Just how well do you know your clients? Not just the standard stuff required to comply with Know Your Client (KYC) or Anti Money Laundering (AML) legislation. Could you describe your clients? Could you describe them in terms that might help you to find more clients? The answers to these questions lie at the heart of client profiling. The ability to describe an “ideal client” is at the heart of marketing best practice.
Why profile clients?
Since the computers first came within reach of professional service firms, they have been collecting client data. Early adopters within the larger accountancy and consultancy firms developed simple storage routines that allowed for the capture of basic name and address data. These early systems promised efficiency benefits by reducing the time taken to prepare documents.
As technology reached into mid-market firms, these efficiency savings became less compelling due to the lower numbers of clients. In an attempt to identify further benefits, Contact Managers offered to assist in the targeting and production of marketing materials. Thus the mailshot became a tool for the development of business relationships.
The increase in channels of communication to include fax (remember them?) email, social media and SMS has required those tools to increase their dissemination capabilities. Beyond allowing for the storage of address details, they have done little to improve the targeting.
In my opinion, today’s client profile needs a radical overhaul. Thankfully I am not alone in this belief and trends in big data and geo-location tools are supporting increasingly useful profiling.
What should be in a client profile?
Client profiling has moved beyond traditional demographic data. This data may be important in identifying target markets for products or services. Demographics can tell you who your customer is, where they reside, and whether your products are likely to be purchased by them.
Increasingly marketing needs a wider data set that includes key pointers to not just past but also future behaviours. Some of this data may already exist in other systems. Does the practice management system talk to the CRM system? Knowledge of past interactions is essential in targeting clients with relevant offers. Indeed, miss-targeting of information is cited as a major cause of dissatisfaction with professional service firms.
The client profile needs to include data that supports your outbound communications strategy. It should inform product development and feed a stream of potential up-sell and cross-sell opportunities to the fee earners and relationship managers.
Client Profiling tips and tricks.
The creation of a detailed client profile is the result of a process that incorporates elements of your top-level business strategy and tactics. It is responsive to the operational requirements of your staff and their day-to-day tasks. To propose a “one size fits all” answer in this blog is impossible. What I can do is suggest some tips and trick based on my experience of working with a number of professional services clients.
- Top of the list. Ensure that the data you hold within your client profile does not breach GDPR regulations.
- The more profile points you ask the user to enter – the less they will. Try re-using or re-purposing data collected by other systems.
- If there is a Master Data Set available, then investigate its applicability. There are numerous businesses that collect and collate information on a particular market sector.
- Remember Timely, Accurate and Relevant. Old data or data that is no longer relevant is worse than no data. If you cannot ensure it is Timely, Accurate and Relevant banish it from your CRM system.
- Ensure that profile data supports a business goal -there should be no “nice to have” data.
- For “soft data” which includes “feelings”, “satisfaction” “happiness” or other intangibles create a mechanism for recording. If you want to find out more about using data to understand client emotions, here is an article from 2019 by MyCustomer.com.
Client profiling should not be a dark art. What is often required is an education process at the very highest levels of an organisation. The leadership need to be helped to convert their intuition and experience into simple manageable profile points. Once developed these should become a part of every client transaction.
How do you profile clients? Has your client profile changed the way you do business? We are interested to hear how client profiles are being used, and the benefits you have found.
If you would like to find out more about how best to use your client data and create ideal client profiles, feel free to get in touch and we will help you in any way that we can.
