So, you’ve invested in marketing your firm and it’s delivering results: you have a lot of leads and potential clients. Is your firm capitalising on them properly? Failing to follow up with a lead wastes the money you invested in your marketing. The good news is that the lead management process can be much more efficient with a CRM.
What is a CRM?
Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a type of software that allows you to track, organise and manage your firm’s relationship with your customers. You can see at a glance where in the sales pipeline an individual or business is. Building a strong relationship between your business and its clients is a powerful tactic for generating revenue, and a CRM will help you maintain and grow that relationship at every stage of client interaction.
It’s a great idea to have a CRM that’s integrated into your practice management system, whether that be something that works with what you already have, or software that does both. There are a lot of different CRMs available, and they offer different features depending on what your firm needs. If you’re interested in data and the analytics of how people interact with your firm, software like Salesforce might be your best bet. There are plenty of CRMs designed specifically for the Legal sector. Orprey Approach is a CRM that also offers practice and case management solutions.
Whatever you decide, the ideal CRM makes the process of gathering and storing data easy. If the procedure gets too complicated fee earners will not engage with it, and their involvement is key to making it work.
Where are your leads coming from?
Data is powerful. It should inform everything your business does – so why not your lead generation? A good CRM will integrate with a variety of platforms to help you track where your business is coming from. For example, you can know whether your newsletter is being opened and if people are visiting your website through it. If the numbers aren’t very high then you can invest that time and energy into areas that are driving leads.
This sort of data collection is massively more effective than traditional methods, such as asking a client how they found you. “I found your firm online” is too vague to be a useful data point and one of the more common answers you’ll get when surveying clients. A CRM will also store all this data in one place – you don’t need to search the analytics across multiple platforms to find what’s relevant to you.
Effective Follow up
Not all leads are equal. Some require more investment before they’re warm enough to convert into clients. Managing your contacts with a CRM allows you to intelligently segment your database into warm and cold leads, so you can manage your time more efficiently and prioritise warm leads. When things are a little less busy your cold leads will still be there with a record of all the communication they’ve received, so you know where you stand at a glance.
Having all your contact data in one place also has one simple but major advantage: everyone knows where to look for phone numbers and email addresses. Everyone knows where to store addresses. If a member of staff is off work ill, you don’t have to hunt through their desk or break into their email account to find a phone number. It’s in the CRM.
A CRM acts as a central database from which you can build targeted campaigns, which generate better engagement than generalised marketing. Segmenting your data so that it’s as useful to you as possible is easy with a CRM. If you need to see which contacts are potential commercial clients, you can tag and then segment them to show just your contacts who have contacted you on behalf of their businesses. Better still, you can often build those campaigns within the CRM itself, so you don’t need to have a lot of tools to build an effective sales pipeline.
Efficient communication
The majority of CRMs these days will not just store contact details, but also allow you to contact them. You can make calls, send emails, book meetings, and leave case notes all in one place. Not only does this make client management much more efficient, but it also shows you which leads have been contacted and when, so you can better walk the line between persistence and spam.
Cut out the middleman and make sure communication from potential clients lands on the desk of the right person immediately. Enquiries about conveyancing services shouldn’t end up in your immigration law department and vice versa. You can also establish a system of notifications and reminders that ensures that once that initial contact has been made it will be followed up with.
Email templates can be a major source of efficiency in your firm that you’ve not tapped into yet. You might be sending a lot of the same basic emails out. Maybe your staff are be hesitant to send an email because they’re not sure what they should be saying. A CRM will let you store email templates and automate sending them if you need it. This effectively remove the mental load from everyone on your team – including you.
Excellent customer service
It’s likely you already have Practice Management software and/or a Case Management system working in your firm. A CRM can complement these by feeding and receiving information from them. If a case has reached a point where a meeting with a client would be beneficial, you can use a CRM that’s integrated with your case management system to send a link to your calendar, inviting the client to book an appointment.
Having up-to-date details and a record of an individual’s interactions with your firm allows you to personalise you communications. This is a better customer experience than a generic greeting. For example, you can track what department an individual is contacting and send them content relevant to that interest. Customer service is more effective when your employees know the contact history and can get right to the point. It makes existing and potential clients feel important.
Support your marketing
Effective lead management can make a huge difference in your business development. With a CRM it doesn’t have to be a time drain. If you and your team are struggling, or you need advice then our marketing support services are here. Ring Lara on 01903530787 today to find out how we can support your firm’s marketing efforts.