The Red review - CRM, much more than a system

In this episode Jeremy is joined by Kirsty Collin, Global Head of CRM at Gleeds, to talk all things customer voice. We work through what customer relationship management is (and isn't), what utopia looks like, where most firms find themselves in it and where to start to make improvements.

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Transcript

[00:00.7]

The Red Review is brought to you by Growth Ignition, the transformation consulting, training and enabling tech firm in the work winning space and their product set. The Bid Toolkit, the online bid processing guide with APMP accredited training and tools to download.

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Hello and welcome to the Red Review with me, Jeremy Brim. Great to have a good friend of mine on for an episode this time around. So we're going to be talking to my friend Kirsty Collin about CRM and what that really means and the top tip is it's not a technology product necessarily and so let's get into it and unpack it because it's a really interesting and very valuable area that high performing businesses play in.

[00:51.1]

But what I find is most businesses don't and so there's a lot of value to be had for in this space for bids, proposals, people, but marketing people, anyone involved in growing a business. So welcome Kirsty, thank you for coming along. Thank you very much for having me. It's really good to be here.

[01:08.3]

It's, it's great to see you again I guess, I guess we should be honest with people. So we used to work together at Mace. We did. You've gone on to do wonderful things there and elsewhere since that will come on to so we'd cross paths a bit. We didn't get to work together enough really.

[01:24.2]

But I was very aware of the work that you were doing and the value that it bought to the business and so now you'd moved on and done a bit more of it, I thought it was time to share it with our audience if that's okay. So Kirsty, first of all give us a bit of a career overview and, and land up where you on your current role and then we'll go from there.

[01:45.2]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I don't think I've had a kind of standard career path. I think you know when I left school I wanted to be a travel agent. Weirdly enough I don't know where that came from. I don't think I actually realised that I wasn't doing the trav. So yeah, so I basically I've been in the construction industry for the past, I think it's 20 years now in total.

[02:09.7]

So I've had various different roles within the industry. Started off as a kind of researcher and then moved into recruitment. Did project management for a while and then being a huge empath and someone who kind of likes to fix things and listen, it's moved me into my current Role, which is global Head of customer, Customer Relationship Management at gleds, where actually I've been one year today.

[02:38.7]

Oh, is it? Oh, congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. So a business that I need to learn more about, really, because it's always been a competitor. So when I grew up at E.C. harris and then Arcadis and then obviously the mace consult business competes with GLEDs, but they seem to be going from strength to strength.

[02:57.7]

It seems to be, a business where everybody's ending up. So, congratulations. You seem to be in a business that's got a tailwind. But we can't talk so much, I guess, today about the inner workings of what, what Gleeds get up to and what you get up to. There's a bit of IP in there, but we need to stick to the broad brushes of the theory of, of what you do as a practitioner.

[03:18.3]

So, let's get into it then. So give us an overview. So I guess the context is very often in my world, and why I reached out to you, really, when I'm working with chief execs and leadership teams of small, medium, but even large, you know, organisations, footsie listed, big engineering firms, outsourcing businesses, leaders in particular get transfixed with buying a CRM platform.

[03:49.4]

And they, they. When I'm doing maturity modelling stuff and I get onto the conversation about pipeline, how they look at their pipeline of opportunities and how they. And then the conversation about key account management and how they look after their clients, the answer comes back, oh, we've got a CRM Platform for that.

[04:07.6]

We've got Dynamics or Salesforce or HubSpot or one of those. And I'm like, that's great, but does anyone use it? And what, why, why have you got it? What for? And generally I find it's just being used as a pipeline system and a contacts register, you know, a little black book, if you're lucky.

[04:25.6]

Implementations, really. And adoption's really low. And it's only being used for 10% of its capability, if it's being used at all. And so, I, I thought, I've got to talk to a grown up about this stuff, partly for my own education, but partly we need to start getting the word out there that customer relationship management is a thing, a philosophy, a practise, not a piece of technology.

[04:51.3]

The technology is just an enabler in the story. So, but you, you give me your overview as, as the grown up, as to what CRM means to you, first of all. Well, first of all, I like that you think that I'm growing up. So, I'll take that. But yeah, absolutely. And, and most people, especially at Gleed will have heard me say this, quite a lot is that, you know, CRM everybody just thinks is a tool and that's it.

[05:16.1]

And I get that, I understand that. Because if you type into Google CRM, what will come up? Salesforce Dynamics, you know, all the, all the different solutions. So it is so much more than that and people kind of really need to understand that and step away from seeing it as a solution because the platform is the end part of it and there's so much to kind of that goes into that.

