Golden Practices

What's In a Plan? Marketing Plan & Budget Development

It’s time to create your firm’s annual marketing budget. Hopefully, you’ve already read my “part 1” post, “Plan Your Marketing Budget.” This is in response to an "Ask Michelle" Q&A post.

I'm including several of our tools and approaches...

Start with a spreadsheet that has a couple columns on the left for your initiatives by various groupings (more on that below). Then you'll need a column for Timing and one for assigning Responsible Person.

To the right of that, I recommend columns for each quarter of the year or you can do months if you want to get that micro--and then create a "total" column to the right. These columns are where you'll include any anticipated expense in the periods you expect to pay them. Not all items will have related expenses.

Your spreadsheet might look like this:

Try having high level categories for the firm, overall (this will include initiatives you cannot tie to any specific industry or service area), and then for each Practice Area (can be industry or product/service) that you are actively building or promoting.

Within each of those categories, seek to include initiatives that address each of these approaches:

1. Existing Clients. Usually the most important area of focus yet, usually, little is allocated to this area.
2. Influential People/Referral Sources. Very important, and includes current clients.
3. New Business. Where people tend to allocate the most time and $, yet somewhat less critical than the first two.
4. Marketing Infrastructure. A potentially bottomless pit of marketing expenditures – make sure to do just the things you need to support the initiatives you’ll undertake, above. Most of this work should serve to convey your firm’s credibility, value, and personality. Remember, professional services are relationship businesses, and personality overshadows technical competence.
5. Research & Development. In order to stay relevant, you have to continually reinvent some aspect of what you do. I talked about this a lot in my post "Product and Service Improvement in Your Marketing Plan?"

The initiatives you’ll include in your plan won’t all have costs associated with them, but be sure to include them, their timing, and the responsible parties, anyway. This will help accountability. It will also help the marketing department have the "What comes off our plate if we shift gears and take on this unplanned work?" discussions that frequently arise.

It's easy to come up with lots of "bottomless pit" ideas, but where ROI is strongest is where specific clients, referral sources and new businesses are reached and impressed. If you're stumped for ideas, you might find the following helpful. Some specific items you might include in your plans are identified in my charts below.

The first one depicts some R&D type items you might undertake. These are best assigned by the firm's operational management group (for buy-in and accountability), but are best carried out by practice area teams flowing down to the individuals who are/should be in touch with the affected clients/prospects.

This second chart (also making available a PDF of this as the pic is somewhat small) shows a several initiatives that you might undertake at the practice area or individual practioner level. While your marketing department can do a lot of the prep and coordination, most results ultimately come down to what the practitioner does or does not do.

This is why it is so important to include practice group and individual "big picture to dos" in the firm's marketing plan. (Their detailed "to dos" can go into their individual marketing plans). It really doesn't matter whether you start with your firm level plan and drill tasks down to a practice group, then individual level, or whether you start with individual plans and stream those items upward to practice areas and then into the firm level plan.

Firms usually find one of these ways easier to begin than the other. It all depends on your firm.

Here is that PDF...Download firm_plans.pdf

Also, I'm happy to share a plan shell in Excel. It has a few ideas sprinkled in but is very generic. You would want to add additional sections for each of your practice areas.

Download sample_marketing_plan.xls

Note the Red items are DIRECT marketing and the Green items are INDIRECT marketing. If you want your plan to generate results, plan a lot more activity in the "direct" areas!

Happy Planning!

Plan Your Marketing Budget

Q. Just wondering if you have any articles or thoughts on best practices in establishing a marketing budget -- why do it and how? (question from a law firm marketer in Des Moines, Iowa)

A. There should always be a marketing budget...even my three-person company has one.

In fact, I just checked my expenditures and they run 3-5% of current year projected revenues--the amount we generally recommend to firms in growth mode or 'get up to speed' mode.

Maintenance mode would be 2-3%. Invest at least in maintenance of basic marketing "stuff" even if business growth isn't a long term goal. You have to consider routine attrition. If you are in a project business rather than one with on-going or recurring revenue, the amount should be greater than 2-3%.

