Effective Key Client programs can be the defining factor to the overall success of a firm. 

In this episode, we delve into the world of Key Client programs and their significance in driving business growth. We have the privilege of speaking with Michelle Murray, an experienced professional who has written the playbook for implementing successful Key Client programs. 

Michelle joins James Barclay to share her expertise as an LMA President, Global BD Director, CMO, and Strategic Projects Director, as we explore the critical aspects of Key Client programs and learn valuable insights from Michelle's wealth of experience.

In this conversation, Michelle and James explore: 

• How to describe and introduce a Key Client program to a firm
• The key steps involved in launching a successful Key Client Program
• What an effective Key Client program looks like, and how to assemble the participants
• How to determine the level of service provided in a Key Client program
• How to build consensus within the firm for a Key Client program, and how to allocate resources
• The most common mistakes firms make when implementing Key Client programs
• The key metrics to measure the success of a Key Client program
• Advice to others looking to create a successful Key Client program 

Transcription: 

James: Hi, my name is James Barclay and I head up Passle here in the US. Today, we're gonna be talking about key client programs and what your firm needs to know. It's often a small number of very influential clients that impact the overall success of a law firm. Top firms and their marketing leaders have recognized this and are implementing key client programs to secure and grow the revenue from their most valuable clientele.

We're lucky today to be able to explore these key client programs and how to make them successful with someone who has literally written the playbook.

Michelle Murray has experience as LMA president, Global Business Development Director, CMO and recently as a Strategic Projects Director in charge of a leading Key Client program at one of the world's leading law firms who better then to talk to about this critical topic.

Welcome to the CMO series, Michelle.

Michelle: Hi, James. Thanks so much for having me today. 

James: Oh, it's great. So we're gonna kick straight into some questions. We're gonna talk about key client programs and then we're gonna do a quick fire round. So just to kick off for those listening they probably know what a key client program is. But how do you describe and introduce it to a firm?

Michelle: You know, I do it pretty simply, I think, first of all, because I think that's the most direct way to get attention from leadership, which is to explain to them that key client programs really build the foundation for a better client experience which will increase profitability for their firm. And when they understand that I follow up by saying it's a mutually beneficial program where it's a partnership between the firm and the client where we are providing A+ client service and the client is providing us revenues.

James: Yeah, may as well start from the start because I know you've set up a few of these, what are the key steps to launching that key client program? What do you do first?

Michelle: Well, you wanna launch the program, you're gonna wanna define what the metrics will be, first of all, for inclusion of the clients because you have to imagine every partner believes their clients are the most important and therefore should be part of the program. And that's every marketer is gonna run into that. So you're going to have to have very specific metrics, whether that's revenue metrics, perhaps it's longevity of the relationship. I always include a White Space analysis which will determine what the growth possibilities are. Because I think that, that's really what the purpose of this is, right? Expanding the your existing relationships because those are the clients that will eventually, if you're already doing great work with them, they're gonna also be your greatest promoters and refers.

And then also part of that is determining what resources across the firm will be committed to the key client program and defining um the number of clients to be included in the program. Like, don't bite off more than you can chew including too many clients at the launch will be a drain on resources and honestly a surefire way to fail.

James: Yeah. And I guess it's, I mean, that's a fundamental thing, isn't it? I just think of the politics within a law firm, you have to be able to put metrics in there that you can argue the ideas and the concepts as opposed to the personalities.

Michelle: That's exactly right and metrics and we're gonna talk about that a little bit later. I mean, metrics, understanding and measuring those KPIs will be really important to determining the success of the program.

James: And assembling the participants. So key are growth, size of client, I guess, is there anything that's a surprising one that you always put in?

Michelle: Well, listen, I'll tell you so successful key client programs start with… it isn't just the business development person saying this is how it has to be. You really have to have a defined clear vision that comes out of the strategic plan from the firm, right? And when you want to assemble that group of people who will be part of it, the participants, you really need to look at putting together a diverse team with a range of skill sets and experience.

And that's gonna include, you know, your most commercial partners at the firm. And it may include some associates that are kind of senior associates ready to make partner because they may have contacts that you know, you're not aware of perhaps that's alumni or otherwise a client. You're going to want business development professionals to be part of that team and any industry experts that might be within the firm that understand your client's business. And I mean, once you've defined what those clients are and I don't know, you can pick a number. I don't care if it's 10, 20, 25…

James: I was going to ask you, what's your magic number? Do you have one?