[05:39.7]

So many behaviour, so many different things that people need to do to do good CRM and good customer relationship management. And that varies from having the right culture, the right systems and processes, from having the data understanding customer journeys, the reporting insights from clients themselves and managing those relationships.

[06:03.4]

So the system just kind of harnesses all of that. And isn't the kind of be all and end all? Absolutely. And so I train people a lot these days in key account management, for instance, you know, picking the clients that touch 60 to 80% of your turnover or margin and with future margin growth potential and the intersection with CRM Is really critical.

[06:31.2]

Yeah. And how they get so I can build a cat, teach them how to build a CAM plan and how to execute on that, on how to leverage marking in marketing into it. But particularly the client voice bit and how we manage those relationships live into it, is so important and of course I'm in a similar place with CAM that that it appears to me about 10 years ago some consulting businesses marauded around the market selling very expensive key account management programmes.

[07:01.5]

They will come facilitate a 50 page template for your top 50 clients for 500 grand or something. And so lots of people got burnt by that because of course that ended up in the drawer never to be seen again. So I think there's a bit of a, it's a combination of everyone Google, CRM and they think it's a technology thing.

[07:20.0]

But also people have been hurt by love before in the key account management space. Yeah. And so just want an easy out that's not a massive investment or investment of time anyway. So I think we're both being burnt a bit like that by that when the value is so great, when we get this stuff.

[07:37.3]

Right. Because certainly in a B2B B2G environment which I think most of our listeners are you know, selling stuff Writing bids to other organisations, whether it's private sector or public sector. You know, 60 to 80% of your turnover should come from current clients.

[07:56.4]

And so you've got to listen to him, haven't you? Yeah, you do, you do. And that's the thing. And it's, it's. What is the saying about it being it's more cost effective to look after the clients that you've got already rather than going out and getting new ones? Yeah.

[08:11.8]

Oh, for sure. I mean, the amount of times again, I, I had a client last year, that's, that's big into public sector and they phoned me up and said, oh, Jezza, can you come and help us with a capture campaign for a key bid that's coming around? We've had this deal for 20 years.

[08:29.4]

We're about to rebid it and I thought they were going to say that it was 18 months away and we were going to do some really sophisticated stuff. And they said, and this was in the December and they said, oh no, the SQ's out, the tender's out in February. You what? So that's normal in your world though, isn't it?

[08:47.2]

Well, unfortunately, because the maturity around that stuff's really low. But you know, they'd had that contract for 20 years. I mean that's just really poor and client feedback and all that stuff. They had a great account manager actually on the ground and had been doing a good job with that stuff and by luck they'd done some good work and positioned some good ideas with the client.

[09:06.0]

But they weren't up to speed with who was really going to be marking that beard and they hadn't influenced them. And you know, they, the, the quality of insight they could have got if they'd had a Kirsty in the game doing that kind of six monthly at least. Touch Point would have been wildly different.

[09:23.1]

So what does Utopia look like for you in CRM then? What does really high performance look like? What should we strive to get to, do you think? I think it comes down to the kind of mindset and the culture of the business, to be honest with you. Because let's be right, that's what kind of good CRM is.

[09:41.6]

And it's not just kind of bringing something in and landing it and leaving it to kind of festive like you alluded to before, that most people do with that. So it's, it's about kind of continually learning from that as well. It's just a kind of massive process that turns your business into a customer centric business.

[10:03.4]

You know, you continue to listen. You don't just land the processes, you kind of, you know, you open to making mistakes and kind of, you know, learning from those and moving forward, listening to your clients, listening to your people internally.

[10:19.5]

You know, it's, it's, it's one of those kind of situations where, yeah, where listening is key. And developing and not just bringing something in and expecting that that's just going to solve everything. Because there's the old adage and am I allowed to swear on this? Yeah, only a little.

[10:39.5]

But there's the old adage of, you know, that's what I find a lot of people find when they bring in a CRM solution. So you've got to, it's a hearts and mind, you've got to bring people along with, on the journey. I mean for me coming into an organisation like Leeds, what I'm kind of doing is really trying to understand us as a business.

[11:03.9]

So I'm not coming because like you said, I could just go out and get Salesforce tomorrow or HubSpot and bring that in. But what I don't want to do is do that and have us working for a system. I want a system that works for us. So I'm going to do the legwork because let's be right, it is legwork.

[11:23.1]

I've got to do the research, I've got to kind of understand from from our people what works for them, you know, what kind of things they want to do, what information we need, who we can support from bids, from marketing, you know, all those different things. We need to understand what it is that they need.