Marketing budgets should be based on marketing plans.

If there's no plan, the budget essentially becomes the plan. (Much as when firms have no strategic plan, the compensation system "becomes" the strategic plan by driving behaviors in a particular direction.)

In a firm with a marketer but without marketing plans or budgets (and there are many such firms), I honestly have no idea what drives the marketer's job description, but I'd predict the marketer is fairly frustrated wondering from day-to-day what s/he should be doing and whether s/he is having much impact. And so are the partners. (If a partner in such a firm is reading this, your marketer needs a plan--for their sanity and yours and, oh yeah--for your firm to experience progress.)

When we work with firms, we usually combine the plan, time line, and budget into a single document. This keeps things simple. We find it is usually sufficient to break the budget down by quarter--monthly is typically more detailed than necessary for firms under 200 people.

What Goes In The Plan/Budget

I prefer to spend most marketing dollars and, more importantly, time, on things that will result in actually achieving a measurable goal:

1. More business from specific existing clients
2. Specific new clients
3. Heightened awareness and increased referrals from specific referral sources

I find most firms don't normally include these three categories in their marketing budgets with the exception of periodic canned newsletters, random sporting events, and occasional client seminars.

Instead, firms allocate the bulk of their marketing dollars to the "black hole" of marketing--a category I'll call infrastructure. This category includes such items as brochures, static websites, general advertisements, announcements, newsletters, holiday cards, press/media relations, etc.

Why?

Well, I have a few theories on that. They aren't pretty.

• these items are relatively easy
• these items can be easily delegated (require little partner time)
• these items keep the marketers busy

The problem?

While these infrastructure things can be useful, even requisite, unlike the above items that require some time and attention of practitioners (for marketers cannot market in lieu of them) none of the infrastructure items can be counted on to result in measurable ROI.

UNLESS, that is, those ads, newsletters, or non-static websites involve disseminating compelling, relevant information about specific areas of expertise to very targeted audiences.

Yep. Specialties. Practice groups. Niches. Whatever you call them. Back in the early 90s, my firm's partners learned it was good to be viewed as "famous" in an industry--so each sought to be famous for something.

Mind you, they stayed generalists in their day-to-day work, but they marketed as specialists. Now, 15 years later, they focus mostly on those specialty areas where they command premium pricing and their reputations make selling the work easy.

Now we are talking!

Niche focuses are where even the black hole of marketing can start to return value. Industry-specific goals and activities. The marketer can help with promotion and lead generation and the practitioners can be there where the rubber needs to meet the road: prospect, client and referral source interactions.

This is the basis for the marketing plan. The plan will drive the budget.

I'll post again in a few days about specific plan/budget considerations.

The main thing to remember now is that marketing budgets and plans are NEVER one-size fits all. They have to consider who you are, who your market SHOULD be, and what you are realistically able to achieve in a given period of time.

Don't spend marketing dollars foolishly, on an ad hoc basis. Make sure every expenditure is wise and part of a cohesive plan. You wouldn't get into a car and start a long trip without knowing your destination. Same thing here. Begin with your destination in mind.

Proposal Success Rate

Q. How do we know if our firm's success (win) rate with proposals is at, above, or below average? For that matter, what is the industry average for CPA firms?

A. My answer will apply philosophically to law as much as to accounting. As to a CPA industry average proposal success rate, a number like this isn't meaningful as it never compares apples to apples. There are just too many variables!

Consider different vertical markets. NFPs or governments almost always require formal proposals with most going out to bid at regular intervals. But businesses, especially the highly-desirable closely-held business market, will often close a deal over lunch or golf game and the "proposal," if it exists at all, might be a formality that accompanies the engagement letter.

