Significant business development potential is emerging, provided that you are able to evolve in methods, strategy, and customer relations.
So how can these professions, used to managing inbound calls, take advantage of this opportunity? What organization should be planned?What are the winning strategies?
The change in legislation results from the convergence of three factors:
– the government's desire to establish a competitive environment in order to lower costs for the public,
– technological innovation which makes it possible to work differently and save on low value-added tasks, with a reduction in production costs and reliable results,
– the behavior of consumers, who need information and are increasingly independent in their research and comparisons.
The rules will therefore evolve, and for lawyers, notaries and accountants, who have always been part of the triptych of "receiving an incoming call / performing the service / invoicing", this is a real revolution that will take place, a 180° paradigm shift! And therefore great development opportunities for those who know how to adapt to their new environment!
Moving from needs to commercial development challenges
To benefit from it, the key will be to move from an approach centered on customer needs to a posture that takes into account the issues as a whole. In other words, we can no longer simply respond to what the customer expresses. Rather, it will be a matter of putting the request back into its general context in order to take into account other factors, to add additional elements to the mere expression of needs and to bring the applicant, the customer, towards an enriched service.
Where, for example, a chartered accountant used to meet the need for VAT returns, payroll preparation, and tax package filing, tomorrow they will need to consider their client's sector of activity, their competitive environment, and their characteristics to offer optimized management solutions. As we can see, this reversal of the relationship represents a significant potential for additional sales, provided that the players are able to develop their ability to advise in a refined and relevant manner. This change will require a lot of internal work, reflection, and strategic analysis to differentiate their offer in terms of substance and form, and to move from a passive to an active sales mode.
How to solicit feedback from your clients?
Clearly, prospecting will not come naturally, as it is not part of the culture or habits of the professions concerned. That being said, before seeking market share, it is first necessary to work on your own client portfolio.
The first step will therefore be to segment it in order to identify those that are most relevant in terms of business potential and commercial development. This will require defining and characterizing the client who is most aligned with the service offering of the firm or practice. And then to initiate proactive action with each of them in order to better understand their respective contexts and propose offers before the client has expressed a need. A lawyer, for example, can easily increase their volume of contacts with their clients. Mathematically, by concentrating time on those with the highest potential, they give themselves every chance to develop their turnover.
The firms and studies that can create opportunities and pretexts for good sales conversations will therefore have every chance of increasing the average basket size of active customers.
Learn to manage customer relationships!
For these professions, the main risk lies in clients fleeing to more competitive providers. However, the clientele is not spread across multiple providers, except perhaps for lawyers' clients. A client who leaves means 100% of their budget is lost! It is therefore imperative to generate and strengthen contact points and align with client needs. And since the services, being regulated, are substantially the same, the difference will also be made by the ability to cultivate client relationships.
To retain their active clients and offer a competitive service, firms and studies should seek to identify low value-added tasks in order to produce cheaper and faster (technology makes this easy today; for example, a notary should no longer have to sign the hundred pages of a sales contract other than electronically!). By remaining efficient on these offers, they maintain a point of contact to then bring the client to high value-added services.
However, addressing client relationships also means discussing client experience. This means that beyond targeting and client knowledge, lawyers, notaries, and accountants will need to revisit how they offer their services to clients for their business development.
The challenge? To move the customer from "I am satisfied" to "Wow! What I'm being offered is unique!"
This approach is already well-established in retail and non-legal B2B activities. Today, tools, techniques, and methods are available to ensure success. For notaries, lawyers, and accountants aiming to leverage this new framework to truly grow their business, the goal is to adopt these resources as quickly as possible to structure their commercial development.
Et cela ne se fera pas en quelques jours de formation dans une salle. C’est au contraire une évolution qui réclame une action durable et régulière. Kestio répond précisément à ce besoin de pilotage continu, pragmatique, et permet non seulement de travailler en amont sur le fond mais également de rendre opérant les changements pour les inscrire dans la durée. Ses experts maîtrisent toute la chaîne de valeur de la relation commerciale et le format court et régulier garantit l’imprégnation des bonnes pratiques et la réussite d’une conduite du changement annoncée !
