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The
Marketplace MasterTM
is a monthly email publication on professional service
marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.
Account
Planning and Relationship Management Programs
This
month I’d like to share with you a story of how
a noteworthy account planning and relationship management
program looks in action.
We
go behind the scenes at L.E.K.
Consulting, a global business-consulting firm that
specializes in growth strategy, mergers and acquisitions
and value management. The following abstract hints at
why this is such an exceptional story. The link below
it leads you to the eight-page PDF case study.
This
wraps up our three-part series on account planning.
To go back and review the others, see Mastering
Professional Service Firm Account Management and
Investing
in Account Management.
Suzanne
Lowe
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service
Firms Compete to Win
President, Expertise Marketing, LLC
L.E.K. – A Consulting Case Study on Account Planning
and Relationship Management
(Go
directly to the complete
case study (PDF))
Scene
A: The largest revenue-generating client of
a top-tier professional firm bolts for one of its strongest
competitors. The client relationship had been shepherded
by one of the firm’s most successful practice
leaders. Members of the executive committee are stunned
at the defection. No one knew the client was vulnerable
to being “picked off.”
Scene
B: A newly hired marketing director asks for
a list of the firm’s top 100 clients. She is astounded
to learn that such a list does not exist, even though
the firm brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in
revenue each year. It takes her six frustrating weeks
of explaining and even pleading with separate profit
centers and far-flung practice leaders to build the
list.
|
L.E.K. created a market-focused infrastructure that
is built upon processes that are so unique to the
firm that they are exceedingly difficult for rivals
to copy. |
Each
of these tableaux is real. Each, and others like it,
illustrates a reality that exists in too many professional
service firms today: an insidious gate-keeping culture
in which “selling business” is built upon
a fragmented and hierarchical model of seniority and
tenure, access to clients and client information is
guarded, and firm-wide account planning is only given
lip service.
L.E.K.
Consulting’s story is remarkable because of its
early recognition of the
competitive advantages that could be derived from the
adoption of systematic
relationship management processes, with strategic account
planning as an end, and a rigorous business development
process as the means to achieve a competitive advantage.
In the early 1990s, L.E.K.’s commitment was a
bold step in a direction that few other professional
firms had demonstrably embraced. By the late 1990s,
the concept of client relationship management (with
a multitude of accompanying software packages that offered
technological support) had been well accepted in the
professional service world. By then, L.E.K. already
had made noticeable strides in its sector.
L.E.K.’s
case is also extraordinary because it had the courage
to embrace what would be a significant shift in the
cultural fabric of the firm. And it was refreshingly
unabashed in its commitment. Through their words and
their behaviors L.E.K.’s partners communicated
their conviction that the program would work.
But
L.E.K.’s leaders gave their commitment much more
than lip service. They did the heavy lifting that is
required to succeed at a significant competitive mission.
They made the program work by setting up the structure
for it to become imbued throughout the firm. They reported
on its accomplishments. They kept at it.
There
is a final reason why L.E.K.’s approach to account
planning and relationship management is so competitively
savvy: it created a market-focused infrastructure that
is built upon processes that are so unique to the firm
that they are exceedingly difficult for rivals to copy.
This market-driven infrastructure also gives L.E.K.
the distinct advantage of having an early-alert system
about shifts in the clients’ needs, and provides
a framework for the firm’s response.
Read
the complete case study (PDF)
Take
the confidential, web-based Marketplace Masters professional
service firm differentiation assessment test for
instant feedback on whether your firm is doing differentiation
right.
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2005 Expertise
Marketing, LLC All Rights Reserved |
