your shoes, I would ….” How do we know that’s what every client wants? Because that’s what every client tells us!

X is for 8 Xs as likely Someone sometime calculated you are 8 times as likely to sell to an existing client as you are to convert a new contact or prospect. I’m not sure about the basis of this calculation but it makes perfect sense – it may be even be slightly on the low side to be honest. The people who have already bought your firm understand the value you provide and how easy it is to work with you. That means logically it has to be the most fertile ground from which to generate new matters and new opportunities. With that in mind here’s a question: Given you are 8 times as likely to sell to an existing client; do you appropriate 8 times more time and budget to client management than you do to new client acquisition?

Y is for Yes Yes is the most powerful word in the client management dictionary. If you are going to remain attractive to your clients, use it as often as possible. Whether you are being asked if you can introduce new billing methods, whether you can give a second opinion on a specific matter, whether you can accompany your client to a meeting, whether you can deliver your information in a different format to meet their internal requirements, whether you can recommend another professional to help with another area, the answer should always be a resounding ‘yes’. Sometimes you may have to work out the practicalities after the event, sometimes you may have to do a bit of reading around the subject. However by saying yes, you will have a happy client and that is the immediate objective.

Z is for Zonal The most effective way to manage and grow your client relationships is to apply a bit of zonal marking – where the level of effort relates to the opportunity each zone (or group or segment) offers you.

You have your primary targets – the top 20% identified in your Pareto analysis and the lapsed high spenders that still offer an attractive share of wallet – and they need close man-to-man markers. Then there’s the middle tier. They need to be visited sporadically, targeted at networking events and industry gatherings and included in more personalised written communications in between times. Then there’s the third tier. Those who you need to maintain contact with but where most of that communication can be automated and included in your general marketing efforts. None can be left untouched but the level of effort you employ to maintain contact has to correlate directly to the likelihood of additional fees, opportunity for growth and the client’s strategic value to the firm.

Now we have your attention, what next?

If you would like a FREE initial 45 minute consultation please get in touch Call Doug McPherson on 077865 40 191 Email douglas@tenandahalf.co.uk

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