If a comparison were made, I might suggest comparing a vertical market (construction, NFP, etc) to other firm's success ratios in those markets. But, I still don't think it will be very meaningful without knowing things for the compared proposals such as:

• Was the firm the incumbent?
• Was a personal relationship in existence?
• Did personal contact take place before answering an RFP?
• If so, how much contact? And what was the quality of that contact (i.e. was it private, one-on-one? In person? By telephone? At a widely attended pre-bid conference? etc)?
• How focused was the proposal on the prospect (customer-centric) versus the firm?
• Did the proposing firm demonstrate they really understood the prospect's situation and needs?
• Did the proposing firm meet the requirements of the RFP and have the experience to truly qualify for the work?
• Was the firm already widely known as dominate service provider to that industry?
• Was it a newly entered vertical market?
• Was the proposal professional-looking, user friendly and free from typos and other signs of negligence in preparation?
• Did the person presenting the proposal do a great job of demonstrating competence and trustworthiness? (or leave some seeds of doubt...?)

Any or all of these things will weigh significantly in the outcome and that is why I don't think a CPA (or law) industry comparison is worthwhile.

The best benchmark is to measure the firm against itself now and later. In the meantime, study existing processes to determine where your firm could use some improvement in the above areas!

Website Shelf-Life: How Often Should a Firm Update?

Q

Fellow consultant, Marc Rosenberg—nationally known in CPA management issues—e-mailed me this:

"A client asked me the following: 'How often should we be refreshing our web site?' How would you respond?"

A

The question actually has a multi-pronged answer...

Content

To be most effective, a website's content should be added to or changed on a very frequent basis such as weekly or at least a couple times a month.

The intent being that continually renewed content gets a site indexed frequently by the search engines. Search engines also like information tagged with more recent dates versus older dates.

If search engines catalog content with the keywords users are likely to query on, the returned results that will come up highest are those with some combination of a) the most dead-on match, b) the most recently posted information, and/or c) the most popular (highly viewed) pages that contain the words.

Design

A website's design should probably be revisited, at least a little bit, every 2 or 3 years. Design trends and technology change so fast that after about 2 to 2.5 years, sites begin looking dated. Sometimes the "dated" aspects have to do with navigation (next element to be discussed, below) but usually they are appearance-related. I was just thinking about the fact that my own site design just had its 2nd birthday and is in need of a refresher.

The good news is that it may not take much to update the look of a site if the site structure is really well-planned to begin with.

Navigation

This is where good strategy comes in. If the site structure (the way all the pages interconnect) is really logical and well-thought through (and functioning intuitively!) then the navigation can remain the same even when a redesign is needed.

This requires the site to have been built in a good program, and not programmed by someone who did it in such a way that no one else can figure out what they did! When the navigation and programming are sound and follow web development standards, then a "refresh" can be likened to changing the clothes on a manikin, or putting new siding on a home. This enables a refresh to occur easily every few years.

An important consideration in navigation is to make your site scalable which means to set it up such that there is consideration for where new service lines (your products) or new niche areas will be added. Anticipating the need to do this makes it easier to launch these new things and promote them on the web quickly without an urgent redesign of your site.

So, as with most things, a good strategy initially will allow for more smoothly changing and growing in the future.

Where Can a Marketer Get High-Level Continuing Ed?

Got a great e-mail yesterday. A request for resources.

Q

Hi Michelle! I am subscribed to your blog and read Golden Practices often. I am a marketing coordinator in [an 80 person office of a 600 person CPA firm located in 6 states]....We have a marketing director, graphic artist, copywriter, etc. in our headquarters and marketing coordinators in our major offices.

All that to ask...do you know of any good 'marketing professional services' training I can attend in 2007?

I am a member of the Association of Accounting Marketing, but my [boss thinks] their conference is a little too introductory and geared towards smaller firms...and would like me to do some research and attend at least one conference, but I can't find anything applicable, so thought you might have some ideas. Thanks for your help!

