Client Relationship Partners or CRPs are responsible for the overall success of the firm’s long-term relationship with each key client. Listed below are 10 different ways to describe the CRP role each with its own nuance and emphasis. These descriptions are useful in creating clarity in expectations, CRP selection, capability development and accountability.
Source: strikingly.com
#1 The firm luminary and client advocate
The CRP faces outward and represents the firm to the client. At the same time, they face inward to ensure the voice of the client is heard and client’s interest are appropriately served. Read David Maister’s famous post to dive deeper into this job description.
#2 The pedestal seller (aka the Tinder Tactician)
The CRP networks actively within the firm and the client organisation, and brokers new relationships. They put colleagues and client contacts on a pedestal and talk them up wherever they can. They start their day by thinking about who they can introduce for mutual benefit.
#3 The strategic account leader
The CRP has the primary role of leading the team of practitioners and functional specialists servicing the client. As with any leadership role, their job is to set direction, communicate the strategy, inspire, motivate, cajole and align the various constituencies to execute this strategy. They span across formal organisation boundaries and facilitate collaboration in the core client team and with everyone in the broader client community. This job is made especially difficult in professional service firms because they usually have signifcant responsibilities without formal authority. They typically would have an internal network map looking like Partner 2 from Heidi Gardner’s recent research:
#4 The planner
The CRP documents a clear set of activities that will help build a successful firm-client relationship over the short-, medium- and long-term. Their plan may look something like this:
#5 The front-door
The CRP is the client’s first point-of-contact and the key person to address any service failures or concerns. They help redirect work to the most appropriate person within the firm that can service their need. They help make the client’s experience frictionless and engaging. This CRP role is a little more passive than the other models described, but it may suit a ‘care and maintain’ relationship that has little profit growth potential.
#6 The rainmaker
The CRP’s job is to maximise revenue and profit from the account. Full stop.
#7 The co-creator
The CRP facilitates the process of aligning the client’s strategic needs with the firm’s capabilities. They explore in some depth the client’s critical problems and opportunities and help bring together integrated bespoke solutions often involving multi parties, technologies and vendors. The CRP’s role would be to understand deeply the key elements that create value for the client. Page 1 of their client plan would be Bain’s 40 elements model applied to their key client:
#8 The intrapreneur
Most relationships need ongoing renewal and inspiration in terms of product, process, people and pricing. The CRP role is to generate new ideas that add value and help get the best ones implemented.
#9 The elder
The CRP role is that of senior door opener, shmoozer, steward and repository of institutional memory. The role is less hand-on in terms of day-to-day account management but they do what’s necessary to influence key decision-makers and help win major new projects.
#10 The relationship choreographer (MY PREFERENCE)
The CRP orchestrates a set multi-lateral connections, value exchanges and mutually beneficial projects. They work internal and externally, strategically and tactically, short-term and long-term. The CRP brings the best of the firm to the client; and the whole of the client to the firm. Their job to drive the pink process to win more blue:
Many of the professional service firms I work with think they are collaborative, but in reality they’re collegiate. The latter describes a club of friends happy to socialise together. The former describes a one-firm firm where everyone is hardwired to win and deliver together.
business, change management, client relationships, culture, governance, growth, innovation, internal collaboration, Leadership capacity, marketing, planning, pricing, professional service firms, Sales management, strategy management
Stop trying so hard to be different
In Articles, Commentary on 6 May 2019 at 4:33 pmFull text of op-ed that first appeared in The Australian Financial Review on 3 May 2019.
99% of Australia’s full-service law firms have a strategy based on seeking clear market differentiation. In my view, they’re largely wasting their time and money.
AFR Legal Affairs op-ed
Conventional strategy thinking suggests there are two sources of sustainable competitive advantage: [1] having the lowest cost, or [2] differentiating from competitors on things that matter most to customers. The former strategy allows firms to win by having greater price-setting discretion. The latter strategy allows firms to extract a price premium for added benefits.
When it comes to the legal market, this theory starts to get a bit wobbly.
Research shows that while most law firm clients can distinguish firms between groups of firms, such as Tier 1 versus Tier 2 or domestic versus global, they really struggle to clearly discriminate between specific full-service firms within a group. To clients, many of these firms look and feel the same.
One of the reasons for this is market fragmentation. Unlike most industries with three or four dominant players (think airlines, grocery retail or banking), the Australian commercial legal market has nearly 30 firms claiming in some way to be leaders in legal expertise and client focus. Australia’s largest law firm by partner number, HWL Ebsworth, has less than 5% share of the total market. Carving out and keeping a unique and relevant market position in such a crowded market is next to impossible.
Another reason for a lack differentiation is a self-inflicted one. Most full-service firms present themselves as being all things to most people. Within the partnership model it’s political suicide not to give every partner a guernsey in describing what the firm is really good at.
So, what’s the solution?
The first part of the answer is to worry less about being known for being different and focus more on just being known. Strong brand awareness still counts in opening doors and staying top-of-mind.
The second part is to encourage more differentiation at the practice, partner and/or product level. With a more micro approach, differentiation usually come from legal specialisation combined with a focus on a particular market segment or industry. So, for example, a general commercial litigation team can distinguish themselves by positioning as class action defence specialists for ASX200 companies.
The third element is to concentrate firm strategy on how the firm competes. ‘The how’ refers to the resources, skills, standards and systems used to win. These are collectively called capabilities, or as Pier D’Angelo, Allens’ Chief Strategy Officer, calls them, the organisation’s “muscles”.
Most full-service law firms need work on these five muscle groups and the inter-play between them:
1. Firm and team leadership – setting and aligning everyone around a clear direction; inspiring others to meet/exceed expectations; and providing support with accountability.
2. Talent management – recruiting, developing, engaging and retaining the right workforce for the firm to flourish, both now and in the future.
3. Winning work and capturing value – developing trusting relationships with clients and referrers; converting more of the right opportunities; and pricing profitably.
4. Collaboration – shifting the mindset from ‘my’ to ‘our’ client and combining expertise from inside and outside the firm to solve clients’ wicked problems.
5. Operating with discipline – having an efficient and effective operating platform; ensuring adherence to agreed policies; executing plans consistently; and optimising leverage and utilisation.
Spending more time at the law firm gym will, over time, create a form of cultural and operational distinctiveness. Paradoxically, this will most likely be reflected externally and create a firm that both top clients and top people will want to work with and for. They will be authentic points of difference not created by spin doctors but radiating from a firm truly fit for the future.
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