(This is one of a number of posts on The Perfect CRM being published today.  Links to the other posts can be found at the end of this one.)

I am not a technology expert by any stretch, but it doesn’t take an expert to be shocked at the frequency with which professionals complain of their firms’ CRM systems as burdens, rather than touting them as assets.  I have worked with thousands of professionals at well over 100 firms and do not recall one instance of a general rave for a firm’s systems.  I can’t recall one endorsement of a firm’s system by a user.  But unsolicited complaints are loud and constant.  This is true of professionals who lack technological sophistication, but also true of technology consultants who are in a position to assess a CRM system both as technologists and as users.

Some of these complaints result from conflicting goals of firm management and those of the individuals professionals who use the systems daily.  For management, the information captured in the CRM system represents a major asset that must be carefully protected.  Though the individual professionals may share this view, for them it must be a real-time, flexible tool for their business development efforts.

Also, problems can arise when a system designed for dedicated sales forces is applied to the professions.  The management of the sales force of a product company differs from that of a professional firm.  In a product company sales people report to sales managers who report to the head of sales.  In a professional firm, the most productive sellers are senior partners who don’t necessarily view themselves as reporting to anyone, and certainly not to a sales manager.  Staff marketing, business development and IT personnel are often, albeit wrongly, seen as second-class citizens.  These factors complicate implementation a CRM system and enforcement of its use.

Here are some of the more common complaints that a perfect system must address:

• Barriers to changing data:  A professional must be able to add, delete and change information about a contact rapidly and easily.   Systems requiring that all changes flow through a central point to control quality, create an impossible barrier to effective use.   The better systems allow professionals to change data at will for contacts assigned to them.
• Inability to blind sensitive information: A professional needs to be able to post sensitive information on the database without fear that it will be seen by other users.  When a client provides the professional with a home phone number or other confidential information, the professional needs to be able to store that information on the database where it is accessible to him with confidence that it will not be as accessible to all.
• Learning barriers:  If the system isn’t easy to learn, busy professionals won’t bother with it.  With a half-hour of instruction, a professional should be able to get basic functionality from the system.
• Clumsy data manipulation: The user should be able to sort by any major field; such as by last name, company, location, area code or zip code; and that sort should bring up just the relevant contacts.  It should not result in a list of all contacts listed alphabetically by field, requiring busy professionals to scan through many lines of data to find what they want.
• Difficult data management: Accessing the database; making changes to it; adding notes; scheduling follow-up calls, meetings and reminders; associating related documents such as proposals; and similar activities must be easy to do with a minimum of formal training.  Professionals are busy people focused primarily on serving their clients, not on tinkering with a CRM system.  Time spent wrestling with the system is time away from clients and selling.
• Adjudicating primary contact responsibilities:  Many professionals feel proprietary about their contacts.  They resent others in the firm calling or meeting with their contacts without their consent.  Sometimes they resist sharing a contact, even though they haven’t done anything to maintain a relationship, themselves.  A good system will remind a professional that he has not made contact with a specific client in, say, nine months.  It will then remind both the professional and firm management, if he has not made contact with that client for a year.  The timing of the reminders should be modifiable, depending on specific circumstances.  This allows management to reassign contact responsibility, when the current relationship manager has been inattentive.

Perfection may not be possible.  But CRM systems could be better adapted for the needs of professionals than they are.

Post Epilogue

The Perfect CRM is a series of essays by industry experts on the topic of client relationship management tools. Each expert will draw upon years of experience to outline their vision of the perfect CRM system. This exercise will provide you with new insights into what works, what doesn’t work, and what you should consider when implementing a CRM system.

The experts include:

• Tim Klabunde, Author of the CRM Chapter in the Marketing Handbook for the Design and Construction Professional
• Bernie Siben, Author of A Horse of a Different Color: Marketing in the Public Sector
• Bobby Darnell, Former Director of National Accounts at Reed Construction Data
• Mel Lester, Owner of the Business Edge
• Matt Handal, Contributing Editor of SMPS Marketer

Visit these sites by clicking on the names to read each expert’s take on the perfect CRM.

John was a young professional assigned to work with a team at a client’s office complex.  Late one Friday afternoon he stopped by the office of Bill, the Vice President in the client organization to whom John and his team reported.  He had a question that needed an answer if he was to keep his team working the following week.

Bill seemed busy, but the question was important enough that he took time to pick it apart with John until they found an answer.  As John turned to leave, Bill said, “Have you got a minute more?  I’d like to ask you a question.  I have my monthly meeting with Tom Monday morning, [Tom was the EVP to whom Bill reported], and I’d like to go over something I plan to say to him.”  For the next hour, John helped his client work through how he would handle some tough issues with his boss the next day.  This was, of course, outside the scope of his assignment.

