When Attorneys Ask, “What’s In It (CRM) For Me?”- Part 2: What They Need To Succeed

The team at CLIENTSFirst has helped hundreds of firms succeed with CRM. A key to that success for many firms involves getting attorneys to use the system or at least share their information. However, as mentioned in our last post, When Attorneys Ask, “What’s In It (CRM) For Me, getting attorney adoption can be challenging unless you can demonstrate that the system will provide them with benefits they really care about.

Based on more than 12 years of experience in working together with top professional services firms, here are some of the key CRM needs that attorneys find most valuable.

• Correct, current and complete contact information when they need it
• A list of other firm attorneys who may know a contact or have a relationship (and, ideally, who has the strongest relationship) with a company and may be able to provide information or make an introduction
• Marketing and business development activities involving a contact (especially when the activities can be automatically generated based on calendar appointments and expense submissions)
• Notifications of contacts changing jobs, receiving firm communications, attending events and meeting with other attorneys at the firm
• Creation of contacts from the signature blocks of emails to improve efficiency and reduce attorney effort
• Mobile access for searching and adding contacts, activities and notes
• Insights into opportunities to cross sell services or develop additional business with clients and contacts
• Automated reminders to facilitate client communication and follow-up
• Dashboards and reports that allow easy access to contacts and business intelligence and that can be pushed to attorneys on a regular schedule
• Key information and business insights about contacts and companies
• Information on pitches and proposals to contacts or companies that other groups or attorneys may be working on
• Referral tracking to identify the best sources of incoming business and ensure that attorneys reciprocate
• Business card scanning technology to allow quick contact entry when out of the office

These features can be extremely useful to attorneys, yet CRM can still be a hard sell for some. There can also be a few attorneys who may have had a bad experience with CRM in the past or require special handling. (What marketing professional hasn’t been on the receiving end of complaints about problems with mailing lists?) But overall, if you can show attorneys how CRM can help to solve problems, save time and increase revenue, most will be willing to participate. It’s up to marketers to educate their attorneys about what’s in CRM for each of them and to make CRM the tool attorneys want to use to help them be successful.

– For more than a decade, the team at CLIENTSFirst Consulting has been helping law and other professional services firms and other organizations successfully select and implement CRM and eMarketing systems to maximize value, adoption, and return on investment. If you need help achieving CRM success, please contact us at 404-249-9914 or Info@ClientsFirstConsulting.com.