Michelle:  I will tell you, I think that it depends on your resources, James. It's really about what the firm, it depends. I would say three things. It's gonna depend on the size of the firm, the size of their footprint and the amount of resources the firm is willing to dedicate to it. I think that's what it comes down to budget and resources. Once you've found out what they're willing to give you, the management team is willing to give you, then you almost have to work around that and make sure that you are looking then at, you know, you can look at revenue from existing clients, but that's a backward-looking metric, right? It's a good metric to use. I mean, that's kind of the starting point for most people, but I think you start with that and you really need to look and dig into what are the industry issues facing these clients, right? And how does your firm solve those problems, and can they? And then the next step would be doing what I mentioned to you, this white space analysis, which is looking at all the services your firm provides across the various practices and where you're currently and where your existing client has that need and where you're providing the need.

James: Yeah, I guess for, for the Senior Management committee, essentially, what they're doing is laying a bet, right? And you know, they're taking a bunch of investment and saying, OK, we're gonna spend this money, we're gonna put these resources in because it's gonna make this kind of return. So how do you determine that level of service?

Michelle: So service, listen, that's a one-fits-one mat metric. I mean, there will be people who say, oh you're and people will stand up programs where everybody gets the same you really can't do that because no client is the same and by the way, what they need and or want is also going to be different. You so you really want to develop a tailored service model that meets your client's unique needs, preferences and budget. And I use the word budget. What I mean by that is, I remember when I first started at a firm and there was a client who said, actually we were meeting with the client and their outside counsel management person and the outside counsel management person said ‘You haven't given us any secondees” and I said, “Yes, I know.” And he's like, “But other firms give us secondees.” And I said, “I suppose other firms also get x amount of revenue from you” and he stopped for a second. And I think that what happens is sometimes the client forgets that there really is an expense to giving these whatever the resources, whether it's to or trainings thought leadership, whatever, you know, value add pieces. And they forget that this is a partnership. They need to be part of the, you know, coming along with you on this. And so if you define them as a key client, but they don't define you as a key partner. That's gonna be a problem.

James: Absolutely. And I guess kind of the understanding, that was gonna be my question next was, you know, how do you build that consensus for that key client program and how to resource it including when it comes to secondees because obviously the law firm is, and this is me being kind of simple about it, but the law firm's paying the wages, the salaries for the lawyer. So that's a stack of money. But it's also the opportunity cost, I guess of what that lawyer could be doing if they weren't on secondment.

Michelle: Oh, that's exactly right. And I mean, listen, I've worked in AMLaw 100 firms for the last, nearly a decade and I will say that, you know, first of all, we all know what the scale is for, what these lawyers get paid plus their bonus schedule, plus their benefits. Plus then it's the cost of not being able to build them to another client. So it's a significant investment if you send a secondee. And I think it's really important for anyone who's even just forgotten about the key client programs when you are filling out a panel response for any particular client. And they ask you, “Will, you give us secondees?” and I mean, almost everybody says, “Yes, of course.” I think they really need to think about what that looks like and what that costs. And I have in my most recent position, I really paired that back to, “We will give you two secondees that are, you know, for three months or, you know, one secondee for a year.” You know what I'm saying? Like making sure that everyone really clearly defined what that time period was because it only makes them angry. You're only going to hurt yourself with your key clients, if you don't communicate well, what your expectations and what they're, you know, to match their expectations.

James: And that must take some negotiation internally.

Michelle: Oh, it's a tremendous amount of negotiation internally. And I will tell you, it's really, really important to make sure that if you're going to stand up a key client program that leadership is truly behind it. And the proof in the pudding on that is if they put together a budget that will not affect the individual practices. So for example, the goal of a key client program is to expand your relationship and do work in a variety of different practices. And you may get the bulk of your work from, I don't know, litigation, but the client may need a corporate secondee. So if you're giving the secondee from the corporate division, you need to be able to have a budget up at the top of the house that's going to take on that expense. And there's gotta be a way for everyone on the team, the client team at the law firm to share in the profit of this particular client. So you really need to create a team that is professionals across the firm. Lawyers from different geographies and practices. And they all need to be working together to understand that this is a key client and a rising tide, lifts all ships.

James: Absolutely. And it's in their interest and I guess the other thing there, which must be quite interesting from your perspective, is that you could probably tell those key clients things that the lawyer finds difficult.

