‘CRM’ is the abbreviation for ‘Client Relationship Management.’ Engineering and Architecture firms require special features to nurture relationships with potential and existing clients. The sales cycle within the A&E industry is long. Sometimes it takes years to foster a relationship to the point where they are ready to hire your firm to execute a project. A CRM helps you track opportunities and communicate with your potential clients at the right time, building trust, providing value, and increasing the likelihood you will land the project.
Why have a Client Relationship Management solution? Because it overcomes the inefficiencies of post-it notes, spreadsheets, and individual memory. Not having a system in place leads to missed conversations and lost opportunities. Firms that consistently and appropriately follow up with prospects are the ones that land their ideal projects.
With a CRM, all information about a potential client is in one place and available when you need it. As you converse with the candidate, you document their pains and problems and everything you learn about their situation. During the days to months-long process, everyone involved in the process (including staff, managers, and partners) will have access to the CRM, saving time and, frankly, impressing the candidate with how organized you are.
Critical Features Needed in Your CRM
Before you sign up for an all-in-one CRM system, there are a few critical features you need to be on the lookout for. We’ve outlined those below.
Marketing
Marketing is a long-term plan, and its execution requires a series of tasks. Supportive marketing activities inform and persuade potential clients about the quality of your services, your reputation, and other aspects of who you are as a firm. Common examples are:
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Your website
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Blogging
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Social media
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Public speaking
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Reviews and testimonials from clients
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eBooks
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Links in your email signature to your firm blog, social media sites, and website
Other marketing actions involve marketing “campaigns” that target specific groups. For example, say you’re an accounting firm that specializes in architectural and engineering firms. You would focus your marketing campaigns on A/E firms in your area—whether through a free webinar, a speech at an association meeting, or marketing emails. Through common marketing campaigns, you want the groups to know:
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Who you are,
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That you understand their unique pains and situations, and
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That you can alleviate their pains and improve their operations.
From your marketing campaigns, you will generate a list of candidates for your professional services. Some may be ready to discuss their situation and learn more about how you can help them. But most will not be ready. You will continue marketing to these candidates by sharing, for example, insights and expertise that’s important to them. You’ll also periodically email them and post information from your blog and eBooks on social media to keep your business at the forefront of their minds until they are ready or until they decide they will never need your services (this is called “unsubscribe”).
Of course, your strong client relationships will result in candidates too. These are called Referrals. Also, new project candidates may come through a formal “Request for Bids” process.
Business Development Lifecycle
Your business development staff, managers, and partners interact with candidates to determine whether they are ready, willing, and able to become a client. Here’s a simple flow for the lifecycle stages:
Lead > Prospect > Opportunity > Won/Lost Project
At any stage in the lifecycle, a candidate may drop out. Perhaps they aren’t able to pay for your services. Or the people most in pain cannot persuade the decision-maker to move forward yet. It might be as simple as a candidate that is not ready to accept they have a need. They require more acclimation with your company through blog posts, emails, and other content.
Below are explanations for each of the lifecycle terms and stages.
Lead
Referrals, bidding instances, and candidates resulting from marketing campaigns are called Leads. They show interest in your firm and its services. ‘Interest’ is demonstrated by the contact information they share—names, companies, phone numbers, and email addresses. How interested they are is the big question. It can range from distantly interested to very interested. Where a lead falls along the spectrum will vary by:
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The nature of your potential customers
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The types of services you offer
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Their immediate pain or problem
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Recognizing the strength of their needs
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Source of the lead
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Other factors
For example, a client referral will normally be a stronger lead than one that just attended a webinar. Your client helped you tremendously. The pain or problem is already determined. That your client recommended your firm carries enormous weight.
NOTE: It is critical to nurture your clients. Service quality is extremely important. However, do not neglect calling clients periodically and emailing them when they reach a milestone (e.g., birthdays, anniversaries, awards).
