Referrer Management Strategies – Planning for the firm, teams

August 2, 2024|Accountants, Kim's Blog, Lawyers, Marketing, Relationship Management, Strategy|

At the recent “Developing more work from referrers and intermediaries” MBL workshop Kim Tasso – MBL Seminars, delegates from legal, accountancy and financial firms tackled the different levels of planning required to design and implement effective referrer management strategies. Referrer Management Strategies – Planning for the firm, teams and individuals.

To develop an effective referrer and intermediary strategy and plan, you need to operate at three different levels: for the firm, for specific teams and for individual fee-earners. And these, of course, need to align and integrate. The choice of a top down or bottom up is considered here: Be more strategic: Top-down or bottom-up, marketing (kimtasso.com)

Firm-wide referrer management

Culture

The likelihood of people generating cross-referrals and referrals will depend on the culture of the firm. In some firms, fee-earners are directed to concentrate on client service and fee-earning work whilst in other firms everyone is expected to contribute to business development activity.

The organisational structure can also get in the way. If teams are isolated in silos they will have insufficient knowledge, trust and contact with those in other teams so they are unlikely to collaborate for referrals.

Undertake research (employee engagement and staff surveys) to assess what organisational, structural and visibility issues may get in the way of a healthy referral culture.

Cultivate a cross-selling culture (kimtasso.com)

Analysis

Start with analysing the current position in terms of the referrals currently received across the practice and the level of cross-selling between departments.

Several of the delegates reported they had inadequate CRM and referral management information systems so were a little hampered in their analysis.

Cross-selling and referrer management – Data, focus (kimtasso.com)

Referrer management – Grading, Research, Discipline, Storytelling (kimtasso.com)

Goals

The firm needs to decide on its goals – what it hopes to achieve with external referral management and cross-selling. These goals need to be SMART so that you can calculate how much you are prepared to invest (in both cash and time terms) in order to achieve them. This will be important in justifying your programmes and gaining buy-in and support for your proposals.

One delegate commented: “I really liked the discussion around types of goals (sales led, client care led, operational etc) – it guides our overall goals and not only lead generation ones”

Referrer Management Strategies – Rationale and Challenges (kimtasso.com)

Strategy

We looked at lots of strategy alternatives to increase cross-selling and external referrals.

Strategy is about choice. It means that you have to evaluate the various options and select the one that is most likely to be most effective and efficient. Too many referrer management programmes fail as they try to achieve too much. They spread and dilute attention and effort rather than direct it. It’s better to be focused and achieve results in a small, specific area than launch a grand plan that isn’t implemented.

Some firms will have a sector-based go-to-market approach and key referrers and targets might be identified through these.

Information and infrastructure

Effective referrer relationship management programmes are reliant on data. So the firm’s CRM and other information systems need to provide information about referrals into and out of the firm so that progress can be monitored and results measured.

Improving data can be a major project for the firm’s marketing and technology teams to address. Then there is the need to ensure that everyone knows what data to enter and when. This is particularly important for managing regular mailings and event invitations to keep the firm on the referrers’ radars.

Proactive marketing and business development executives – CRM (kimtasso.com)

Marketing technology system review – Clean contact data with Cirrom (kimtasso.com)

Some firms will build detailed profiles of the most important referrers so that everyone who comes in contact with them knows key details about the organisation and individuals and the past relationship and joint marketing activities. These may be extended into key referrer plans as part of the firm’s Key Account Management (KAM) system.

The firm may also have client listening programmes. And these can be extended to explore and capture the views of referrers and intermediaries so that you know how your firm is perceived and what your competitors are doing. There are some examples of firms including referrer research in various case studies posts (e.g. Case studies: Marketing and Business Development at law (kimtasso.com))

Referrer communications

Most firms will generate a lot of content within the marketing and business development department that can be circulated to external stakeholders. Some firms may have dedicated content management plans to consider the needs of different referrer segments. Whilst others may tailor general content to make it more suitable for fee-earners to share with their referrers.

Training and coaching

The learning and development (L&D) team will work with the marketing and business development (MBD) team to identify the competencies needed by fee-earners in their referrer management relationship development.

We spent some time at the session talking about interpersonal skills, sales and selling skills and also confidence. Fee-earners may also value some coaching support to help them identify, target, connect with and nurture their referrer relationships.

Selling challenges in professional services (kimtasso.com)

Why are questions so important? (Questioning skills) (kimtasso.com)

Active Listening (Video) (kimtasso.com)

Boost business development success with coaching (kimtasso.com)

Incentives

Many property firms and some other professional services firms operate reward schemes to encourage their people to generate cross-referrals and external referrals into other teams. For low value referrals, there might be gift vouchers. And for more substantial referrals there may be a percentage awards (this varies from 5% to 15% in firms).