A

It's unfortunate to hear that AAM's conference seems too introductory—this is something AAM has grappled with for several years:  how to appeal to the most experienced marketers when so many new marketers continue to enter the profession. I'd not heard anyone suggest that AAM is geared for smaller firms—I'm not sure I agree—the issues seem largely the same whether small firm or large, though resources for initiatives are certainly vastly different. 

Still and all, AAM is a good conference for accounting marketers—I would just urge attendees and members to challenge the speakers and organizers more for new and deeper topics. And, if needed, topics that address the unique needs of larger firms. As a volunteer driven org (and conference) people like you can and should become organizers and establish things like a "large-firm track" at the conference. It is, after all, "your" organization. :-)

I really don't know of anything else specifically geared for accounting or even legal marketers that will truly get you to a much higher level than you receive at AAM or its legal equivalent, LMA. Some say they do, but I've not found that. What I have found is that looking outside the industry helps a lot.

It's really healthy to look outside of our "professional services" niche and explore teaching that is geared for the rest of the world, too. People, in general, become really good at "navel gazing" and benchmarking against each other which immerses us in mediocrity. We need to be climbing mountains, not staying comfortably in our valley.

(The challenge comes when bringing ideas back to the firm and convincing partners to try things that no other firm is yet doing! I've had those conversations—still have them, and they aren't usually easy. But when you succeed in making the case, it is awesome! And so are the results).

Not knowing what your particular job focuses are, your whole marketing department might enjoy "dividing and conquering" a la carte education such as the stuff below. Then maybe each of you can come back and share the "best of" with each other in a one day retreat or periodic half-day gatherings. As Stephen Covey says, we learn best when we teach what we've learned to others.

Some topic oriented education to explore might be:

• http://www.ana.net/about/  they have conferences and regional meetings all year long...it's one to watch and it's where the big boys play for branding/advertising and other external marketing initiatives
• http://www.prsa.org/ public relations
• http://www.iabc.com/ business communications
• http://www.iaf-world.org/ facilitation (skills for facilitating teams internally or focus groups, etc)
• http://www.womma.org/ word of mouth marketing
• http://www.amanet.org/ see just their marketing seminars here
• http://www.corante.com/  they have conferences later in the year. Here are last year's Innovative Marketing Conference, CMO Summit and Marketer's Forum to get an idea of what is offered
• http://www.emarketingassociation.com/2007/index.htm  e-marketing association has 2 events per year

I'm posting this on my blog so that others can expand the list with comments! Thanks for a great question...

Commenters: if you plug a conference or source of education, please keep it relevant to accounting or law firm marketing and please indicate what type of learning will be gleaned. Please no product or consulting spam. We're looking for legitimate recommendations, preferably from other marketing types.

____________________

Appended 30 Jan:

Cameron Fuller with accounting and law firm associations TIAG and TAGLaw, respectively, recommends the Marketing Partners Forum that some of their members find to be of value in addition to their own periodic marketing director fly-ins and monthly webinars or teleseminars.

A marketer wrote in to add Society for Marketing Professional Services

Debra Helwig at accounting association, IGAF Worldwide, wrote in:

I would strongly suggest they check out their firm's general association membership to see if there are resources for marketing directors. For example, we have a robust Marketing Directors Group with a strong peer network that engages in regular email exchanges, monthly conference calls, and an intense and high level annual [marketing] conference.

Most associations provide at least some level of support to their member firm marketers. What's more, most of the time these services and offerings are at least partially included in a firm's general association dues so marketing directors may have access to these resources either free or nearly free. One of the things I've observed is sometimes association benefits stay trapped at the partner level and information doesn't get to the marketing staff who may not learn of all the things that are offered. So find out who your firm's accounting association is, and if they offer marketing director support, take advantage of it!

Organizations like Debra's and Cameron's do offer continuing education for their marketers, both in person and virtually. When I was in-house, my accounting firm's association was an enormous resource for me in many ways and, to this day, I'm still close to several of those marketers and partners though many of us have changed roles, and even professions in some cases.

Thanks for writing in!

Can Consultants Have More Impact?