Just as a Client Relationship Management solution includes marketing capabilities, it should also include Lead Management capabilities. Using these features, you will:
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Track phone conversations and emails
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Document information from conversations and emails
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Schedule follow-ups
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Learn about their company and its pains and situations
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Provide information about your services and why your firm is best for their needs
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Prepare quotes and proposals
Over time, the characteristics will change. This is the Lead Status. Here are common lead statuses (you can create your own in a CRM):
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No Contact
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Left Message
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Contacted
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No Response
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Qualified
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Not Interested
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Dead/Lost
Most of the statuses are self-explanatory. Every lead starts as No Contact until an attempt is made to start a conversation by telephone, email, or text. Most conversations start by trying to be helpful:
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Do you have any questions?
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Can I provide them with more information?
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Was the webinar, blog post, eBook, or other content useful?
Be prepared to leave many messages and send many emails. Each contact effort should provide some bit of value. You want to emphasize that you understand their needs and have the expertise to help. Your business development process should include standard emails and voice mails.
Also, expect to never get a response from most leads. Even after making contact, many leads will go silent. Others will tell you they are Not Interested now or they will never be interested. Your firm should establish a policy for the volume of voice mails and emails that are considered appropriate over a period before changing the status to No Response, Not Interested, or Dead/Lost.
Say you make contact, and the conversations move forward. You shared information about your firm and the lead showed reasonable interest in your services. You now have a Qualified Lead or Prospect.
Prospect
When a lead is Qualified, they move to the Prospect stage. Now your business development people are smiling. Not yet ear-to-ear, but they are happy they have someone interested in talking to them. Their persistence and no-response frustration has been rewarded.
Some firms continue to have business development staff continue the conversation. They might bring in a manager and partner for special discussions. Other firms assign managers and partners to work with prospects because of their superior experience and knowledge. When insightful questions arise, if the prospect’s senior managers were not involved before, they will usually join the conversation. Having your firm’s managers and partners involved in the conversation is immensely powerful.
Whoever steers the prospect conversation needs to learn a number of critical items:
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What is the pain or problem?
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What is the pain or problem costing the prospect?
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Who feels the most pain?
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Who is the ‘internal champion’ pushing to solve the problem or relieve the pain?
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Is the need new (e.g., regulatory) or long-felt?
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Who is the decision-maker?
In short, you need to collect information to determine whether you can relieve the pain or solve the problem. Through your questions and discussion, you should help the prospect understand the seriousness of their situation and that your firm can help them. You make the pain or problem more acute.
Opportunity
When the conversation turns to specific services and your fee, the Prospect becomes an Opportunity. You will likely discuss fees and prepare a quote for the prospect. Your CRM should handle preparing a quote easily.
This opportunity does not mean you will gain a new client and/or a new project. In most situations, the probability of winning the new business is low. If the quote is rejected, you may lose the opportunity. Perhaps the prospect cannot afford your fees or are unwilling to pay. You might say the “pain” is less painful than the fee.
A rejected quote or one accepted “with hesitation” could also represent a starting point for negotiation. The conversation is not over.
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Services may be redefined.
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Your solution to the problem may be staged over time.
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You may offer a payment plan.
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You may offer a discount in exchange for a testimonial later.
As you negotiate, the fee amount and probability of winning the opportunity will change. At the right time, the prospect will request a proposal (or accept your offer of one). What is included in a proposal depends on your firm’s decisions, the nature of the groups to whom you provide professional services, and the requirements of the prospect (e.g., legal, regulatory, etc.). For example, a proposal might include:
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Firm background information
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Key managers and partner experience
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Professional accreditations and certifications
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Detailed project description
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Services to be provided
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Quote
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Contract or engagement letter with an e-signature link
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Invoice (retainer, first payment plan amount, full payment)
Won Client & Project
Ultimately, the opportunity is won when the prospect signs the contract. Typically, a new project is scheduled when the invoice is paid. Your CRM should be able to integrate with your time, billing, project management, and accounting software, making the new client and project set up automatic. You save more time.
Metrics & KPIs
For short-term as well as long-term success, you need to track all of your activities. There is always a refining process to improve everything from marketing to business development to proposals.
Some of the metrics and KPIs that will help you improve include:
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How many leads were generated by each campaign?
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What is the quantity of leads, prospects, and opportunities in the “pipeline”?
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What percentage of leads become prospects?
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What percentage of prospects become opportunities?
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What is the total value of opportunities based on the probability of being won?