[11:40.9]

We need to speak to our clients, understand, you know, what is good customer relationship management then. Because often we make an assumption the clients want something or this is going to work for them. But a lot of time do you actually know and on. All our clients are different. So you know, it's finding that kind of common ground that makes it work for everybody, for all our client base.

[12:02.2]

So I think people have got to put that legwork in and put that time and effort into understanding that and going on that journey to understand before they kind of get to again that solution piece at the end. And it's a change management piece, a behaviours piece.

[12:20.9]

People have got to see the benefit, they've got to see the value from sharing their contacts, from inputting something into our system. You know, it's, it's, which in itself is difficult, especially in our industry and kind of construction where it's very entrepreneurial.

[12:37.6]

You know people don't necessarily want to let go of their clients or let it give information about their clients but you've got to because it does actually belong to the organisation that you work even though the relationship is with you as a person. Okay, very good, agreed.

[12:56.1]

So let me test what I think I've found in high performing businesses with you as an ecosystem for CRM as in properly managing your clients, customers. And correct me if I'm wrong, I guess so. And some of it's what we used to do together and some of it's what I've seen elsewhere.

[13:14.3]

So I guess number one's consistency. So you know the, the basics I guess are having a net promoter scored based customer survey where we ask the same questions to every client if we can.

[13:32.5]

And I, I've seen people qualify that. So they would have the same survey but for their gold tier clients, their top five clients, they would get either an external consultant I.

[13:47.7]

E. Me or an external Kirsty a marketing agency but someone fairly senior to go and interview that fairly senior client person through that script and score it the same scoring and then the silver ones would be via a teams call and maybe someone from the marketing function or someone who's not connected with the service delivery but of the right level.

[14:13.4]

And then the seed here, the bronze tier would just be a Microsoft form survey with the same questions in the same scoring but the client basically fills it out themselves in five or ten minutes. But the idea being that you're getting the same questions answered with the same scoring structure to be able to assess the themes that you get back from that.

[14:35.5]

So in terms of customer voice that can consistency of approach is a key thing. To be able to derive real insight and data for the board to then be able to interrogate that and use that to make decisions.

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Right? Yeah, yeah but I think as well the key thing with that then you mentioned the board. Yeah, that information goes up there but I think what people often miss a trick with regards to that is disseminating that through the business as well and making sure that everybody hears about that.

[15:06.0]

And that's where I think a lot of people go wrong. It should, shouldn't be that it just sits at the top because let's be right there at the top and they've got that kind of overall view. They're not the doers and it's the people that are doing that need that information and Those steps and then trends and understanding what, what our clients think to be able to make a difference because otherwise it's, it's pointless doing it.

[15:29.6]

No. Agreed. So on that then, to build on what I said. So another piece of high performance I've seen from a particular client of mine, contractor, is that they undertake that customer voice survey, three times through a project life cycle at the end of pre construction, end of construction, end of defects, and it's done by someone whose job it is to go and do that fairly senior goal.

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Very good. But the, the interesting thing is the score that comes out of that, the net promoter score that comes out of it directly influences the appraisal score of the people that touch the project and therefore their bonus.

[16:15.3]

And it also directly affects the performance score of their supply chain members that delivered on the project. So that there's very much a stick element, but there's also a bit of a carrot element. So how do you feel about that hardwired measurement?

[16:30.8]

Yeah, so I don't agree with that and I have worked at places where that is the case. My main concern with using customer satisfaction and NPS as a measure for people and especially for their bonuses and things like that is the main thing is that it's subjective now.

[16:54.1]

The scores depend on what's happened that day, what type of person they are. There's all sorts of things which can attribute to why that person gives that score. And what I do when I'm interviewing clients is, you know, I, and when I'm reporting on the interview as well in particular is that if a client says to me when they give a score and they're like, oh yeah, I'll give that, they're really, really, really good at that, but I'll give it a 7 out of 10 and I'm like all right, okay.

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And then they say well you know, I'm never going to give a 10. And I get that because I'm like. And you know, we've, we've kind of had the conversation just before, before we started this podcast about, you know, people who are decorators who, who don't have a well decorated home. Well, it's very similar for me.

[17:36.7]

I work within customer satisfaction and client relationship management and I'm a bit of a booger for when I'm filling in customer satisfaction and especially because I know the inner workings of net promoter score and which kind of category that puts you in. But you know, for me, if I'm taking my car to, to a car garage to have its service done.

