Issue 23 – Winter 2009

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Practice Perspectives

Client Meeting Strategies

You may be surprised how many times your clients are telling others, “I wish my CPA would reach out just to check in with me” or “The services I receive from my CPA are fine, but I wish he/she would be more proactive with advice to help me make decisions that enhance my business.” In today’s economy, you have every reason to be proactive and identify new ways to add value for your existing clients, who may need additional services and are already familiar with your firm, people, and processes.

In this article, we will explore an approach to client meetings, surveying your clients, and also tracking any opportunities that arise to provide accountability for the goals you have set for your personal marketing plan as discussed in Leadership Lessons.

Client Meeting Surveys

As we identified in Leadership Lessons, one of the marketing activities you can do to deepen client relationships and uncover new opportunities to serve them is to meet personally with each of your clients. Conducting client meetings will enhance client satisfaction and retention for your firm, uncover immediate opportunities to serve your clients, re-fill your pipeline in a low cost manner, and create shorter sales cycles with less effort because you are opening up an opportunity to sell new services to existing clients (versus strangers to the firm). Perhaps most importantly, when you are proactive with your clients, you minimize the impact of potential competitors who are reaching into them – especially in this market!

Conducting a short survey during client meetings will position you – and your firm - as someone who cares and acts as an advisor rather than just a tactical service provider. It will give you the ability to elicit:

• Satisfaction feedback – Start your meeting by asking one or two questions about how your firm is doing as a whole to gauge satisfaction and find out how you can enhance your relationship with the client.

• Information about your client’s existing situation – Then, provided the satisfaction responses are positive, ask a few open-ended questions about their business, the challenges and issues they’re facing, what keeps them up at night, and their plans and goals for the upcoming year.

• Plans or needs for the upcoming year, potentially identifying additional service opportunities - Ask two or three questions that would uncover opportunities for specific services you would like to highlight. For instance, for your private company clients, you may ask, “Do you have multi-state tax requirements? If so, how are you currently addressing them?” and, “Does your firm have a pension plan? If so, how are you addressing your pension plan audit today?”

• Potential referrals - Finally, your clients are a great source for referrals, so be sure to ask them (assuming they are happy with your services!) for referrals during your meeting. Remember that your clients are used to the past years of “plenty,” when they may have been concerned about the time you had available to service their needs, so it is appropriate to share that you do have the capacity to accept their friends, family, or colleagues as new clients.

In general, a successful client survey will be fairly short and cover these four areas as well as any changes in contact information that may be applicable. If you don’t already have it, ask for your client’s e-mail address and find out if they are using LinkedIn or Twitter for future communications, too. Be sure to customize your client meeting surveys by client type to ensure the correct service questions are covered.

To get started on your own client survey, consider using our template found in our Marketing Toolset at www.convergencelearning.com. If there are clients you are not able to meet with personally, consider sending them an online or paper survey or holding a “check in” phone call.

Create a clear follow-up plan before the survey is deployed. It is important that each opportunity and all survey data is acted upon, including resolving any satisfaction issues that clients raise. If nothing happens as a result, neither your clients nor the firm will benefit, and your team is not likely to support the effort next time. When you compile the data from all client service owners, evaluate the overall feedback, highlight both positive and negative trends to your satisfaction questions and cross-selling opportunities, and develop action plans around your findings. Consider assigning one person to compile and review the surveys. Then they should ensure that follow up with clients who raise specific concerns or issues occurs and that contact information is updated in all the appropriate systems.  

Track Your Client Opportunities in a Pipeline

When you ask clients about additional ways you can serve them in your client meeting surveys, you are likely to uncover opportunities for new business. All new service opportunities should be entered and tracked and reported on in a sales pipeline - just as you would “new name” prospect opportunities.

Implement – or recommit to – regular pipeline meetings that include all sales opportunity owners, and identify the appropriate person to follow up with those clients who express a need. Use the pipeline meetings to work to close business that stems from your client meetings to realize a return on your investment and show your clients that you care about their business and overall success.

If you don’t have a pipeline tool, feel free to use the simple Excel grid found by clicking here. Be sure to capture the following information in your pipeline (which should be used for all opportunities, both for new and existing clients):

• The client owner, who is responsible for moving the prospect through the sales process

• Your contact’s name(s), organization if applicable, and contact information

• A brief description of each service and/or product that is needed

• The next follow up date and last follow up date for each contact

• The next follow up action

• The result or outcome

In addition, indicate the probability that each opportunity will close by using a percentage or a simple A, B, or C rating. This will help you prioritize and focus your team’s energies on those most likely to close. Record the source of each lead, which will help you track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and your client meetings, too.

You can use a pipeline tool to track your referral source and networking meetings, too. This will give you a structure of accountability to report and measure on the goals you set for your personal marketing activities as we discussed in Leadership Lessons. Consider implementing a firm-wide process for capturing all of your referral source and networking activities by having each team member update their opportunities on the pipeline and then review it with their career advisor or mentor or in your marketing or sales meetings.

Use our simple client meeting survey idea to deliver better, deeper service to your clients and a pipeline process to close more business and reach your personal marketing goals. For additional information about surveying your clients and implementing a sales pipeline process, contact Krista Remer at krista@convergencecoaching.com or (402) 891-6393. Connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/kristaremer.