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What percent of leads resulted in Won and Lost opportunities?
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How much revenue was generated from leads for each campaign?
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What was the cost of each campaign?
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What is the trend for leads generated by month?
NOTE: “Pipeline” represents the stage of all your candidates. It is typically shown as a funnel.
Streamline Pursuit Through Project Delivery with BQE CORE CRM
Tracking a contract from an initial contact through project completion can be a daunting process--one that is mostly handled between multiple software applications and maybe even some handwritten notes on your desk, information on your phone or details in your head.
Keeping this information organized is critical to using your time and efforts efficiently all the way to making sure this effort produces a profit. The process you go through to solicit and secure work deserves its fair share of streamlined tracking.
In BQE CORE, we do just that. We make sure that the process of soliciting, negotiating and securing your jobs is tracked and documented, all in one place from start to finish. This ensures you are attracting work that returns a profit for you.
To better understand how BQE CORE CRM helps you through this process, we will start from the beginning with four simple steps of setting up some default information, building our sales tools, tracking the details, closing the deal and, most importantly, making money.
Here is a breakdown of our 4 easy steps:
Step 1: Set Up Your Lists
Lead Sources: These are the common avenues your company collects the leads from. The source could be advertisements, trade shows, Internet or search engines such as Google, word-of-mouth, emails, conferences, resellers, etc. You can create a custom list of lead sources to represent how the leads and prospects were identified by your company.
Opportunity Types: When an opportunity arises, it is helpful for sales representatives or business development team members to classify or categorize the opportunity.
The opportunities can be classified or tagged as new business, existing business or migration from another business, cross-sell or up-sell, and so on.
This allows the sales agents to quickly understand what the opportunity is about and also helps in reporting by displaying a breakdown of all your open opportunities.
Opportunity Stages: You can create a list of stages for your opportunities to indicate the current status of an opportunity or to track the progress of an opportunity, e.g., whether an opportunity is ongoing, lost, won or closed.
When an opportunity arises, a sales representative or business development agent can be at various stages in the sales process. Whether it be understanding the needs of a client, negotiating a quote or closing the sale, it is important to be able to quickly understand where you are.
It also helps your company to track and forecast potential revenue and allow managers to do performance reviews of their sales agents based on the opportunities lost or won.
Follow Up Types: Follow-Up Types represent different categories that help to organize the sales follow-ups in BQE CORE CRM.
You can list your company’s common sales or business development-related tasks that are used to categorize your follow-ups.
Follow-up type can be a follow-up call, meeting, email, etc.
Campaign Types: BQE CORE CRM allows you to create a list of campaign types for your CRM to describe the different types of campaigns run by your company.
The most common types of campaigns are Email, Newsletter, Referral Program, Social Media, etc. You can create any number of campaign types and then use them in your campaigns. You can manage a global list of campaign types in BQE CORE CRM.
Campaign Status: BQE CORE CRM allows you to create a custom list of status for your campaigns that indicate the different stages of a campaign’s activity or progress.
The commonly used status can be Budgeted, Planned, Approved, Cancelled, Completed, etc. You can create any number of campaign status and then use them in your campaigns.
You can manage a global list of campaign statuses in BQE CORE CRM on the Campaign Status screen.
Step 2: Build Sales Tools for Your Sales and Marketing Managers to Use
Email Templates: Build an email template or series of templates to ensure consistent content to be shared via email with your clients. This also streamlines your emails, which is a common way we communicate with our clients.
Promotions: These are essential for an organization that uses CRM. The Promotions screen in BQE CORE CRM allows you to define promo codes that offer special discounts on your products and offerings for a limited period.
It allows them to define promotions and tie them with marketing campaigns. Create an association between sales and promotions so as to run on-demand or interval-based reports.
Campaigns: The Campaigns screen in BQE CORE CRM lets you set up marketing events and activities to reach out to existing leads and prospects, track response rates and conversion rates, calculate ROI, and so on. You can also use a list of campaign types for your CRM to describe the type of campaigns you are running, say Email, Newsletter, Referral Program, etc.
BQE CORE CRM also allows you to create a custom list of status for your CRM campaigns, such as Budgeted, Planned, Approved, Cancelled, Completed, etc.