[17:59.2]

Am I going to give them. If I take it and drop it off and it's an okay service and they. They service the car and it's fine, then am I going to give them a 10? Probably not. If I go to the garage and they roll out a red carpet and there's a glass of nice cold Prosecco on the side and someone's going to drive me home and all the rest of it, then I will give a 10 for that.

[18:20.4]

You know, so it's so subjective. And it drives the wrong behaviours. If you are targeting people with getting a certain customer satisfaction score or a certain net promoter score, because all that's going to happen, especially in the B2B kind of world and environment, is that before you, Whoever goes to interview them, the client's going to have that in their ear, no matter what people say, you know, oh, we've got to achieve a percentage of 85% or whatever.

[18:49.6]

So just go easy on what you scoringly because, you know, they've got the relationship with the people that we're going to see. So I, you know, and again, and I've come in to Gleed, and I don't want to talk about Gleeds too much, but obviously I kind of work there. But I've not set that as a KPI in terms of our, customer satisfaction score purely for that.

[19:08.3]

For that reason. It's a good metric. It's good to kind of understand where we are. But in terms of putting it against people's bonuses and, targeting it in that way, I just think it drives the wrong behaviours. That's really interesting. So I'm normally a stick kind of guy.

[19:26.8]

Mike, who I used to do this podcast with, was very much a carrot sort of guy. So he. He can't do the podcast anymore because he's gonna be an MP one day. But, you know, he's a nice carrot. Of course, you know, my mentor.

[19:42.2]

That's right. That's right. Oh, he did. Sorry, I forgot to say he does wish he were. He says, hello, what's happening about some other stuff? Because I'm doing some work for him at the moment. So, yeah, I think there's a balance of stick and carrot around behaviours.

[19:58.0]

So I wouldn't. I perhaps would agree. I wouldn't hardwire it that hard into people's appraisals, but I, I personally would still have it. Have some influence. 100 and yeah, and I agree with that. And like I said, I still they still stand by them as measures and you can kind of, you know, look at them and it gives you that kind of high level view.

[20:15.6]

But again, looking at kind of customer satisfaction and the kind of feedback that you get, I know, you know, and obviously the way that I kind of do interviews and the information that I get back, I always say to people as well, as well as not focusing on the score, it's to focus on the verbatim and what's actually coming back through from the clients and what they say.

[20:37.3]

And that, that for me is where the gold is and where, you know, the kind of real truth lies at the, the metrics are there, they serve a purpose Net promoter score is really good, you know, in terms of understanding where that loyalty is. Customer satisfaction score just, you know, kind of complements that really well.

[20:56.4]

But the verbatim and the kind of, the questioning is really important on the customer satisfaction surveys. I think, you know, it's a lot of companies have a habit of asking questions that makes clients tell them what they want to hear.

[21:17.2]

And again, in my, in my current role, we've kind of coined the phrase if you like fearless feedback. So what we've done is I relaunched our client listening back in February and we ask questions that we might not be that comfortable getting the answers to.

[21:34.8]

And that's what you need to do. You need to kind of really ask those questions and understand and listen to what the clients are saying to then make improvements, to get the insights and, and kind of understand what you can do to then strengthen that relationship. Too many times you've got people who use customer satisfaction or client listening as a tick box to kind of, you know, and that, and that's when people get bored and sick of doing it as well.

[21:59.2]

Because, you know, again, we spoke earlier, because everybody asks you for feedback no matter what you do. You know, you go out for a meal, how was your experience? You go out to cinema. You, everything you do at the moment, you get asked for a score of feedback. But what's the worst thing that happens with all of that is that first of all we're annoyed because we're being asked it all the time.

[22:18.0]

But the second thing is there's no outcome, there's no output from it. Nothing happens. So that kind of leads me on to another important point, which is closing the loop and making sure that with your clients you are getting this feedback. I mean, if they're giving you the time in the first instance, you know, you've got to make sure that you're doing something with that and making sure that they're getting something back out of it.

[22:41.7]

And closing the loop for me is kind of absolutely key. And otherwise there's no point. You're doing it and you know it's pointless. No, I absolutely agree. So, I have a scenario with one of my partners where they're a bit obsessed with using one of the, you know, one of those online tools where it just asks a customer for a score out of five.

[23:06.0]

Yeah. They can leave a little comment and it's just not intelligent or not enough detailed enough. So of course all you get is comments back from super negative people. So if I trained, if I've trained a hundred people, one person's gonna think it's rubbish.

