We’re heading into the time of year when one day blurs into the next. You feel bombarded with unexpected client calls and requests 24/7. There’s nothing worse than being caught off-guard by an urgent client request, or worse, hanging up the phone and realizing you just had Client A’s situation confused with Client B’s and called his wife by the wrong name and wished him happy birthday — five months too late. Oops!
Productivity guru David Allen likes to say, “The mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”
We all want our clients to feel valued, but sometimes it’s overwhelming to keep all the details of their lives in the back of our minds, or in manila folders, spreadsheets or tax software. That’s where a client relationship management system comes in. Tax software is where you go to find a client’s AGI. But a CRM system is where you go to find notes from your last meeting with a client, or their birthday and their kids’ birthdays. If nothing else, the CRM system allows team members who are interacting the most with clients to build trust with clients by understanding what’s going on in their lives — and to share those insights with the rest of your team.
Which CRM do you need?
There are a wide variety of solutions on the market. Just know that you want a CRM system that makes it easy to see what’s going on in clients’ lives, and that gives an effective summary of your prior meetings. CRM software is also great for storing long-term reminders. For instance, in February, a client may have told you they want to discuss retirement planning or business exit planning in the fall — but not before. CRM makes it easy to retrieve all the client’s relevant information about these issues when the time is appropriate to discuss.
Some CRM systems have a lot of bells and whistles that could potentially replace many of your other tools. Others are better at integrating with your existing tax software and email, etc. While it’s tempting to go the integration route, just know it can take longer to put the system in place at your firm and the learning curve (and adoption rate) can be longer. Every firm operates differently. So, you have to take a vote about what’s most important for your particular situation. Your staff is busy. Your partners are busy. The people handling client relationships are busy. They’re not going to drop everything just to adopt the CRM.
It all comes down to asking yourself: “How do I prepare efficiently for a meeting with my client? How do I keep track of all the to-do’s assigned to me and my staff? And how do I understand what’s relevant in the client relationship (i.e. number of children, names, birthdays, etc.)?”
Most likely, your client service team will be the one operating the CRM along with others who work directly with your clients. CRM is really designed for your service team to deliver consolidated information to your client-facing team.
Rolling out your CRM
So often I’ve seen a big software rollout announced at a firm, and half the staff throws up their hands declaring: “I’m too busy for this. I don’t want to learn this. It seems like too much extra work.” Here’s the secret: You don’t need them to use the CRM. You just want them to have the benefit of what CRM does. And that’s reporting on their most important clients.
For example, let’s say you want your team to call your top 20 clients every month to see if there are any important changes in their lives. Or maybe you want to call them individually to discuss a new tax rule that could affect them. Your staff can run a report on your top 20 clients with each one’s birthday, spouse’s birthday, anniversary, and kids’ birthdays, as well as the last time you talked, what you talked about and if there are any open action items from that conversation. All that valuable information, which is at your fingertips, comes from entries made to the CRM.
Armed with that information, you’ll have much better conversations with each client. Even better, it’s not complicated or time-consuming to run that report and it can be done by a staff member, not a high-billing partner. Management of the CRM is $10-per-hour work. But the ability to add value to your clients is $1,000-per-hour work. Keep your high-value team members doing what they do best: helping clients make better financial decisions. (For more about this best practice, see my article "
Metrics for success
If your firm needs metrics associated with any new software implementation or process changes, let me give you some guidelines. The goal of your CRM is for your lead CPAs to build more trust with your best clients and prospects. How many proactive client calls is your team making every month? What’s the goal? They will be more willing to call clients if they can quickly go to the CRM and print out a snapshot of each client’s situation before dialing.
Again, you’re not just calling your best clients to say, “Hi” or “Just touching base.” That’s annoying for busy, successful people. It’s not that they don’t want to hear from you, but they don’t want you to waste their time. If you think about it, there’s always a good reason to check in.
As Peter Drucker liked to say, “What gets measured gets managed.”
One of your most important firm meetings
At the beginning of every month, you and the other lead partners should get together to decide what you want your best clients to know about the most important happenings in the accounting, tax or business world. Ask yourselves: “Does anyone have an article or resource we can share?” The partners email the resource to their top 20 clients, and spend the next 60 to 90 minutes calling to discuss. Be ready to leave a voicemail like this:
“Good morning John. I emailed you an article discussing recent tax increases in the manufacturing space. I thought of you. Happy to discuss if you’d like. I hope you’re having a great week.”
You may need a few tech-savvy client service members to get the ball rolling with your CRM, but once the lead CPAs see how quick and easy it is to use, they’ll probably want to take over themselves.
Don’t underestimate the power of telling clients: “Hey, I was thinking about you when I saw this.” Isn’t that better than “Just touching base”?
