CRM Success Tips Blog

On the sixth day of CRM Chris Kringle Fritsch told me, it\'s time we redefine adoption! CRM systems have been around for more than 20 years, and we’ve been talking about adoption since the beginning. Maybe it is time we rethink our approach to adoption, especially in a law firm. In law firms, time is money, literally, and everyone is incredibly busy, leaving them with little or no time to regularly update the CRM system. And remote work can complicate things further. Another group to consider is the professionals who bill over a thousand dollars per hour. Is the best use of their time manually entering contact records and updating missing information?

On the fifth day of CRM, Chris KringleFritsch gave to me, the 5 golden A’s of CRM! Sitting down and cleaning your data can be a very daunting task. So where do you start? Start with the five A’s of data quality. When starting a data cleaning project, don’t think you will get 100% clean data because if you have zero new contact records and clean everything else, in five minutes you’ll have a new record that needs cleaning. That is how quickly data can change. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because you can\'t get every record perfect does not mean that you shouldn’t do it.

On the fourth day of CRM Chris Kringle Fritsch explained to me, four ways CRM has changed over the years! CRM and the technology surrounding it have evolved a lot over the years. But where did CRM start, and where is it headed? Outside of legal, CRM was acquired to manage pipelines and contact lists with less of a focus on writing. But in the past few years, having a CRM system with fully functional business development tools is at the top of the list for every firm and organization. And while we may still be a far cry away from having a firm-wide business development pipeline, many of the features and

On the third day of CRM Chris Kringle Fritsch informed me, three things CRM should do for me! CRM can do a thousand things, literally. But how do you know what it should do for your business? The answer is simple, provide value. Then you\'re left asking, “How do we define value?” Your definition of value is unique to your business, and unique to the departments within your organization and even individual users. Value could be minimizing effort, maximizing relationships, automating processes or facilitating business development. While these are all important, different stakeholders will care about different things. You should define value early in the implementation process, so every communication point drives

On the second day of CRM Chris Kringle Fritsch told me, the origins of bad data! With more than 20 years of CRM consulting experience, all of Chris Fritsch\'s clients have at one time or another experienced problems with data quality. There is nothing you can’t do with good data, but everyone has a problem with their data. So where is all this bad data coming from? Problems can arise from having too little data, too much data or disorganized data whether it\'s in spreadsheets, separate databases, in people\'s heads, or in Outlook. And if it\'s in Outlook it\'s more than likely outdated, incorrect or incomplete. These siloed records cause a myriad

On the first day of CRM, Chris Kringle Fritsch explained to me, how to measure CRM success! CRM success is different for every firm. If you have a CRM system, success can and should be measured. Figuring out which metrics to use to measure success is subjective. There are metrics everyone can use to measure success, including web analytics, email deliverability, and tracking, which tell you the health of your list data and how well you are reaching your audience. But there are other metrics that can be used to measure CRM success that most firms don\'t think about, like tracking business development activities, the number of users going into the system

Over the more than 15 years we have spent working together with hundreds of top law firms on marketing technology selection and success, we have seen a number of changes, developments and trends in the industry. This experience as trusted advisors has allowed us to understand, early on, some of the primary challenges firms frequently face. And while we don\'t have a proverbial crystal ball, sometimes this experience can help us to predict what may be on the horizon. Within the broader legal industry, we frequently find that many smaller and mid-size firms are facing unique issues of their own. And while dealing with many of the same challenges as their larger

When implementing a CRM, a number of challenges can arise that hinder its success. In fact, respected researchers suggest that up to 70% of CRM implementations may fail to meet expectations. Despite these high failure rates, it’s possible to position yourself and your organization for CRM success by identifying and preparing for some of the most common CRM implementation challenges. If you haven\'t already read The Top 10 Most Common CRM Challenges - Part 1, check that post out for a discussion of some of the challenges that arise when an organization doesn’t have a strategy or plan in place or has a lack of focus. Here are a couple more: CRM

Chris Fritsch, Founder & CRM Success Consultant for CLIENTSFirst Consulting, and Stefanie Marrone, Founder of Stefanie Marrone Legal Marketing Consulting | The Social Media Butterfly, recently presented a webinar on their experiences with creating and managing alumni relations programs, alumni data management strategies and how technology has evolved to help lawyers and law firm business professionals track alumni and other data. It doesn’t matter how big or small your firm is, if you have employees who have left that you want to keep in touch with, you should consider an alumni relations program. Yet many firms aren’t investing in creating these programs or the programs they have may not have yielded real ROI… yet. Benefits of

When implementing a CRM, a number of challenges can arise that hinder CRM success. In fact, respected researchers suggest that up to 70% of CRM implementations may fail to meet expectations. Despite these high failure rates, it’s possible to position yourself and your organization for CRM success by identifying and preparing for some of the most common CRM implementation challenges. Based on more than 15 years of consulting experience and working with hundreds of top law firms to successfully implement CRMs, here are the 10 most common challenges the CLIENTSFirst Consulting team sees when organizations implement a CRM, along with a few solutions and best practices we recommend to overcome them: CRM