[23:22.8]

And you get the keyboard warriors. You get the keyboard warriors. If you've not got someone that's seeing the whites of your eyes and kind of able to kind of interrogate what you're, what they're saying to you and really understand that. And again, you know, with client listen in particular, you know, I could be talking to a client who, you know, they say, oh yeah, they're really good at communication and you know, they're da, da, da, da, da.

[23:46.9]

And then they come to give a score and then like, communication. Yes, six for me. Then being sat in the room, I'm like, well wait a minute, you've just said to me that they were really good at communication. Is that a fair score? Whereas when you've got the online ones which go out, you know, sporadic times and again, you don't know what's going on in that person's life at that moment.

[24:06.0]

You know, that could just come through and land in their email and they just had a really bad meeting and it ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Let's, let's kind of, yeah, it is really dangerous and, and it sends businesses and especially leaders off on a tangent and sometimes in the wrong direction.

[24:23.2]

So you've got to be really careful with the data that you get back in, how it's kind of manipulated and used. And again, that's that piece that where it comes down, it shouldn't just be for at the top. It needs to kind of go all the way through the business because they've got different views of the client, they've got different views of what's happening.

[24:41.6]

So it's, it's really important. So there's, there's an intersection I think with account management or key account management in the say the other thing that high performing businesses have that I see is that they've analysed their client base and recognised who their key clients are or should be.

[25:00.0]

And that, there's a couple of key facets to it. One, there's proper sponsorship of that CAM programme, but also of the client voice and CRM. So we. We find the biggest defining factor in the growth trajectory of clients that I work with is sponsorship.

[25:18.2]

Yeah. So I don't. And I have to be very clear with people, so whether. Whether it's, sponsorship of good business, a good marketing plan and, events action, whether it's CAM stuff, client voice capture or bidding, sponsorship of that activity.

[25:35.8]

Super important. If you don't have somebody at the top of the business with their shoulder behind you, which I know you have in your role. Yeah. People don't take it seriously. You don't get the right resources deployed to you and people don't. You don't get the followship. So that sponsorship of it is really key.

[25:54.2]

But having clearly defined owners of an account for the whole business. So even if your business does lots of different things, like yours does PM and Qs and lots of other interesting things, you need one owner, that owns that relationship and they work with others in the business to, you know, have a plan and manage who's talking to and who's doing what and getting and working with you on the feedback.

[26:19.5]

But you do need a very clear ownership of the account and that helps when you get that feedback back from the client that's not so good or things to focus on. Yeah. It's their job to take that on and deliver against that action. Because you're absolutely. That key point that you make.

[26:35.7]

There's no point doing any of this if you're not going to take action off the back of it. In fact, you will be in a worse position. And I've got a client that's done this. They pay a marketing agency a load of money to come and do a client voice programme once every two years and then they've done it three times in a row and not taken any action on any of the feedback they've had.

[26:54.5]

And then they wonder why the client's still upset as anything. Yeah. And that's the worst thing. I mean, for me, you know, we carry out the kind of client listening annually. So I, you know, at the moment I'm kind of doing those interviews, so I would go back and see a client again.

[27:13.9]

And the worst thing in the world for me and for the business is if I go back after a Year Go. Right. Okay. Last time you mentioned this, this and this. You know, what's. What's the update on that? Everything's still the same. You know, I might as well just walk out the room at that point.

[27:31.6]

So it is. It's something that needs to be be done, but then also something that just popped into my mind then when you said about the kind of sponsorship, which is very, very, very important. But what's. And this. And again, I'm talking from experience with this.

[27:46.6]

Is this area. Customer, relationship management, customer satisfaction, all that is always the first area to go when businesses are cutting back. Or when there's a recession or there's something going on, you know, rumbling on.

[28:02.2]

It's always the first place where it gets cut, which has always blown my mind. Because that is the one time, the absolute key point. You need to be listening to your clients into understanding what's going on, how things are affecting their business and all the rest of it.

[28:20.6]

But ironically, like I said, I'm talking from direct experience. It's always been the CRM or, the client listening that's been cut in the first instance, which is nuts. It really is, because you're absolutely bang on.

[28:40.3]

Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? It's one of those sort of misconceptions when people are, you know, senior people are under pressure, to make change, to hit some numbers and things. When I just look at things in a spreadsheet, it's. It's easy to make wrong decisions, isn't it? Yeah. And fear. There's a king, isn't it?

[28:57.5]

And it's kind of like. Well, actually, you know, there's a lot of stuff. And that comes back to the getting this right, you know, and the continual development of CRM and client listening. You know, it's not. You create something and then that's it.

