Consulting Tools, Part II: Do You Need a CRM in Your Management Consulting Firm?
The consulting industry has evolved greatly over the years. In years past, Consulting was largely about making sales, and a simple contact management system sufficed to keep track of current and prospective clients. Today, consultants’ work is increasingly geared towards meaningful advice, client support, and ongoing consultant-client relationships. They now need the right consulting tools to manage and improve both their relationships and their everyday processes – tools that will help them to keep in touch with clients and measure their business.
Consulting tools are methods, processes, templates, or software that a consultant can repeatedly use to address client-specific needs. In our last blog, we discussed the top four management consulting tools today: strategic planning, employee engagement surveys, benchmarking, and customer relationship management. Customer relationship management, or CRM, triumphed as the most comprehensive and widely used tool for solving the everyday challenges of management consultants.
By now you might be asking yourself, “Do I need a CRM system?” or, “Is CRM right for my consulting firm?” Your first step as a senior management consultant should be to review your current consulting processes and identify what is working and what is not. Is there something lacking in your consulting firm? Are you wasting time with your existing methods?
As a member of a growing consulting business, you likely rely on spreadsheets and email to organize and keep track of your client data. But are these current systems working for you?
Bullhorn has compiled a list of questions that can help you better determine if CRM software is essential to your consulting operations. Before making the investment, ask yourself:
1. Do you use multiple methods or platforms to communicate with your clients (email, phone, chats, etc.)?
2. Is your client data spread across multiple systems?
3. Do important emails, messages, or client interactions ever get lost in your inbox?
4. Do you spend a lot of time sifting through emails?
5. Do you need a better system to manage contacts?
6. Do you want a consulting tool that tracks performance and competitors’ performance?
7. Do you need a database to track your sales pipeline?
8. Do you want to boost leads and gain new clients?
9. Do you want an automated system that can follow up with qualified leads?
10. Does your team often overlap or duplicate its efforts when reaching out to a prospect?
11. Do you lack project visibility across your consulting team?
12. Are you unable to target specific customers or personalize your marketing campaigns?
13. Are you missing intelligence and insights into your marketing efforts?
14. Do you have difficulty generating reports?
15. Do you want to deliver better client support?
Customer relationship management is a robust consulting tool designed to keep track of client interactions, projects, and contact information all in one place. It streamlines consulting workflows and increases efficiency across consulting teams. But is it right for you? If you found yourself consistently answering yes to the above questions, your consulting business needs a CRM.
Consulting tools like customer relationship management can help companies unlock growth and profits, reduce costs, complexities, and time, and gain a complete understanding of clients and prospects. Do you need a consulting CRM?