The following Monday John ran into Bill in the hall and asked him how the meeting had gone.  Bill, obviously happy, gave him a quick summary of what had happened.

This was the first time that John had ever provided career coaching to a client and he liked it.  He realized that his stature had risen in Bill’s eyes.  He also learned things about what was going on within the client organization and about important people who worked there that he might never have known otherwise.  Later in the month, he was able to use some of this information in the way he responded to a question that EVP Tom asked during a meeting.  Without having to disclose that he knew something that was not generally known, the knowledge helped shape his work and the way he spoke with his client.

Bill had told him that he had a monthly meeting with Tom.  Noting that the men had met on the first Monday of the month, John found an excuse to drop by Bill’s office the Friday night before the first Monday of the following month.  Sure enough, Bill asked for John’s reaction to something he planned to say to Tom the next Monday.

The matter that John and his team were working on ended months ago, but they are all still there working on other assignments for the client.  And on the Friday afternoon before the first Monday of every month, John stops by Bill’s office to go over the meeting that Bill will have with Tom.  This has never been formally arranged and it’s outside the scope of any of John’s work.  But both men have come to expect it and both get a lot out of it.

Everyone knew there was no point in calling on Hannah.  She had had a bad experience with the firm and had ceased to use it long ago.  The damage that had been done proved ever more limiting as Hannah’s career prospered and she was put in charge of larger portions of the client organization.

Ignoring the common wisdom of the firm, Grant, a senior associate, scheduled a meeting with her.  Grant is a soft spoken man with an open, reassuring manner.  He is an introvert and a listener.

He began the meeting by saying, “I understand you had a bad experience with our firm.  The person you worked with is no longer with the firm and that was before my time.  But, if you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.  Or, if you would prefer, we can talk about the future.”

There was silence for half a minute and Grant held his tongue.  Then, Hannah said, “I haven’t spoken with anyone from your firm for ten years.”  Again a pause, and she said, “I have some needs coming up that I’m going to want some help with.  Let’s talk about them.”

Go see that client who had a bad experience with your firm.  A forthright approach, like Grant’s, at the very least will help ensure the client doesn’t bad mouth the firm, if she has in the past.  At best, the client and you will talk about the future.

In a previous post I described professionals who wanted to hire business developers instead of doing the hard work of getting business, themselves. These people don’t think like partners, because they want to abrogate the single most critical responsibility of an owner in hard times, making sure there is a flow of work to maintain the staff and pay the rent. *

Contrast these people to Cleo. A year or two away from being put up for partner, she already thinks like an owner. She established herself as a high potential employee when the economy was hot by doing excellent work in large quantities and mentoring junior professionals. She also built a small, but productive network that feeds her new business. A staff member at one name corporation goes out of her way to find Cleo opportunities at the company.

Last fall, as the cold hand of recession gripped her firm, Cleo asked to have much of her client work reassigned to others who were under-utilized, so that she could devote more time to finding new business. She has found it tougher going than she had expected and hasn’t generated as much revenue as she had hoped. Even so, she has increased her already substantial respect among some key partners. She thinks like one of them.

* Note: Business developers can be hugely valuable to a firm. Here I refer to a partner’s recommendation to hire one as a way to avoid revenue responsibility, himself.

A test to identify future rainmakers has be reported in several blogs (and also 2).  Here is my concern with it:

I find this test disturbing.  I have interviewed hundreds of rainmakers in the profession, written three books on rainmaking, and, along with the other members of our firm helped many hundreds of professionals learn how to bring in new matters and new clients.

The characteristics Dr. Richards has identified ring true. The test, then, may be good at identifying people who have them. But it does not look at what in our experience is the single most important determinant of rainmaking success, the desire to bring in business.  Someone with the will to succeed can learn many of the other traits. 

Take, for example, an attorney I will call Kate.  She works on media and entertainment matters for a mid-sized firm. When I met her she was a partner who had not met origination targets for several years. One reason was lack of resilience; she gave up on opportunities after one or two unreturned phone calls.  She needed and took help in developing appropriate standards for measuring success.  She learned that an unreturned phone call did not mean a lack of interest, that a client who turns you down for one matter isn’t lost forever and many other interpretations of events that built her resilience.  She now is a solid producer of new work.  A single mother, Kate was driven to succeed, even though she lacked many of the traits at first that Dr. Richards identified.

I fear that people like Kate will score poorly on such a test and be written off as unsuited to become rainmakers.  That would be an injustice to them and a loss for their firms.

Ford Harding