Resource Library: As a part of the sales process, CRM users provide prospects with information that can help close the sales. In the professional services industry, these resources can include PDF portfolios, white papers, e-books, request for qualifications (RFQs), etc.
These resources can be in the form of documents, hyperlinks to files, or links to websites that feature the project you want the prospects to see. Based on the interests of the prospects, you can send them some materials from the Resource Library in BQE CORE via email.
Sales Goals: The Sales Goals screen in BQE CORE CRM allows you to set a target for your sales and then track what percentage of the sales target your sales or business development team actually achieved in a given period.
Step 3: You're Now Ready for Your Pursuits
Enter Leads: BQE CORE CRM provides a centralized system to track your leads and their progress through the sales pipeline. In CORE CRM, leads can be created from scratch or can be imported from Comma Separated Values (.csv) files.
You can also create a custom list of lead sources to represent how the leads and prospects were identified by your company. BQE CORE allows you to manage leads with details that can be used to evaluate their chances of becoming prospects.
Enter Prospects: When leads are converted or qualified as prospects, this can lead to various sales opportunities. As these opportunities are won, they lead to various projects where the earlier leads and prospects now become your clients.
In BQE CORE CRM, you can create prospects from your existing contacts or from scratch. If you have both BQE CORE and BQE CORE CRM subscription, then those prospects for whom sales are won become part of your standard client list.
Assign Opportunities (Quotes & Proposals): In BQE CORE CRM, if you have determined there are potential sales to be made for prospects, you can go ahead and create opportunities for them detailing what you are expecting them to purchase, when they might purchase and how big the purchase is going to be.
You can then create proposals to email the prospects and negotiate the sales. After the life cycle of opportunity is completed, you generally indicate a closed-won or closed-lost opportunity stage.
As these opportunities are won, they lead to various projects wherein the earlier leads and prospects now become your clients.
Track Follow-Ups, Notes, To-Dos, Documents and Emails: The Follow-Ups feature in BQE CORE CRM refers to the tasks that can be created for leads, prospects, opportunities, quotes, etc. and assigned to sales persons.
You can create follow-up notes and specify the entity the follow-up is linked to. The follow-ups can be created by you and assigned to yourself or another person. Although you can create follow-ups in various screens like Quotes, Sales Goals, etc., the Follow-Ups screen allows you to manage all of them from one place.
When you log into BQE CORE CRM, you can view these follow-ups from the screens or the Follow-Ups widget. Follow-ups can have a reminder date set on them along with a priority and to-do type. BQE CORE CRM also sends reminders about any follow-ups due today.
Step 4: Close the Contract and Start Making Money
If your proposal is accepted and it now moves on to contract, you are ready to begin tracking your client, project, time and expenses, invoices and payments.
Using BQE CORE CRM, from initial pursuit through contract completion allows you to track all your details from start to finish in one place. Data flows from one part of the app to the other, so information isn't lost, and significant time is saved from not having to set up a new project from scratch.
You will have project information for your proposals and contracts as well as the history, leading to an efficient, organized and streamlined process for tracking your project information. This allows your project managers, and firm financial team to get up to speed quickly.
A CRM is Essential to Client and Firm Success
What is most important is that your CRM should automatically provide metrics and KPIs. With access to this data, it is then up to you and your team to take the lessons learned and adjust your marketing and business development strategy to improve your results. The information should be shown in live dashboards and regular reports so you can see trends over time and identify what is working and what need improvement. For busy business development managers and firm partners, a dashboard with key information should be available so you don't have to spend much time pulling together the data from various points..
The other valuable aspect of the CORE CRM tool is that it is integrated with the rest of your Firm Management system. Projects and contacts move through your CRM and when a contract is signed can easily be converted into projects. Data flows between the systems so you can get a holistic view of your current workload, and project future resource and financial needs. An integrated CRM simplifies your operations, making it a cost effective and time saving strategy.
Ready to take your CRM insight to the next level? Watch the webinar recording on BQE CORE CRM for a step-by-step, how-to demo for winning more clients.
And request a demo to meet with a BQE expert who can give you a custom deep dive into our CRM tool and how it can help your firm improve your business development process and increase profitability.