International networks and international referrals

Where firms are members of international networks, they will need to have dedicated programmes to ensure that international referrals flow to and from the firm. Most networks will organise annual global and regional conferences and other events on a national scale more frequently.

Most marketing and business development teams will have dedicated activity and communications programmes to remind everyone in the firm of the opportunities available where strong international relationships are established. There will also be tasks in deciding which fee-earners from each department will attend international events.

referrer management – highlights from London and Amsterdam (kimtasso.com)

Consistency

Firms monitor client satisfaction with different services at the firm. You need to keep an eye on where there are service inconsistencies as this can deter people from cross-selling between departments. There needs to be an eye on consistency of pricing as well – people may be reluctant to refer their clients to other teams if they think the pricing in other terms will cause client resistance.

Team referrer management

As we saw in the session, there may be significant variation between departments in terms of their reliance on and effectiveness at generating referrals.

Some teams will be more reliant on referrals than others. For example, transactional teams (e.g. corporate finance, insolvency, litigation) will generate the lion’s share of their work from referrals. Whereas others that already have long term relationships with clients (e.g. private client, employment) are more likely to regard referral management as periphery to their needs. However, such teams may be more interested in internal referrals from other departments (cross-selling).

Referrer Management – Capacity and Capability (kimtasso.com)

Targeting referrers

Each team is likely to have a variety of existing, target and potential referrers. This may be even more complex if the team provides many different services to different client groups. So it is important that the team agrees targeting criteria and grades referrers according to priorities. We looked at a variety of tools to help with this including the loyalty ladder.

We also touched on the need to consider where referrer relationships have been nurtured for a long period of time yet have not generated any referrals. There are various techniques for converting continuances into progressions.

Sales Targeting Toolbox for Professional Services Firms (kimtasso.com)

Referrer and Intermediary Management – Silos, Targets and Culture (kimtasso.com)

Internal cross-selling process

A starting point will be for the team to ensure that everyone in the firm is aware of the services and benefits they provide. They will also need to ensure that all members of the team are aware of the services provided by other teams. So internal communication will be important.

Activities here might include: updating the intranet regularly, sending out regular internal alerts about services, running short internal campaigns, providing “lunch and learn” sessions and sharing compelling case studies and client success stories.

Some teams identify individuals to regularly attend meetings at other departments to wave the flag, learn more about what that team does (so referrals can be made to them) and to identify specific opportunities to cross-sell.

Some teams may be net recipients of cross-selling and others may be net providers. So addressing motivation will be important for those who are primarily involved in referring to other teams.

Referrals – The role of internal communications (kimtasso.com)

Book review: Influential Internal Communication by Jenni Field (kimtasso.com)

Referrer watch lists and coffee plans

Having identified both existing and targeted referrers, you can establish a priority list. You can share information about those key referrers amongst the team. And monitor developments at those referrers with “watch lists”.

You can organise events and social activities so that you are touching base with them on a regular basis. Some firms have “coffee plans” – to indicate who should be seeing who and when. And some firms organise regular, small events where fee-earners can invite their referrers along as well as other guests.

Key events

The team is likely to have key events in its calendar – for example, annual conferences, quarterly seminars or webinars and monthly eshots. With a team approach you can ensure that everyone is briefed in advance of those events, that the team has suitable representation at them (you might establish a team rota for attendance) and that you have a timely debriefing session to ensure that the appropriate follow up action is pursued.

Allocate referrer responsibilities across the team

To spread the load of business development activities, you might allocate roles and responsibilities across the team. This approach has a number of advantages:

You need a plan and a campaign timetable to co-ordinate and keep track of activities
Your efforts are focused on agreed team priorities
Fee-earners can play to their strengths (e.g. some focusing on social media content development and online awareness and others presenting at local events)
Fee-earners can work flexibly (e.g. some prefer daytime to evening networking events)
Those responsible for key referrers can co-ordinate activity across the team
You can measure progress across the team and a number of activities rather than for each individual
It builds team relationships and collaboration

Individual fee-earner referrer management

Each fee-earner will need to assess and plan how much time they devote to internal cross-selling and external referral and intermediary management. And their plans should take into account the firm and the team’s strategy.

Assessments to play to their strengths

You should adapt the specific referrer management activities to each fee-earner depending on their needs, personal strengths and preferences. This may mean that you need to help fee-earners undertake some assessments.

We spent some time considering the different personalities of fee-earners and how important it was to match their chemistry with different referrers. We also saw how emotional intelligence is an indicator of the likelihood of fee-earners being adept at relationship management.

What is emotional intelligence and why is it important? (kimtasso.com)

Referrers in personal business development plans

Integrate referrer management into an integrated marketing and business development plan for each fee-earner. This means that the needs of the individual fee-earner are reflected in their personal business development plan.

Younger fee-earners may need to concentrate their time in establishing their personal brand and building their networks and/or supporting more senior fee-earners managing large or key referrers.

