CRM for Professional Services – Analyze The Buying Process

A common conversation for us with our clients in designing their CRM systems is to wrap our minds around what goes on with the buying process, and the criteria that the buyer uses in procuring the products and services that our client may be selling. The specific example that I am using in this article is that of a law firm. You could well extend this discussion to any kind of procurement of professional services that happens in a corporate customer of yours. 

Alternatively, you can also choose to watch this video to understand the context better.

• Who is the buyer of legal services in a corporate firm? Typically this is the general counsel’s office or the in-house staff of attorneys as well as the CXOs and Senior Execs who might get involved in this decision.  

• The biggest criteria of course is that of trust and this is more so in the case of professional services procurement. The buyers are assessing for themselves through their interactions with you, whether you have the experience, the expertise and whether your references and your reputation are speaking to your credibility, and your reliability as a partner. 

• Corporates might have a formal selection process maybe a competitive bid or an RFP process and at the same time in matters of great urgency or when they are in a rush they may choose to waive the formal selection and the more elaborate selection process and go with the primary supplier or someone that they have already worked with. 

• Influencers are referring to the referrals that the buyers may get and these could be a variety of sources. These could include the board members,  investors, VC firms in the case of early-stage companies and so on. 

• The specific service line that the corporate firm is looking for has a bearing of course.  It is quite common for corporates to have one or two primary suppliers for legal services and then look for specialists when it comes to areas like mergers and acquisitions or maybe immigration law. 

• The capacity of the in-house staff and alongside your ability to scale and meet their additional demand as well as, whether you have the coverage in the geographies that the client is maybe operating in and 

• The pricing, which essentially means whether your fees are competitive and whether the fees are in line with the budgets that the customer has for their legal services. 

Hope that the idea-storming on the buying criteria was interesting for you, and one that you could extend to other professional services.