To my recent post entitled "The People Problem is Firms' Fault," David Maister commented that he agreed with the points but he posed to consultants the questions:

I agree these are important points and right on target. But I don't think I really understand why those of us who share your point of view, Michelle, seem to be fighting a LOSING battle. What you advocate is becoming less common, not more.

What are we doing wrong in our attempts to have a beneficial impact on the world? If what we suggest would truly help everyone, why isn't it happening? What do WE have to do differently to help make it happen other than just keep on insisting that we're right?

I answered with a comment but wanted to elaborate in this post.

As the last consultant on earth who wants a firm to invest in me for research and development of solutions and then, for whatever reason, fail to implement the solutions they participated in creating—and it breaks my heart when this happens—isn't it the responsibility of the firms, who've looked to us for guidance, to ensure implementation?

So, assuming that the scope of our engagement does not specify implementation (leaving it the firm's responsibility, overall) some of us are still very invested in the outcome. Given this level of care, how can consulting experts be more influential in inspiring firms to desire and achieve results?

These are the largest barriers I see when it comes to implementation:

1) Problems and Solutions are NOT Simple
2) Democratic Leadership
3) Complacency
4) Defensiveness
5) Infrastructure

Perhaps if consultants work with fewer firms but in more depth, the results can be far stronger than when working with more firms, but more superficially.

Problems and Solutions are NOT Simple
They are complex and entirely interrelated. Consultants and media feed "easy" solutions to one small piece of a problem at a time. This doesn't seem problematic at first, and even seems a palatable way to make incremental change.

But what this approach fails to illustrate is exactly how interrelated most problems in firms are (e.g. low interest in personal marketing is perpetuated by the belief that no one is available to "do the work" if/when the marketing succeeds—though this appears at first like a capacity problem—often the capacity DOES exist to do the work, but leveraging is the issue). While it may seem trivial to fix a leverage problem, if we can show the impact of leverage on profitability (for example), it is easier to accept this as a beneficial change. Without a clear picture of exactly why a change is needed, buy-in tends to be half-hearted at best.

Unless the leader/s of a firm are true visionaries and connect these dots themselves, or can see the forest despite the trees, then we consultants may need to do more in this area in order to have deeper impact.

Democratic Leadership
When firms are governed by democracy, multiple leaders seldom agree about making a change at all, much less about taking that commitment personally and supporting it all the way through implementation. To succeed, leaders must agree that a problem IS a problem therefore believe in a solution's need and then must trust in the appropriateness of the recommended approach to resolving it.

The firms that experience greatest success have at least one of the following:

1. one key leader that others respect and follow;
2. multiple leaders, but infrastructure for accountability (including mutual respect in order to adhere to commitments made);
3. an emotional or psychological investment in the success of implementation.

Consultants can spend more time illustrating the interrelationship of problems for clearer understanding, and then facilitating solutions that are "right" for that unique firm. And consultants could probably work more closely with the firm to create custom solutions even if it means directing them to others to solve the problems.

Complacency
Today, many of those in charge are making "enough" money and are close enough to retirement that "sticking it out" a little longer in the status quo is still an option for them. And it's an option that can be more appealing than making the sorts of significant changes we suggest.

Is the firm going to increase it's internal and external value proposition? Or not? That is the question.

Bringing in the consultant doesn't mean the desire to move forward is a given. We consultants could do a better job to always raise the question — it is an important part of the commitment to implement. Getting a solid answer is a must because choosing not to decide is always an option. As the song lyric goes, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." (Freewill, Permanent Waves, Rush, 1980). Any choice, or lack of choice, will have its consequences. Until or unless the consequences of not changing are actually painful to the current leaders, many firms simply won't.

What consultants could do more of here is to be more compelling about the benefits of improving the firm's value proposition for its people and/or its customers. When enough work is piled on their desks, partners don't care to worry much about tomorrow's dollar. When there are warm bodies populating the cubicles, they don't care to question if those are the right bodies or if those bodies will be there tomorrow.

