Reason #6:
Your office has neither recorded client/prospect information consistently nor documented client/prospect interactions sufficiently. As a result, information retrieval is difficult and time-consuming (when it is even possible) and there are knowledge gaps due to variances in how staff members store or track data.
Redtail CRM provides your office with one centralized location to house your organization’s institutional memory. Institutional memory is generally defined as “a collective set of facts, concepts, experiences and know-how held by a group of people.” Contrary to this definition however, much of what makes up institutional memory in many offices is often housed at an individual level, and thus creates a dangerous state if the entire team doesn’t have access to it.
I don’t need to know everything, I just need to know where to find it, when I need it. ~Albert Einstein
With Redtail CRM in place, you and your staff can take detailed notes, document all interactions, and record all information learned about your clients and prospects. Much of this you’ll do for compliance purposes, but it is also invaluable in terms of remembering aspects of your clients’ lives in order that you might streamline your interaction preparation, engage in data-driven marketing, and strengthen your relationships and build trust through personalization. Whether these business-building activities come in the form of one-on-one interactions referencing back to a specific individualized piece of data or through marketing campaigns based upon client segmentation around shared data points, the more informed you are about your clients, the better.
STREAMLINE INTERACTION PREP
Redtail CRM can play a crucial role in helping you prepare for client meetings. It’s important to remember that it’s not always about numbers – many of your clients are looking for someone they can talk to easily and openly about very private aspects of their lives. When they meet with you to discuss financial matters, it’s not necessarily numbers that drive them to you – it’s what those numbers mean for the comfort and security of their families and futures. How can Redtail assist you in prepping for these meetings?
Establishing and effectively maintaining a CRM system is one of the most important steps you can take toward putting your clients’ interests front and center for your firm. When you consider that multiple studies on client retention suggest that improving your retention rates by five percent can improve your profits by anywhere from 25-95 percent, the importance of putting your clients’ interests front and center comes into sharper focus.
When everyone in your office is using Redtail CRM to its potential, everyone can see exactly where other office members left off with a client. When your data is maintained and up-to-date, you always have immediate access to the client information you need at your fingertips. Redtail can be the first place you look when a client reaches out or when you are about to reach out to them; this will give you a quick overview of where you are with the client and whether or not anyone in your firm is waiting on anything specific from the client. This also allows you to personalize the call in a number of different ways when you have easy access to both immediate needs and historical interactions.
DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING
As the channels for client communication expand, the opportunity for you to carefully craft your message for specific audiences has grown as well. You may not be able to be all things to all people but you can certainly represent portfolio management expertise for some clients while serving as an estate or tax planning guru for others. To know what each of your clients might need or be interested in though, you must have a system in place that allows you to both track everything you know about them and to easily segment and report on this data. This is one of the important capabilities that Redtail CRM provides.
Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves. ~Steve Jobs
Segmenting your clients based on any number of different factors allows you to easily tailor your marketing and service efforts in a manner that will help you to achieve the greatest return on your investment. As an example, you probably wouldn’t want to target single clients in their 20s or 30s when sending out a client communication about 529 plans. New parents or grandparents though? Smart, data-driven marketing means spending your money on marketing efforts that are likely to pay off, whether in the form of client upselling/retention and/or client acquisition.
Similarly, it’s important to remember the famous 80-20 rule, i.e., 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. By segmenting your clients into Tag Groups or Quicklists based upon data that makes clear the value they bring to your firm, you can move toward processes that ensure you are spending more time with that 20% of your client base that is actually driving your business rather than the 80% that is not. This, in turn, can give you some insight into which clients you should most actively be working for referrals as well as helping you to retain those A and B clients who might otherwise move their business elsewhere because so much of your office’s time is tied up by C and D clients.
An effective CRM doesn’t just store your data – it provides you with tools for effective, and profitable, time management and marketing efforts.
PERSONALIZATION AND TRUST-BUILDING
Redtail CRM allows you, at a glance, to pepper your client conversations with the things that are important to them as an individual (or to market to them based upon that information). Simultaneously, it helps eliminate much of the siloing w/i your office, as everyone has access to all of the same information (with the exception of those things permissioned to only specific teams or individuals, when needed). This is critical in terms of building institutional memory and keeping things flowing during employee vacations, departures, or deaths.
With Redtail, you can track all those little details that ultimately enhance your client service. You’ll be able to stand out from the crowd because you can offer a highly personalized experience for a larger number of clients.
Whether you are in a solo practice or you have multiple advisors and staff members across several geographic locations, everyone has one central location that provides an easy way to tap into previous conversations, important client information, and/or those little nuggets of personal information that can help an office personalize each and every interaction.
Your clients are individuals. You know this and that’s why you don’t approach each of them in the same way. Redtail CRM is the tool to help you maintain that personalized approach and strengthen your client and prospect relationships.
REDTAIL CRM DOESN’T FORGET
Redtail CRM is your memory when your memory falters. Building relationships is all about remembering who people are, what they love, what they hate, what they fear, what they anticipate. It’s about the entire picture of who they are, and recording that data in Redtail CRM makes it easy to reference, easy to remember, and easy to put to work.
Regardless of who is involved in a client meeting, who took a prospect’s phone call, or who is following up on outstanding requirements, Redtail CRM can put the relevant information that arises as a result of these interactions at each employee’s fingertips. When you adopt the mantra, “If it isn’t in Redtail, it didn’t happen,” which so many Redtail users swear by, you are establishing companywide open lines of communication and setting your office up for success!
Up next week, Reason #7: You need the technologies you use to integrate in meaningful ways so that you can eliminate redundant data entry and errors, streamline your processes, and improve client experience.
As always, if you have any questions along the way as we address these, you can reach out to our team at online or call 800.206.5030. We can’t wait to get to know you and your business better and to show you why Redtail is an industry leader committed to your success!
