Adding Value for Key Clients Adding Value to your Firm
Added value and adding value is an often laboured and frequently discussed topic in law firms. However, invariably lawyers fail to understand (a) all the options, (b) how it can benefit them as well as clients, and (c) how to set up and manage an added value programme that lasts and isn’t prohibitively expensive.
In this article, Natalie Rodgers and Darren Francis, Directors of RTZ Upstream, explore how to do it right.
The starting point always has to be to ask your clients what they want. To some this is so blindingly obvious that it is elemental. Unfortunately, many firms don’t take this view, or, if they do, they recognise the need to engage with their clients without being able or willing to develop and implement a process to make it all work properly.
So, ask your clients what they want to see being delivered that isn’t just technical legal services – this is a good starting point as a definition added value (and can be achieved as part of a decent client listening programme).
Also, discuss with them the funding of the different added value activities they would like to see being delivered and over what period. Yes, that’s right, added value isn’t (or at least, is no longer) just “free stuff”. Provided clients recognise the benefits, we find that clients are happy to pay or share the cost of activities if they:
· add commercial value to a client’s business;
· make a client’s life easier;
· address and deal with risk of perceived risk;
· add to the happiness quotient of a client organisation and its people
The above four categories of AV are capable of spawning a massive range of individual features that can be put onto an agenda for discussion with key clients. We won’t go into what these individual features are here (but we are happy to meet with you and discuss these), we need to get onto the next step, which is to also think about delivering client AV.
Developing an Added Value programme for key clients
Who will manage and deliver the programme? Try not to fall into the “yeah, one of the partners can do this” trap. Many firms are now thinking about deploying an AV Director (or similar) as part of a wider client service team (we can get you started on this and be your ‘virtual’ AV Director if you want to try it out before committing to additional permanent cost, happy to discuss, no obs);
What will your AV programme cost? What elements will you pay for, and what elements will your clients be responsible for? If clients are to pay, how is this structured? For example, is it wrapped up in the overall cost of legal services or is it separately priced? Whatever you and your clients decide, it should be completely transparent.
Where you’re meeting this cost, how will this be communicated and reported? For example, it is worth considering an annual or even quarterly AV Report to each client to remind them of how fantastic you are and how much more proactive you are at managing the relationship with them than other firms they use;
Over what period will you deliver the programme? This is slightly rhetorical and designed to make the point that it doesn’t all have to be delivered at once. Consider what you may wish to deliver over a 3-year period and beyond. Clients tend to like this approach as it’s less overwhelming and easier to visualise what the potential benefits of the programme will be. Don’t forget, an AV programme worth having will require resource and commitment from your clients too, and they won’t want it all to happen at once.
Engaging key clients in an Added Value programme
Once you’ve scoped out a potential AV programme, then comes the exciting bit. It’s time to engage with your clients.
Engaging in the right way will be exciting for them. This means creating or reviewing a Key Client Management plan for each client. Think about the following when creating a plan (we deal with the detail of this elsewhere, but again, happy to meet you to discuss):
- Your business objectives for each client;
- Risks;
- Client markets, risks and challenges (in addition to asking your client, have you ever done a 9-box SWOT or a PESTEL analysis for each of your key clients?) - it's crucial to offer AV proposals which meet these risks and challenges;
- Relationship maps (who you know and how well – helps to create a realistic assessment of each individual relationship);
- Resource – who have you got to manage the relationship with each client…
- …and how successful have they been vs. how successful they need to be.
These are just starting points; the important thing is that they will enable you to set up your client meeting in the right way and to ask all the right questions.
Within this, a key agenda item has to be Added Value. You will already have figured out what you can deliver in terms of resource and cost. Let’s see what the client says, they may surprise you. Ask them directly – what can we do to add value to your business both now and over a longer period?.
And of course, your clients will not only tell you, but they will also be over the moon that you have asked (many, and sometimes all, of your competitors won’t have).
Build your Added Value programme into your key client plans
Having the conversation is, of course just the start. However, if you have gone about this the right way you will be able to assimilate what your client has told you into your key client plan for them. It’s worthwhile thinking about which elements you can (or must) deliver now (dovetailing with what would also suit your business to deliver now), and which elements can be pegged as medium and long term activities.
It is easy at this stage for the whole thing to fizzle out. That’s why you did your resource planning at the start, and that’s why you will have your AV Director or equivalent at the ready to drive this. Again, this is a differentiator that not many of your competitors will be doing (it takes effort that isn’t just delivering legal services which most law firms don’t do well).
Similarly, by involving your client in a collaborative project managed environment to deliver their AV, you are giving them the opportunity to shape and adjust things as they go along (and an idea of how much this stuff really costs). If you’ve picked the right clients at the start, they will love this and may even want to write about it and publish it as a case study.
Natalie Rodgers and Darren Francis
Directors, RTZ Upstream
June 2021