Much like an attorney or accountant trying to convey the benefits in proactive tax or estate planning, we consultants are presently trying to communicate the price of NOT changing. And much like many people will never buy the tax or estate planning, many firms will never accept our advice to change. We consultants must accept this and focus our energies on the firms that WILL move ahead of the pack.

Defensiveness
Leaders often think when someone says things need to change that we are saying THEY broke them or that THEY somehow failed. More often than not, all we are saying is that times they are a-changin' and firms need to change, too. Consultants could be more careful to avoid putting firms on the defensive which creates a barrier that doesn't need to exist.

Infrastructure
The systems, processes, and expertise needed to apply our recommendations is not usually in place within the firm. If we don't help them to create that infrastructure, then we could be more proactive in helping the firm find the resources to build it and follow up routinely to counsel through the implementation.

Again, though it isn't always our "job" to ensure our advice is heeded, if we care to, those of us who consult can do more aid in implementation. If our personal satisfaction is in seeing firms advance, then perhaps we need to be better at our own client selection--choosing to work with firms with higher likelihood of applying our advice. Sounds a lot like our advice to the firms we serve...

Measuring Marketing Efforts

As leader of a national marketing advisory and implementation practice (Golden Marketing Inc.) I was interviewed by Association of Accounting Marketing about my thoughts on measuring marketing efforts. An excerpt of the interview was used for an article in AAM's newsletter, but here is the interview in its entirety.

What marketing programs have you chosen to measure?

Just about everything possible! As an outsourced marketer for firms, there is even more scrutiny with regard to cost/benefit for marketing dollars spent. In-house marketers face much the same pressure, though, so similar tactics can be very helpful for marketers employed within their firms.

Expectations on the part of firms can be high. (And sometimes, firms expect their marketers to market "in lieu" of the practitioners!)

But even where the marketer is in pretty full control of an initiative, it is common for marketers to over-sell the benefits of a proposed marketing initiative in order to gain the support needed to try it at all. This is dangerous but happens all the time.

Setting goals and expectations with the partners that are reasonable and realistic, and then quantifying the expected results, are critical to our company staying in business. Mastering this is just as critical to keeping ones job as an in-house marketer.

We measure specific sales/marketing campaigns (mail, phone), all practice area growth initiatives, individual coaching results, sales of ancillary services, referral source activities, surveys, etc

Other projects taken on by marketing are measured against their time line and budgetary expectations as would be expected in any corporate environment with regard to accountability by a department: Web/brochure development, timely PR activities, proposal development, procedural development, internal consulting, practice area support and leadership, and other various functions.

How do you measure results?

I've Been "Tagged" - 4 Things

Lawyer Dan Hull of What About Clients tagged me for the following "4 Things" question series that I have to answer or my retirement funds go "poof" or something equally horrid. I'm saying "sorry" now to the four bloggers I'm supposed to pass this "tag" on to.

Try not to fall asleep, I lead a pretty dull personal life!

4 jobs I've had:

• Ear piercer at Piercing Pagoda
• Waitress at Denny's across from Disneyland
• Asst manager at Ardella's Pizza
• Staff accountant at CompCare's corporate headquarters

4 movies I can watch over and over:

• A League of Their Own
• Braveheart
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Singin' in the Rain

4 TV shows I love to watch:

• Desperate Housewives
• Deadwood
• The Shield
• Ren & Stimpy (you eediots)

4 places I've been on vacation:

• Sonoma Valley
• Across the US, St Louis to CA and back by RV over 3 weeks -- awesome!
• Iran for a month (don't laugh at the bad fashion in the pic, it was 1976! Pic taken at Persepolis)
• Backpacking for a week in the High Sierras

4 tunes that play through my head:

• Augustus Gloop... (my 4 y/o watches Charlie and the Chocolate Factory several times a week, nuff said)
• You're so Vain (Carly Simon...keeps popping up on my ipod)
• Where It's At (Beck)
• Get Together (Youngbloods)

4 favorite dishes:

• Cheeseburger & chocolate milkshake
• Grandma's pot roast (a pic of Gram & me, don't have one of her pot roast)
• Thanksgiving feast
• Cheesecake, plain (I'm a purist)

4 websites I visit daily:

• Bloglines
• Typepad for Golden Practices
• My family sites on Myfamily.com
• Most of my clients' websites (puts me well over 4...)