How to create and promote your personal brand – Kim Tasso

Book review – Great networking by Alisa Grafton (kimtasso.com)

More senior and experienced fee-earners are likely to have long-established referrer relationships so the focus may be on assessing and prioritising existing relationships and targeting new relationships. However, they may also play a key role in allowing younger fee-earners to shadow them at events so that they can forge peer-level relationships. KAM Basics – Bowties and Diamonds (kimtasso.com)

All fee-earners may need some help in understanding how best to manage inbound and outbound cross-selling referrals A personal approach to cross-selling – outbound and inbound internal referrals (kimtasso.com)

Equipped with stories

Fee-earners need to know the key messages to convey about the firm, their team and themselves. We explored how communication was most persuasive and more memorable when it involved stories. So fee-earners might need some help in developing great stories that they can share with the referrers they meet.

Video – The art of storytelling – Kim Tasso explains

selling legal services with storytelling (kimtasso.com)

Rainmaking best practice

You should be aware of the latest research on the most effective rainmaking strategies. These generally point to strong internal collaboration and cross-selling as well as dedicating regular time to business development

Rainmaking best practice in professional services firms (Selling) (kimtasso.com)

This article shows how the firm, team and individual approach can be applied overall to marketing (including referrer management) the private client department A three-tier approach to private client marketing (kimtasso.com)

Delegate poll results and key takeaways

Feedback and poll results are provided as a supplementary learning resource for delegates who attended the session.

Delegate aims (at the start of the session)

Learn how to increase leads from referrers and intermediaries
Need to establish new contact base and workstreams as new to the team
Obtain ideas on cold reach outs to potential new referrers
Learn skills to support lawyers in their business development and referrals
Make selling more palatable to fee-earners
Identify key referrers
Develop a referrer strategy
Consider how to add value to referrers
Leverage existing referrer and intermediary relationships
Generate more referrals

Delegate takeaways and actions (at the end of the session)

We have a massive opportunity to increase work flow
Importance of identifying the different personality types
We aren’t alone in the challenges
I need more data for my referrers
Increase touch points as lawyers seem to think 2-4 is enough
More confident that if I develop a strategy and work to the plan I will achieve results
Conduct research, create strategy and implement plan using one team as a test to prove the concept
Identify targeting criteria through analysis
Reduce risk by developing awareness, touchpoints and relationships
Develop my BD plan with so many action points
Work on our stories
Look into KAM for referrers
Change CRM to monitor KPIs
Look at the current referrer process firm-wide
Identify some best-practice fee-earners to work with

Delegate poll results

Your role

43% Delivering services to clients (fee-earning)
57% Marketing, business development and selling

Your sector

71% Legal
14% Accountancy
14% Financial services

Which topic is of most interest?

63% Psychology of selling
25% Strategy and planning
13% Cross-selling to existing clients

Amount of work generated by internal and external referrals?

43% 20% – 50% of our work
29% 50% – 80% of our work
29% Over 80% of our work

Main CRM used:

38% Something else
25% Don’t have a CRM
13% Microsoft Dynamics/Maximizer
13% Salesforce
13% HubSpot

Our systems and information for referral management are:

50% Average
50% Inadequate

Main reasons cross-selling doesn’t work well:

86% We are in silos
43% Everyone too busy/no time
29% Lack of information about other services
29% No incentive

Activities most effective for building relationships with referrers?

50% Zoom/Teams meetings
17% Social media
17% Webinars
17% Online networking/socials

Use of social media in referrer relationship management?

100% Connecting after meeting
80% Liking and sharing their content
60% Approaching referrers in LinkedIn groups
60% Research
60% Sharing our content
40% Endorsements and recommendations
40% Sharing joint content
20% Monitoring accounts

How do you feel about selling?

33% Neither uncomfortable or comfortable
17% Comfortable
50% Very comfortable

How much time do you spend selling?

40% 10% – 49% of my time
20% About 50% of my time
20% 50% – 80% of my time
20% Almost 100% of my time

How well do you understand the psychology of business relationships?

50% Not well
50% OK

What is your personality type? Adapting to dog, cat and bear personalities – Better business relationships (kimtasso.com)

83% Dog
17% Bear

Do you have a Key Account Management (KAM) programme at your firm? Key Account Management (KAM) programme (kimtasso.com)

20% No
20% Yes, but it isn’t working very well
60% Yes, some teams work well with it

Thanks to the delegates for their great feedback on the session

“Really enjoyed that last session – lots of food for thought”
“Thank you very much, lovely to meet everyone”
“Thank you very much Kim – a very enjoyable and informative day!”
“Fantastic delivery, materials and additional supporting information from Kim. Really enjoyed”
“Kim was extremely knowledgeable and led an interesting and engaging session! I would recommend one of her sessions in a heartbeat, a very enjoyable day”