[29:13.1]

And it works forever. It doesn't. You've got to keep on adapting, got to keep on learning. You know, you will make mistakes and be okay with them as long as you learn. And then just understanding your client. It's so important.

[29:29.7]

So, so important. Well, it is. I mean, it factors into another key part of Canva. Just generally, what I'm finding in B2B. B2G stuff these days, you've got to be relentlessly focused on the value that you create for your clients.

[29:46.0]

Yeah. If you focus almost solely, but certainly, a lot on that, you can't go too far wrong because ultimately you're just asking as A business to take a share of that value that you create for them. The more you can do that and so you can eventually get yourself into a place and I have the mindset of that.

[30:07.3]

I can't allow myself to have competitive competitors. I, I have to create so much more value for my clients that it's indisputable. So we went for a really. We, we've just, it's just finished. We've just lost a bid writing tender for a big client recently.

[30:26.8]

Which I came out to my shed and spent hours figuring out how on earth that could have happened. And there was some miscommunication and. But there was some learning points for us. But we had an 18 month span where I didn't lose a single competitive pitch for bid writing training alone, let alone capture.

[30:43.0]

And the stuff I'm even better known for. And it's because, you know, we've invested heavily in learning about proper learning and development. So we don't just do structured learning, we do other things across social and on the job learning. Much more valuable. And I can teach not just bidding, but capture and can and marketing.

[31:04.5]

And we own a marketing agency and strategy so we can join the dots all the way through this stuff. And I know my mate Kirsty and I can talk to her about CRM and the client voice, the CX bit at the end as well. So that creates a lot more value in those two dynamics. And we're doing a whole rebrand and all of that kind of stuff that's due out in August, in October.

[31:25.1]

So maybe before this episode goes out actually. But so people will see. But it's about that power that that brings. But that the client listening part has been really painful in that as we've been experimenting, testing things with clients, we have made some mistakes along the way.

[31:45.1]

Some people aren't ready for it. You know, they just want a bid writing course. Because they're losing bids or whatever. And so, you know that it's been really critical to continually tweak our content and our approach. The language we use, the way that we engage with clients, the technology that we use, you know, is it zoom or is it teams?

[32:06.5]

You know, did our. We've got a 360 meeting owl thing that's like a 360 camera and speaker that we use for hybrid calls. Has that worked? How did people find the experience? And you know, some things have worked for some people, some things haven't.

[32:23.2]

So we're. It's been so important to keep us out front of our competition. But by the way, I'm against competitors that have been in the game 15 years, three times longer than me. Yeah. So I'm on the catch up all the time. I don't have the alumni they have, I don't have the scale of marketing engine they have.

[32:42.6]

So I can't afford to lose clients. Yeah, I have to. And what they've been really good at over the years is retaining clients and looking after clients. And so I have to be magnificent at that. And so it's part of the reason for reaching out because I needed to be reminded of this stuff and not take it all personally.

[33:00.9]

You know, I've had some really, we do loads of great work, but as I said, if you're going to train 100 people in a programme over a few sessions, one person's going to think it's rubbish. And yeah, you know, and I've lashed out. Keyboard warrior thing and I've taken it personally and the wife's had to give me a cuddle and all that kind of thing, when actually it's just all part of life.

[33:23.0]

But the more important bit was talking to the right senior client people and getting the real feedback on how we would do things differently next time and then make sure that rolls into how we deliver the service next time around for someone else or indeed for them. So it's been really a key part of our success.

[33:40.7]

But it's not fun all the time. But it's. You just have to recognise it's really important. Yeah. Which it is. So one last thing that I've seen, that we used to do together and I've seen high performing businesses, is a league table of your key accounts then.

[34:00.9]

So if you've got 20 top clients in the business, do you have some KPIs, some super KPIs on those clients? Five, three to five things, you know, your current margin with the client, but your net promoter score from your last, feedback with them.

[34:19.3]

The amount of time that's passed since that last feedback interview. Do you have a key account plan and the amount of time that's passed since that was done. And do you, have you done an annual report to that client where you do a six slide presentation? You know, what's not gone so well? What's gone well, what we're going to do in the future, all of that kind of stuff and then put that in a league table to.

[34:39.8]

Because everyone's a bit competitive, particularly accountable Types and you know, so bait them in effect that they're in the lower half of the table or whatever. Again, it feels to me like you're going to say you hate that idea. But I've seen it. I don't hate that idea.