4 books I'm reading or want to read:

• Value Pricing, 6th edition, because Baker will kill me if I don't finish it before his next book comes out (plus it's a pretty darn good book...much different from the 1st and 3rd editions I've read)
• Willa Cather: 3 Novel compilation (O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia) because Mom gave it to me for Christmas and I haven't been able to start it yet
• Founding Brothers because I love history and am related to Aaron Burr (no comments from you on that, Dan, I hear he just got a bad rap...) we share a common ancestor, his grandfather, Jonathan Edwards.
• The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block because Baker says it's excellent

4 places I'd rather be:

• Southern California visiting my family and my favorite ocean
• Puerta Vallarta basking in warm sunshine
• Curled up in a cozy chair reading a book (inspired by thinking about above books)
• Greece because I've never been

4 Bloggers I'm Tagging

• Lisa Haneberg of Management Craft
• Thom Singer of Some Assembly Required
• Bruce Allen of Marketing Catalyst
• Future blogger, Ron Baker when our VeraSage blog and new website launches Mar 31

How to Collect Info & Track Leads for Follow-Up

Q.

I feel like our firm needs a mechanism to "collect" information about all of our opportunities so that we are certain to do the appropriate follow up. What should we use?

A.

The best way to achieve this is with a customer relationship management (CRM) system because such a system will prompt you (or anyone else) to actually DO the followup item: make the call, send the letter, etc. When you go through the CRM implementation process, your firm would develop the optimal "lists" (specific to you) as to what information you want to collect and how you want to categorize it. (more on this below)

The problem, though, is that a CRM system takes big commitment from--I'd say the majority of--the firm in order to be effective. But then again, so does the effective implementation of a paper or electronic form to capture feedback. The biggest challenge of all is getting people to consistently fill out either paper forms OR enter their communication results into a CRM.

It takes a culture change.

The CRM is infinitely more powerful than a "form" because other people can access/read the info and, when it is used for customer information/interactions too (HIGHLY recommended) it enables you to dramatically escalate customer service through increased internal communication.

Capturing information on customers, I'd argue, is even more important than capturing info about leads. This is the case with one of my client firms who implemented a leading, high-end CRM program (over $120K) because "we can't afford not to" after nearly losing a $100K/yr client due to a communication glitch about what the customer expected and when.

But don't be put off by that price. A CRM, even at a low price-point such as ACT!, Maximizer, or Goldmine, can help you immensely.

Beware, however, because I find that partners and others don't often "get behind" the contact documentation process unless they spend a lot of money on it (where they have lots of skin in the game) and, even then, the key influential people in the firm have to really understand and BELIEVE the value of capturing and USING the information so they can appreciate why they are taking these extra steps. The good news is, the steps become habit pretty quickly for most. Enforcing the need to use the process is important.

The above firm actually dismissed a 40-something partner for reasons that included the fact that he wouldn't enter his activities as required. Failing to do so hampered the firm's ability to capture and meet customer expectations.

The hidden benefit of using a CRM to track activities is that marketing activity/result reports are a snap to generate without having to painfully (manually) extract information from people individually--a process subject to much unintentional omission.

The activity info outlined below *creates* your criteria for report generation and can easily be tailored to tie to your firm's individual, practice group, and/or firm level marketing plans. My experience shows this can save you (the marketing department) weeks of report creation time at the end of your tracking year, plus you can generate interim reports to see progress.

Again, though, the key is getting stuff entered. As they say, garbage in, garbage out. That's why a cultural change is paramount to success. The dozen or so CRM companies can cite hundreds of "failure to implement" stories--though most probably won't bring them up in the sales process!

