This document discusses the importance of client relationship management for professional services firms. It notes that relationships are fundamental as firms are selling their people and expertise rather than products. An effective client management program moves the relationship beyond individual projects to a collaborative partnership that adds value. The key aspects of building trust with clients are credibility, reliability, intimacy, and having appropriately motivated goals. Managing client relationships requires coordinating teams, strong foundations across organizations, and talent retention. An effective program includes account selection, dedicated teams, action plans, feedback mechanisms, and performance monitoring. Challenges can include maintaining momentum, demonstrating benefits to clients, training professionals, coordinating globally, and gaining internal buy-in.

1. CLIENT RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT
FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS

2. RELATIONSHIPS
• Professional firms are about people. There is no product, so we
are selling our people and their expertise or the service they
offer. We are selling our intellectual property to people within
our client organizations, and therefore relationships are of
fundamental importance.
• The challenge is to deliver a benefit to your organization and to
the client, often described as ‘win–win’, through the investment
in a client management.

3. RELATIONSHIPS
• Move from being a provider of
services to having a
partnership with a client where
you are working
collaboratively, adding value to
the client’s business, not just
an individual project, and
getting work without having to
compete or bid.
• Remember, however, that the
relationship will always be
commercial, so customer
satisfaction remains vital.

4. CHIEF ASPECTS OF TRUST
• Credibility is about being credible on a subject area.
• Reliability has to do with being dependable on delivery.
• Intimacy refers to giving confidence that a client will be safe
with you, eg you will not confidentiality or embarrass the
client.
• Self-orientation refers to how ‘selfish’ your motives are.

5. HOW CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS WORK
• The relationship is never just on two people
who lead each side of the relationship.
• Teams need to be well connected and each
individual relationship well managed.
• The relationship is built on firm foundations
and is strong across all aspects of the client
and supplier teams.
• Client management has to be paired with good
people management and talent retention.
• Account managers should be your ‘stars’ and
should be people whom your firm wants to
nurture and to keep.

6. DESIGN FOR A CLIENT RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT

7. ACCOUNT SELECTION
• Targets and KPIs need to be agreed for each account on the
programme.
• These should reflect the overall objective of the programme, but
there may also be some client-specific KPIs that are appropriate.
• As always, these need to be SMART (specific, measurable,
achievable, realistic and time-bound). Buy-in from the executive
team should be sought.

8. ACCOUNT TEAM
• It is vital to the success of an account that the right account lead is
appointed.
• The success or failure of client accounts tends to reflect the suitability of
account leads, around either their relationship with the client or their
ability to manage clients.
• A clear role description is required. It is also good practice to support the
account leader, who is usually a partner or director, with a ‘driver’, who is
typically someone at associate or manager level. It is this person’s job to
ensure that actions are completed and momentum maintained.

9. ACCOUNT PLAN
• A client plan should be approached in the same way as a good strategic plan, backed
up with thorough research and used on an ongoing basis.
• Clients can be managed through their plans with no need to produce any other notes or
information – it should all be in the plan.
• The plan should be user-friendly and all the team must have access to it. For some
parts of your programme, ‘light plans’ may be suitable. These should be in the same
format as the full plan but with less information, usually more implementation focused.
• This is suitable for clients who are not complex or perhaps are not likely to require the
time and resource but who still need a managed approach.

10. MEETINGS AND MOMENTUM
• It is important to have structure in order to maintain
momentum.
• Either weekly or monthly client team meetings work well, with
set agendas focused around the action plan, the pipeline and
the relationship.
• This will ensure that actions are carried out and next steps
identified.

11. ACCOUNT PERFORMANCE
MEASUREMENT
• Monthly or quarterly reporting to the board or management
team keeps the leaders of the business appraised of
progress and any issues that have arisen that you may need
help with.
• Quarterly reviews with the account lead and team are also
required to monitor overall progress with individual accounts.
• Adjustments to the programme may be required.