[34:56.6]

I think it has a place and, and we, I've not kind of brought that in to GLEDS yet. And it is something that I would do but again it's making sure that those measures, it's not just turning into a tick box exercise like you kind of mentioned you can do as your CRM plan up to date.

[35:19.8]

Well, everyone can quickly go in and pull together the CRM plan and bung it into wherever it needs to go to get that green on the dashboard. But what you actually need to happen is that people are using that CRM plan. It's going to the right people and it's being actioned and it's having an impact.

[35:37.7]

And then, so maybe it's not about doing the CRM plan that should be the measure. It should be something to do with the outputs from doing that CRM plan. Same with the annual review. I think all these things are important to do and I think they all improve CRM and the relationships and they have a benefit to the client and to the business.

[35:58.3]

But it's getting that measure right. Again, you know, it's, and it's a difficult one because you have different anomalies like customer satisfaction for example. You know, you can kind of do a KPI on that and more often than not it's the score, which we've already talked about.

[36:15.9]

So it should be about it being done rather than the score itself. And you know, so it's, it's just kind of tweaking them to make sure that there's something in there that's, that's going to make a difference because that's what it's all about, making a difference from learning.

[36:32.4]

And I keep saying it, learning, learning, learning, you know, know understanding what the client wants, needs, and work with your clients to understand. You know, again, you know, if you're going to put the league table together, why does it have to be that the business knows everything that it needs to be so actually speak to the client because I know when that league table was kind of live and going, some clients didn't want to have someone create a CRM plan or you know, they didn't want those kind of things.

[37:03.0]

So, so it didn't necessarily work for them. So again, in that, you know, when I mentioned about the journey that I'm currently on at the moment and doing that research piece and really understanding what works well for us as a business and for the client. It's about that listening piece there.

[37:18.0]

Well, you know, would it help if we were targeted against doing a CRM plan for you and we kind of, you know, the client probably like, no, actually I don't want to do that. And we did get pushback from those things. Like, well, actually I don't want to do a customer satisfaction satisfaction survey. So then you're in, you're on red on the lead table.

[37:35.5]

Or someone, someone gave me an annual plan. Not really that interested. I'm more interested in time, cost, quality and what's going on, in the next six months on the project. So you know, again, it's, it's just what works for clients. One size doesn't fit all.

[37:50.6]

But where can you get that kind of broad baseline, you know, of things? No, I can, I agree with that. But it's all about again, building on that competitive, competitors thing. What we're trying to get to in a B2B B2G environment is to become the client's trusted advisor ultimately and partner.

[38:13.6]

And particularly with your key accounts. If you're going down a full blown CAM approach, you are looking to get to a place where you co solution with them. You're in partnership, developing solutions and service. So they're just negotiating work with you. But you become, you know, a valuable bit of the furniture, as it were.

[38:31.1]

So again, this whole listing piece is so important to that because you can't do it without it really. They're not always going to be as close as the relationships that you zipper and you build are. You do need someone to go and health check it once every six. You do. And yeah, and I think it is really important.

[38:49.8]

I mean I'm. Like I said, I'm at the moment, I'm kind of doing the interviews for Glee, just while we kind of set this up and get it up and running. And so I'm in front of our clients again, which is great. And then I absolutely love. But the fact that I'm impartial even though I work in the company is, it's huge.

[39:09.0]

And you know, I've had kind of feedback back from our clients recently, unsolicited whether, you know, they've really enjoyed the process. First of all, because we've changed the questioning because we've made it so that it's not getting them to tell us what we want to hear. You know, so they're finding it quite cathartic.

[39:26.3]

They find a date, you know, that they're then kind of thinking back about things which they hadn't thought about for a while because they're so involved in the project or their day to day. So it kind of allows them to step out. You know, I'm going there to just listen.

[39:42.4]

I'm not going there to sell. I'm not going to cross sell anything. I'm not trying to do anything else purely listen, learn and feedback and make improvements to the business which, you know, they obviously like us as a business because they're using us. So it just works.

[39:57.9]

It's not, it's not witchcraft, it's just pairing. And, you know, we said we wasn't going to kind of talk about Gleeds too much, but just at the very beginning, when you did kind of say about Gleeds and things that they're doing particularly well at the moment is they are a client centric business and that is key.

[40:18.4]

You know, they've been, they've had clients with, who've been with them for years and years and they care. It's a culture and that. And that's why I'm there. Because, you know, as I've alluded to, I'm an empath, I'm a carer and that's the, that's what you need. So, you know, it's massive.