Below are specific activity types and information we've tracked using both sophisticated systems and "over-the-counter" packages.

RFP Follow-Up Problem

Q. Recently, we received an RFP from someone that we are very interested in responding to. We have since tried on several occasions (5 phone calls and 2 e-mails in the past week and a half) to contact the CFO to obtain some additional information to no avail (the proposal is due next week). The RFP listed several decision makers but said all inquiries should be funneled through the CFO. The partner is ready to contact others listed in the proposal. Any ideas for how to proceed?

Kathy Lambardino, Hood & Strong LLP in San Francisco

A. Kathy, I wouldn't hesitate, at this point,  to send a very nice and tactful letter, by courier, to the CFO saying:

"We are very interested in proposing services to you however we are unable to obtain information from you--after several phone calls and e-mails--that is critical to our presenting you with a meaningful proposal. If you wish to receive a proposal from [your firm], we need to speak with you for about 15 minutes to ask three questions [or list the questions]. If we don't hear from you by [day/time], we will have to assume you don't have an interest in receiving our proposal. This would be most unfortunate because we believe our experience in [fill in] would bring tremendous value to your organization. Additionally, we would consider it a privilege to work with [company].  Kind regards..."

Delivering by courier in a big, or boldly colored (urgent looking) envelope will probably catch his/her attention and will demonstrate you will do whatever it takes, without being obnoxious, to professionally accomplish your goal.

Unfortunately, you must go only through the CFO because 1) you were instructed to do so and following instructions is critical and 2) to go around the CFO would be undermining him or her thus starting the relationship (should you get the job) off on the wrong foot.

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New Marketing Person Asks "Where Should I Begin?"

Q.  "I was recently hired as a marketing director for a public accounting firm. This firm has never had a marketing person so I'm not sure where to begin."

A.   Interviewing each member of your firm's team (every level) is a perfect first thing to do.

1) Introduce yourself and describe a little bit about the firm's marketing initiatives and your role (represent yourself as high-level as possible--avoid painting yourself as a task person or you'll find it hard to get out of that "box").

2) Obtain and review the person's bio before the meeting. If bios don't exist, look in proposal documents or ask personnel if they will share a copy of the person's resume so you can learn about them before you meet. They will be flattered and appreciative that you've taken the time to know a little about who they are. This also sets a good example because they should be doing this before meeting with a client or prospect.

3) Conduct the meeting as an interview. If you take good notes, you could use the info you learn not just to gauge the person's potential role in future marketing plans, but if you take good notes, you could also have a good draft of a new bio! (2 birds, 1 stone = bonus points)

Things to ask:

• Use the opportunity to learn what each person likes and doesn't like about their practice. This way you can help them more aggressively market what they like to do versus what they don't enjoy.
• Find out what he or she is most and least comfortable doing both socially and from a sales/communication standpoint so you can best determine where they will fit into your next step (marketing plans) and if sales or other training might be needed or wanted.
• Discuss how they would envision participating (i.e. meeting with prospects or helping behind the scenes with articles, research, etc).
• Ask them to describe what they think management expects, and to tell what leads them to those conclusions. Ask also what they believe needs to be done that may be in addition to management expectations or perhaps in contrast to it. Simply addressing this with them -- letting them know you understand there is probably a variance between the two -- will help create a sense of trust and understanding between you and the people you speak with.

I strongly recommend interviewing the staff people first, especially if you are new to the accounting industry because you can usually feel more comfortable asking them to explain things (e.g. "do you mind helping me to understand the difference between an audit and a review?"). This way you'll be better equipped for your conversations with the partners.

Take great notes and transcribe them so you can quickly review from time to time. This also allows you to search your notes for keywords so you can quickly find a fact -- for instance, you may later wonder "who was it that told me they've always wanted to do fraud work?" when a partner mentions there doesn't seem to be anybody interested in expanding into new practice areas.