12. CLIENT FEEDBACK
• It is an essential part of the programme.
• Many firms fall back on online feedback either on individual transactions and
projects or on the overall relationship, for example the Net Promoter Score.
• This type of feedback is good and essential, but the really valuable feedback is
the face-to-face type that is undertaken by either a senior marketer or an
independent reviewer with two or three senior decision-makers from the client.
• This gives you some real insight into performance to date, but also a better
understanding of what the client is looking for in the future.

13. AREAS TO MONITOR
• Revenue
• Profit margin
• Work in progress
• Wins
• Pipeline
• Cross-selling
• Key performance indicators (KPIs) for the overall programme that should be monitored on a
regular basis

14. ISSUES AND
CHALLENGES

15. MAINTAINING MOMENTUM
• Most teams set off enthusiastically but then get on with the day job and
momentum can be lost. Having buy-in at the top level in the firm, with good
account leads and good drivers, should ensure that this does not happen.
• In addition, success will motivate the teams, so if the right clients have been
selected (where there is a realistic chance of success) and there are
opportunities to follow up on and regular wins, the team will be enthused to
achieve more.
• Other things that can maintain pace are wider communications, such as award
schemes for account managers and teams or reporting internally on successes
and good behaviours.

16. BENEFIT TO CLIENTS
• A good programme should benefit both the organization and the client. The best
programmes include the client in the planning process, the actions and the feedback. Ideally
the client should know that it is included on the programme, should have input to the plan
and should influence the way the account progresses.
• If the aim is to achieve a closer partnership with the client, open conversations and joint
involvement in the plan are the right way forward. Many clients operate their own
programmes and are therefore very familiar with the concept; indeed, many larger clients
now positively ask for a ‘partnering’ approach.
• Marketing and business development professionals can play a role in encouraging partners
and directors to be more open with their clients. The best way to achieve this is to have direct
contact with the client, initiate conversations and ask questions around areas that partners
and directors may find difficult.

17. TRAINING AND COACHING
• During their professional training, professionals are rarely trained to
sell or to manage and develop client relationships.
• It is not surprising that they often find this part of their role very
challenging.
• Training and coaching are essential elements of the marketing and
business development role. They can be delivered either by the
team or through outside organizations and should encompass
building relationships, managing accounts, sales skills development
and winning bids.

18. GLOBAL VS LOCAL
• Executive sponsorship is imperative to encourage the right internal behaviours but alignment to strategy is also
crucial; this could mean having to tell a client that you cannot help them in a particular country, or revising the
strategy to accommodate a specific client. Finding resources to deliver across the globe in places where you may
not have them and delivering globally in a consistent way are both challenges that take up the time of the account
team.
• Open and honest conversations with clients about what you can deliver, and where, help to overcome any issues.
Clients appreciate honesty and do not expect an organization to be able to deliver everything everywhere.
• Working with local clients can be more straightforward. The client is in one geographical area, there are no
cultural issues, it is much easier to engage with the client on a regular basis and the team is all in one
geographical area, usually working within the same profit centre.
• There are usually fewer delivery issues and therefore progress can be faster. In all cases, IT systems can assist
with sharing information and with communication. CRM systems, internal chat sites and file-share systems all add
to communication across global and local teams, but can be particularly useful for global accounts.

19. LACK OF BUY-IN AND ‘WE DO THIS
ANYWAY, DON’T WE’• Many partners or directors believe that they have, and indeed often do have, good
relationships with their clients and cannot see the need to have a formal approach.
For those clients who fit the criteria, there is always more that can be done to
improve the overall relationship, to widen it, develop more business and bring
more value to the client.
• Building the internal relationship with the client lead and supporting them is
imperative to gain their trust to allow you to help with the client.
• Executive buy-in is crucial to get a programme up, running and maintaining
momentum. If the board and management team are not totally and proactively
supportive of the programme, it will fail.

20. By Charles Nixon 2014
Adapter from The
Importance of Client
Relationship
Management