[40:33.7]

Just giving the clients that impartiality and, a chance to kind of speak without any kind of fear of repercussions in terms of, you know, it's not someone who's on the project who's going to get defensive about it. It's. It's just massive and, and it's something that people really do overlook.

[40:54.2]

There should be more Kirsty's out there doing this for businesses. There should. Well, that nicely segues us. I'm just conscious of time because we've rattled on, we've had a great old chat. So, we had a couple of questions, the final questions to ask about where do we normally find companies in terms of their maturity with this stuff?

[41:11.9]

And then which the. The short answer is is fairly low, I. E. They're not, they're not really doing it or if they're doing it, it's fairly clunky. So what are the sorts of steps that they should take to improve? I think just one bit to round off the conversation we've had though. The other thing for the Bidding because a large part of our audience of bid managers, bid writers, bidding professionals, etc, a fantastic opportunity with this is to get those great client quotes out of this.

[41:40.2]

Yeah, insight. And to put those into your bid content library to get those into your bids and all that sort of stuff. So get the client to sign off, you can use those quotes, that kind of thing. It's just a handy little thing to have. And it's also obviously very handy to know if a client's upset with you before you go and put a case study in or a reference from them, etc.

[41:58.9]

So make sure whoever your Kirsty is, that you're best mates with them because you want her to tip you off if you're about to bid something and you know which clients are happy, which ones are unhappy. That's actually a really important thing. There's nothing worse than putting a client's name into a bid and they hate your guts or whatever.

[42:14.1]

So yeah, that's the toxics. Yeah, and it is a really toxic because again, you know, I don't go into our client, listing meetings to get quotes but then obviously when I come out of them and this is part of that closing the loop piece as well.

[42:29.1]

And again, any of any of the clients that I've seen will listen to this and we'll know this process. But you know, I will email them afterwards. We have a follow up and I'm, you know, checking that anything that's been raised has been kind of dealt with and stuff. And then there is a. And by the way you mentioned or you gave these great quotes, are you happy for them to use them internally, externally and more often than not then they do.

[42:53.6]

And it is a very powerful way of getting quotes that are from the heart, I would say, because they're set in an environment where it's not. Come on, give me a quote. You are very good. But you know, so it's, it's quotes that I can see would have an impact and, and you know, I've seen that in the last couple of weeks where one particular quote we had from a client was just explosively amazing.

[43:20.6]

Is that even a word? It was brilliant. And you know, and I sent out to the top and was like, look at this. And it was brilliant. So. And those are the kind of the real nuggets that you can get out of doing client listening properly. Okay, so, just to round off then to summarise, I guess so if you're in a business that doesn't really do this stuff yet or is a bit immature in it.

[43:43.5]

Go and get yourself a sponsor who's going to back the implementation of proper CRM. It's not an IT system, it's a way of life client centric culture. So as part of your transformation, focus on the benefits case behind it, the culture and behaviours you need around it.

[44:01.5]

And then the technology bit is just an enabler to do that. Absolutely. It just, it just harnesses all the good stuff that you're doing already. That's what it is, it just harnesses it all. Yeah. So then select, work with the business to select your, you know, the proportion of clients.

[44:18.1]

Use the 8020 rule. Yeah. Who, who are the 20% of your clients that deliver 80% of your margin or will deliver 80 of your margin in the future? Focus on them first. Go and do some in person stuff. Build yourself a net promoter based questionnaire model to work through.

[44:35.7]

But I think your top tip which was fascinating was be fearless and ask questions that are challenging. Yes. Get that fearless feedback. So that's, that's a top tip and be consistent in how you do that. But just think through and listen to those clients about how they want to engage in this and the value that they get out of it.

[44:55.3]

And ultimately this is about, becoming a trusted advisor and a partner to your clients, and how you are going to create more and more value for them and then you can't go too far wrong. Excellent. Okay, thank you very much Kirsty. You're very welcome.

[45:11.0]

So I think we've covered everything. So because I'm just conscious I've only got 30 seconds or so left I think with you. So, where can people find you on LinkedIn? Yes, I'm on LinkedIn. It's Kirsty Collins. So C O double L I N. I'm only saying that because generally people have the S on the end of it.

[45:28.1]

So I'm Kirsty Colin. Yeah, no worries. And so if they just search Kirsty Colling Gleeds, they will find you. So I do advise doing that because she's a fascinating lady and you also have another life that we can talk about another time in terms of mental health. And good work that you do.

[45:43.9]

So lovely to see you. Thank you very much for coming on. Really valuable conversation. I think people will take a lot from it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. Asking me in the first place. It's been great. No worries.