Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to Live with Liz. Thanks for joining me. Today, we're talking about CRMs, customer relationship management tools. Really for law firms, I like to call them client relationship management tools. That's what they are for law firms. For the sake of expediency and our limited time, let's just skip ahead to the part where we all agree that everyone should have a CRM, that it's a valuable tool, and it's useful, and that maybe you already have one because today, we're going to talk about getting the most out of the CRM and what else the CRM can be doing for you. I guess traditionally, what people are using CRMs for is really just to keep track of your clients and to figure out how you know them or maybe put together that holiday list. If you already do that and if you have a holiday list and you have a client list already, good job. It's great that you have that. It's great that you have a CRM, but CRMs can do a whole lot more these days than what they might have been able to do initially or if you just have an Excel spreadsheet or you're just using your Outlook address book as your CRM or even your email marketing tool as your CRM. There is so much more that you can do. I mean, it's just a quick story. When I was in college, I went to a political fundraiser, and it was my first time ever doing something like that. An aide walked up to this congressman and talked to him for a minute, and then the congressman came over and said hello to me, and I felt super important in this moment. And the congressman said, oh, hey, Alyssa, it's so nice to see you again. I know that we had met once before, but there's no way he could possibly remember that. There were so many people there. And he said, you know, I remember that your dad's in the Navy or that you have a twin sister. How's she doing? And he knew these things about me that created this kind of weird, instant connection, and I thought, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. How did he know that? And also, it endeared me to this congressman whose political views aligned with my own, and I thought, gosh, I might donate money to this guy, that's crazy. So that kind of relationship, that kind of connection that he created was probably because the aide told him, reminded him who I was, and they were keeping track of this information. And that was kind of my first introduction to keeping track of relationships and understanding how people recall such details of how they know you and how it can be valuable in terms of growing your network, staying in touch with people, making them feel connected to you, and how important this is in business, too. Now fast forward a couple of decades, and here we are working with law firms, and CRMs with law firms are something that law firms are a little bit behind on when it comes to adoption and utilization for a lot of different things. So whether you can get a lot more out of your CRM comes down to how much you're using it and what you're using it for today. If you haven't looked at your CRM for a while, if it's been six months or a year, it's time to do an assessment, and this assessment is going to help you understand whether or not you have additional opportunities to get more from the CRM. When you're doing the assessment, you're going to try and understand who has access, what roles they play, how they're using it. You're also going to look for your integrations with your billing system, for example, with email marketing, with social media management and community engagement, all of these things that can make your life a little bit easier if you have adoption, if you have workflows in place. Now, if your CRM is a CRM that's specifically for law firms, you might have a leg up already. So I'm talking about platforms like, oh, Interaction by Lexis is one of them. Law Ruler is another one. Maybe if you're a solo or small firm, we might be talking about something like LeanLaw. And if you're a law firm that is already utilizing one that's combined with your practice management software, you also might have a leg up. We're talking about Clio Grow, which used to be Lexicata. We're talking about Practice Panther, Casepeer. These are platforms that have already combined functionality with docketing, perhaps with case management, with document management, maybe already with your billing. So maybe you've already got the potential to get a lot out of it. There are others out there that are also a little bit easier to use sometimes on the business side of things. And these are your HubSpot, Salesforce, Sugar, Zoho CRM. These are the kinds of tools that are not specifically for law firms, but that have really done a lot towards efficiency and functionality when it comes to the business process for prospecting, for lead generation. Now, how do you use your CRM today? That's the important part of understanding what opportunities are available for you. And what do you want to do with your CRM? So a lot of people already have that holiday list together. You've already got your email list together. Do you know that you can take this a step forward and have all your compliance and email marketing together inside your CRM or integrated with your CRM? Most of them already work like this. If you haven't looked at your CRM in a while and you're conducting your assessment, consider lead generation and prospecting first. You probably haven't made that your main priority. And if you can tie that to your billing system, you'll be able to get a lot more out of it to understand the priority when it comes to business development strategizing. And that's really where you're going to get a lot of value out of your CRM, not just keeping track of whom you've met or who you might invite to a party, but actually conducting an entire business development assessment and creating a strategy around it based on your CRM, which will then allow you to get the most value. All right, if you are looking for a new CRM and you haven't taken the time to do the marketing and business development planning together, this is the moment you want to do that because these CRM investments are incredibly expensive and time consuming and difficult to make the most of if you don't get adoption. So attorneys, as we know, maybe you're one of them, don't like to do data input and have new things to do. You have your docket. You have your docket for your case management. Do you have a docket for your relationship management? Are you only reaching out to clients? Are you responding at the last minute? If you have clients who are maybe the best for additional work, maybe they're great referral resources, maybe they can give you an excellent testimonial, you can combine these efforts with your other communication efforts to keep in touch with them. And you can set up some type of docket for relationship management. And this is something that you don't necessarily have to do yourself. You can have your administrators or your support staff, even yourself if you'd like to, go ahead and set up a system with your CRM that reminds you automatically so that you don't have to necessarily touch it every day, who you need to reach out to on a regular basis to maintain a relationship. This is so much more important now that we're not having conferences, we're not having in person meetings. How frequently are you touching those important contacts that you have? Have you arranged your contacts in terms of priorities? Do you have a value system in place where you're able to understand right away who is the most important person that day to talk with? When it comes to growing your business, do you have a strategy in place to actually reach out