PROFESSIONAL FIRMS‘ CROSS-REFERRAL CHALLENGE

The biggest challenge facing every large professional firm – lawyers, accountants, surveyors, etc – is the tantalising opportunity for the cross-referral of clients between internal teams.

I found a superb summary of this issue – and some solutions – penned by Lee Smith on the Professional Marketers‘ group of LinkedIn.  I‘ve added my own thoughts and experience to his summary.

Cross-selling is an area that most firms acknowledge as critically important, but very few ever manage to get right. Indeed, according to one survey (BTI Consulting Group‘s ‘Benchmarking Law Firm Marketing & Business Development Strategies‘), just 4% of firms rate themselves as highly effective at cross-selling, and a worrying 77% rate their firms as ineffective.
 
Where does cross-selling break down?

Where do firms go wrong? What are the things that typically get in the way of cross-selling?  All the answers seem to begin with “C”:

Compensation: A belief by individual fee earners that they will not be fairly rewarded for referrals 

Control:  A fear of relinquishing ownership of a valuable personal client relationship

Contact: Not knowing colleagues well enough or spending sufficient time with them 

Competence:  Doubting the knowledge, skills and ability of colleagues (particularly ‘unproven‘ new joiners)

Client focus: (lack of) Not thinking from the client‘s perspective or appreciating what they most value 

Cynicism:  Operating in a low trust, sceptical or suspicious environment (particularly relevant during times of change)

Cooks:  Too many (or too few) senior client contacts spoil the broth!

Chemistry:  Not selecting the right people to lead and develop the client relationship.

What are the solutions, to create a culture and climate for cross-selling?

• Hold a fun ‘speed-dating‘ session after work, or as part of your internal conference programme - where employees from different teams are tasked with meeting and learning about people from other teams.
•  Face-to-face forums, where you mix up people from different teams, service lines or practice group
•  Fact sheets (one sided, plain English) on your services (perhaps written by your graduate or new starters as part of their induction).
• Tap into your hospitality, sponsorship, sports & social and corporate responsibility activities, to bring your different teams together. Include a slot in team meetings for someone from another area of the firm to come in and talk-through what they do (short and simple elevator pitch with client benefits, highlighting stories and anecdotes used to bring to life)
  
• Review the material on your website - is there stuff you are communicating externally that could be repackaged and used internally?
•  Celebrate cross-selling wins - not just new clients
•  Is compensation getting in the way? Have a closer look at your reward strategy
•  Weave success stories into all communications - magazine, e-zine, intranet, etc.
•  Focus on your leaders - what else could they be doing to champion cross-selling and, more importantly, demonstrate the right behaviours. Can they become your chief match-makers?
•  Tap into your firm‘s competitive spirit by using quick-fire online quizzes (or perhaps a live ‘pub quiz‘) to test employee knowledge of your products, teams, etc. 
•  Run breakfast briefings or ‘lunch and learn‘ sessions, where your people can turn up to learn about products and services in return for a free lunch.
• Embrace social media as a way of connecting people.
  
• Follow the lead of Deloitte and run a ‘film festival‘ - equip employees with cheap USB cameras and encourage them to make short films about other teams.
•  Tap into you new starters - get to them, while they are fresh and ‘untainted‘ – and ensure they are given a good understanding of your services during their induction.
•  Feed the grapevine - create the right environment in your office for people to talk to each other informally – consider your own Facebook group.
•  Identify & highlight your cross-selling success stories - proactively promote your ‘star‘ partners and fee earners, capturing the secrets of their success, identifying good practice, tips and lessons learned. 
•  Get the partners out there - if you have a regional office network, get them to commit to spending a day a week/month in other offices.

At a time when professional firms are spending more on external marketing, they are wasting the cheapest route to new business – the cross-referral of clients.  The solution lies in putting as much focus on internal communications as on external marketing!