Cross-selling and referrer management – Expectations, Data and Focus

March 14, 2022|Kim's Blog|

It was a full house on the recent “Cross-selling and referrer management accelerator” workshop from PM Forum. There are lots of insights shared by delegates below. But I wanted to focus on cross-selling and referrer management – Expectations, Data and Focus.

Expectations and Goals

An effective cross-selling or referrer management programme needs goals and objectives. Without objectives, any activities risk being too general to be effective and the scope of any project too broad to be meaningful.

Without objectives you can’t align M&BD team or fee-earning targets so that people are accountable. Without objectives you can’t monitor progress to assess whether your activities are effective in generating the right results.

Without objectives, cross-selling and referrer management remain lofty ideals that no one addresses in a structured way.

Only 6% of the delegates said they had clear goals (and ROI measures) for their referrer management plans. So the starting point for many firms will be to articulate their expectations into goals. That way you can achieve the buy-in and resources to any programme you develop – as senior management and stakeholders will know what they might receive in return.

Data

In order to set goals and targets you need base line data on what has happened in the past and what is currently happening. And herein lies a major challenge – too many firms do not have sufficient or accurate information either about levels of cross-selling or about inbound or outbound referrals.

The delegate polls revealed that 53% felt their information systems for supporting referrals management were poor and 18% said they were non-existent. 27% stated that the lack of information was the biggest barrier to cross selling.

So whilst professional service firms have invested in CRM systems to keep track of client information and martech to automate many of the client lifecycle and communications activities, there appears to be a lack of investment in information systems to track internal cross-selling and external referrals.

And until this is done it is hard to set goals – whether for firm or team plans or for the performance of individuals. And if you can’t set measurable targets for individual fee-earners, then it is hard to develop recognition and reward systems to encourage and motivate referral behaviour. Nearly a third (27%) of delegates said that the lack of reward or incentive was a barrier to cross-selling.

Focus

The delegate polls show 41% don’t have a cross-selling or referrer plan and 35% only have plans for key referrers. Furthermore, only 6% said they had a plan that was good.

So. Once you have acquired the relevant data and set some goals the next challenge is to focus.

Look at the goals. Decide how best you can achieve them – generate options. Then select those strategies that are most likely to do so effectively and efficiently.

Strategy is about making a choice. Which services do you most want to cross-sell? On which internal audiences or external markets will you concentrate? Which referrer relationships do you most want to develop? Which key relationships do you most want to grow? Which messages do you need to promote? Do you want everyone in the firm to cross-sell or appoint a special task force?

It is more likely you will be effective if you select a few key activities – and do them well – than trying to do a wide variety of things that simply spread the effort too thinly.

While talking about focus, it also struck me that whilst firms were great at promoting their brand values and overall positioning often these messages were insufficient for referral purposes. You need to focus on the people you are talking to for referrals. And provide messages that make it easy for them to remember the types of client and/or types of situation you can help with. Remember the power of three (see a short video on the power of three) e.g.

Consultants who help businesses reduce risk by doing the necessary due diligence before making an acquisition or merger
Patent attorneys who help those in the cosmetics sector protect and harness their investment in innovation
Accountants who are best placed to help medium-sized charities and not-for-profit organisations with their financial management and taxation
Lawyers who understand the impact of future trends on the real estate sector and help property companies prepare (BTW I really like Mills & Reeves interactive map with links to trend information about the real estate sector Forward looking and insightful legal content from our leading legal experts (mills-reeve.com)

There were two other points I thought worth mentioning:

Back to the office As we return to the office there is a window of opportunity to harness the internal social interactions that we have been starved of during lockdown to re-ignite cross-selling programmes. Informal internal interactions are vital both to help teams understand what each other can do for their clients and build trust between them.

Training Once we have gathered data, set goals and built a plan we need to invest in training to make things happen. Whether this is internal product knowledge training so people know how to talk about the firm’s services or skills training to provide the confidence for fee-earners to initiate and convert cross-selling and referral conversations.

Delegate ideas and suggestions

The following ideas were suggested by delegates

Programme elements for cross-selling projects

Case studies – share good news stories of wins from teams
Have informal/non-project related conversations on clients’ wider work, projects and mid/long term goals to identify any gaps or opportunities we can plug and align with
Get to know your client as an individual, maybe invite them on a day out event, the races etc – ask about their family, information that is shared acts as an indicator to services you may be able to offer them or their family
Identify a current and pressing challenge for a client which we can help with (through LinkedIn interactions or business information reports) and reach out to the key client relationship partner offering our help
Build relationships with wider team not just the main contact / decision-makers – this provides great insight on what else is on the agenda
We created a business area ‘Playbook’ highlighting top challenges and questions they should be looking out for from clients as well as listing the key people within the business to target
Google Alerts is good for monitoring key organisations you might want to target
Following company pages on LinkedIn…
Ask ‘How else can we help?’ post transaction

Programme elements for referrer management

Joint roundtables and events
Collaborative thought leadership programmes
Case studies
Social media – especially LinkedIn (sharing content)
Joint webinars to showcase knowledge and expertise
Networking
Analyse changes in (and threats to) referrer relationships
Organise internal meetings to collate all the information about a referrer relationship and then brainstorm potential activities
Ask for an introduction to a colleague of theirs
Consider the blind spots we have with some referrers

Challenges to cross-selling and referrals

Obtaining good data
Chargeable time targets limiting resources for referrals
Fee-earners lacking the breadth of relationships at the client
Fee-earners being reluctant to discuss services outside their area of expertise
Struggle to get testimonials from lawyers from their clients
Keeping track and following up referrer conversations
Not tracked or measured and so no accountability
Lack of confidence
Not enough granular detail
Lack of time to investigate the issues that are keeping clients up at night, to not knowing who in the firm can help with this
Agree on tracking / measuring. If it’s not measured it isn’t usually a priority.
Brand ambassadors and cross-selling team has ended up another silo of activity

Delegate key takeaways and actions

Write down your goals/objectives to make them more achievable
Establish a clear buy-in for the programme with senior management and other stakeholders
Build referrer profiles to understand existing and target referrer organisations and relationships
Relationship mapping on a deeper level
The Godfather story – The people closest to the relationship are often in a tricky position to actually ask what more can be done for them (it’s true that stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered!)
Consider motivation of individuals to refer (what’s in it for me, cultural issues, rewards and incentives)
More segmentation needed for our referrers
Create a cross selling HIT team with clear targets
Hot desking to promote proximity marketing
Structured approach to tracking referrals in and out of the firm (across teams)
Targeting, objectives, measurement and reviews, incentives and “Thank you”

Actions:

Obtain a list of the current referrers (immediate) and create heat maps (medium term)
Map out existing referrers and collect data on inbound and outbound referrals
Create relationship maps for referrers and address any blind spots
Conduct a cross selling matrix of our top clients to see our most used services
Already working within a CX programme on account planning – measuring and reporting on service gaps is an immediate action that we haven’t got planned
Grade referrers, identify hot spots, develop referrer profiles, create face-to-face opportunities
Create better internal conversations with fee earners on their referrer relationships
Produce referrer profiling briefing sheets for four target accountancy firms

Thanks to delegate contributions, I added the following research agencies to those previously recommended (for the full list of research agencies)

Feedback surveys | Business insights | PDW Group

Customer Feedback: What to Collect and When | Qualtrics