and be in touch with these people on a regular basis? No. So what are we trying to get out of this assessment with our goals when it comes to marketing and communications and our efficiency and our functionality? We're trying to understand what new integrations are available. We're trying to understand how we can improve the systems that we have in place when it comes to workflows, perhaps intake management, perhaps those task management and reminders that you may have living somewhere else. We're trying to run automated campaigns to make things as easy as possible without having to put too much administrative pressure on people who need to be doing higher value work. And that's really how you make the most of what a CRM has to offer. Speak of the devil, Zoho's calling me right now. That's funny. And then you can take it even a step further. So how do you currently manage your marketing campaigns? How do you currently manage lead generation? Do you have these things connected to your CRM? Did you know that you can have your newsletter and your contact forms that are on your website connected to your CRM to have leads automatically loaded into your CRM and then assigned to people based on certain criteria that you set up? Zoho CRM, that's right. Hello, Zoho. Nice to talk with you, too. These are things that you can do. You can customize these systems so that you can get the most out of it for what your needs are. And since these needs vary so drastically from firm to firm, from platform to platform, it's something that requires an investment in time to really understand and to be able to get the most out of. And I know that this is kind of a boring thing to kind of figure out. You're over here. So I'm not recommending that you necessarily do this multiple times a year. I think you should do this at least annually to figure out what new options are available, where you can improve, and how to really make it a part of your overall strategy when it comes to your marketing and your business development. And firm forward, this is one of the things that we do with legal tech implementation. We run these assessments and we try and figure out which are the most valuable in terms of the goals that you have set for your firm. So I think traditionally what we see is a lot of people already have kind of the client management aspect of it in place. You've already figured out with your data who your contacts are, if they're companies, if they're people, and then whether or not they're current clients or former clients. But what are you doing with them in terms of business development? And this is where you get more out of your CRM than just the general tracking. If you're able to really prioritize or set up a value system and understand the value in contacting people on a regular basis and actually having a meaningful connection with them like that congressman did with me, you'll be able to get a lot more out of it later down the line. You can also use it to identify problem areas and be able to correct them. You can do quality assessments through your CRM to be able to understand what opportunities for improvement in terms of the service that you're providing could actually be a benefit from the CRM tool that you have as well. So it's not just a matter of keeping track of people. It's also how you use that data to grow your firm and to really manage those leads. I think lead generation and prospecting is something that all firms seem to struggle with and it's not a natural part of providing legal services and being a lawyer. You want to focus on those high value services that you have and not on the business development part. But if you've got a team set up who really understands the ins and outs of the CRM tool that you've got available to you, you can have them set up the process, the workflow. You can actually integrate it with other things that you're doing like your docketing system and like your practice management system to be able to function at a very high level and have as much of it automated as possible but still have that personal touch that comes from having the knowledge of when to be in touch with someone, why to be in touch with them. And if you really, really understand the highest value contacts you have and have those touch points on a regular basis, you will generate more business. You will be able to take advantage of your pipeline and understand the leads. Now, do you even have a pipeline in place for your CRM? This is really next level. If you haven't taken advantage of the relationship cycle and really the approach to ask for business, to ask for more business if you're already working with someone, to ask for a referral from those referral clients, what are they doing in your CRM? They're just there and you haven't touched them. So these are the kinds of things that you can do to get more business and to get more value out of the tool that you've invested in. Now, there are a lot of tools out there that are able to do a ton of different things, but I'd say the most important things that you're looking for are, of course, the ability to track your clients, but you're also looking for marketing management. You're also looking for workflow efficiency and you're looking for those integrations. And if you can get the integration with your billing system, that's going to be one of the highest value integrations that you have with these CRM because it's going to help you prioritize what's coming in in terms of real money revenues. It's going to help you understand active clients versus former clients versus potential clients. And those things, if you have that level of integration, can be accomplished much easier than if you're having to do this manually. Of course, your marketing efficiency is something that can be very challenging for a law firm, especially if you're doing something manually. And then, of course, security and compliance are things that you might struggle with already. You might have made them a priority and they might be the things that maybe in the back of your mind are holding you back from taking that investment a little bit further or making the most out of it. Maybe you're a little bit afraid of crossing a line on privacy. A lot of these tools have those things already built in and streamlined so that you don't even have to think about them. It's a check in the box and then all of a sudden your life is a lot easier. Now, that adoption hurdle is a real thing. And if you can't get people to adopt, of course, it's not going to be valuable. But it's not that you need every single person at your firm to necessarily adopt every aspect of this. So it can be highly customized to make sure that the right people are accessing the right information to accomplish what you need to achieve. If you have questions about CRMs or if you have questions about any type of legal tool for your firm, whether it's practice management or billing, or if you have workflow questions, we're always around and are happy to have these conversations. We like to look at the nuances of the different legal tech that's out there. We demo everything we can get our hands on and ask a million questions to figure out how these things work so that you don't have to. So love the questions. And if you are looking at CRMs or have something new that you've figured out with one, I'd love to hear about it. Shoot us an email, solutions at firmforward.com. Every Wednesday, we get together for these coffee style breaks, grab a cup of coffee and join us as we dive into some of these topics and try to make the most out of business development and marketing for law firms. Take care, everybody. Until next time on Live with Liz.