Vue Consulting surveyed 52 professional services advisers in July 2010 about five relationship management processess...

In our July edition of monthly newsletter, reVUE, we asked our readers to participate in a 10 second survey on five relationship management processes which often exist in a professional services business.  We had 52 responses from a range of professional services industries – from real estate to accounting to solicitors.

We asked advisers if they had any of these five processes in their business and, if so, did they use them.  The results were quite interesting.   Let’s review and consider some practical implications.

A written Service Standards document you discuss with clients

Of interest here is the large response of participants which have, but don’t use, written Service Standards documents.  Perhaps this is because advisers don’t see the benefit in running through these documents with clients.  There are so many benefits, however.  Let’s just consider two.  First, a proven, major driver of client engagement is having agreed Service Standards.  Clients want to know what is going to happen.  Second, written Service Standards helps you screen out clients with unrealistic expectations by judging their response to your standards.  I cannot stress enough how critical this issue is.

Templated confirmation emails/letters for common types of meetings

Meeting confirmations are so easy to template up.  You can send yourself or have an admin staff do it for you.  You end up with less cancelled meetings, better prepared clients and generate those feelings of reliability in your client – feelings which are critical in the area of referrals and engagement.

Templated meeting agendas for common types of meetings to provide to clients

54% of advisers don’t have meeting agendas for common meetings?  Clients love agendas.  This isn’t a well known fact, but it is a fact.  Simply put, agendas create more effective outputs from meetings but improving the meeting inputs.  Most advisers have a few common or typical meetings with clients (fact find/initial meeting, proposals, reviews) which can benefit from template agendas.  60 minutes work can create your template meeting agendas which you can use over and over.

A process/template to routinely thank clients for their business

Two-thirds of advisers don’t have a process to routinely thank clients for their business.  This is a such an important topic which is so easy to overlook.  As it was the question with the least successful outcome in this survey, I have devoted an entire article to this topic, which you can read here.

A CRM/Client Database tool which you use to store file notes (not just factual data)

Excellent.  Two thirds of advisers have and use a CRM system for file notes.  CRMs help institutionalise your relationship with a client.  A good CRM can also reveal sales ideas, prospecting tactics and relationship management information which can add directly to the bottom line.  CRMs don’t need to be expensive – a simple database or Business Contact Manager for Outlook can often do the trick.