Michelle: Yes. Absolutely. And listen, I often 

James: You were bad cop were you? 

Michelle: I was very often the bad cop, I’m like listen, that just doesn’t work!

James: Because the lawyers are really keen to help, they're really keen to sort the challenges they really want to help on the legal side, but they might not like the kind of more negotiation side of, okay this is what we can offer you because I'm guessing lawyers tend to want to say yes.

Michelle: Of course. And listen, we all want to say yes. We all want to be the good cop in the matter. But the truth is the relationship partner is meant is there and it might be multiple partners, by the way, is there to build and forge this strong relationship with the client. They're really there to understand the client’s business, be their advisor, not just on legal matters, but on like business solutions, right? And so then they can come to us and say, listen, you know, I need you to handle this work with their outside counsel. And I will tell you many, whether it's financial institutions, or corporations, they are standing up their own what they call outside counsel management teams. And so it becomes a business professional to business professional conversation and the lawyers on both sides get to step back and be able to, you know, kind of continue that relationship without dealing with the nonsense.

James: Yeah. And that’s the thing you bring to it is the literally the business part of that business.

Michelle: James also, it's really important for the business development team at a law firm to work with the other professional services teams in their firm to create, I would call like service team, a client service team for each one of the clients. It's usually broken down by maybe level of service that you're giving, maybe you have a top 10, you know, group and they have a specific level of things that they're getting. But you are working with people in your revenue team, whether that's on your billing and collections, whether it's your conflicts team, on-boarding, you bring on, the lateral lawyers and you've got to work through conflicts and it might be a key client that's coming over because of the size of value of the revenue that this new lateral is bringing on.There are IT security audits that go on constantly behind the scenes that nobody knows about right or nobody wants to know about it. D&I and professional development teams, all of these are people that you want to bring to the table as a resource to your clients. Clients want to have a go-to person and often that will be either the relationship partner, depending on the culture of the firm or the person who oversees the key client relationship program in the business development department. That was my role in my previous firm where I was the key point person to handle any issues and inquiries. But success is really, I have really found tremendous success in building these teams of people that you work with because if you can get your internal various departments to work with you to provide better service overall, whether that's in the form of a faster turnaround time or resource and knowledge sharing, it only benefits the client. Having to say, “I'm so sorry, you're in the queue and you know, we'll get to you by, you know, next July”. Like that's not gonna fly. How is that a partnership, right?

James: Yeah. And every touch point is what you get judged on. It's not just the legal advice, it's how you build, how you, as you say, the interaction. And I suppose that brings me to my next question, which is what have you seen or what do you think are the biggest mistakes firms make when it comes to a key client program? What's your kind of top three? I suppose, biggest mistakes that you, you know, you need to avoid?

Michelle: Not determining the KPIs ahead of time that will define success of the program. That's the biggest mistake because a lot of times you stand it up and you, they think that revenue growth is the only KPI, but the client doesn't think that. So you really need to start with a client feedback interview so that you know how they define success. Then the second thing is measuring those on a regular basis. So whether you're doing that through post matter surveys, doing your firm-to-firm meetings semi-annually, annually to ensure that the client needs are being met. And honestly, because look, the partners need to hear positive feedback. They need to know that the work they're doing is being well received from the client. And I say this in the sense of because they're gonna share this with management, right? It isn't just the outcomes. They know that when they do good work as a lawyer whether it's a, you know, they won a litigation or the or the matter was a huge success financially in a corporate matter. That's a big win on that piece of it. But knowing that the law firm has helped a client to develop, maybe they are creating a new professional development recruitment program or they're doing some kind of charitable work and you're working with them on a pro bono matter or you're partnering with them on diversity and conclusion programming, those types of things, if those are important to the client, they're going to tell you that in your annual feedback and then you get to elevate that to leadership and say these are the things that matter to our clients, this is the revenue growth we've seen year over year and here's the budget we need for next year because you're always going to have to justify the budget expense and then follow through. Lawyers get busy and the regular check-ins go by the wayside. So having business development professionals that guide this program and help track these KPIs is really, really important.

James: Yeah, I get it because actually obviously you get judged on your legal work but sometimes it's the little things that are most important.

Michelle: Yep, it's the touch points, the email that's sent, it's got a bit of information they didn't ask for. Yeah. Okay.

Michelle: Right. So, I mean, working with your clients on their own department goals and budgets measuring your firm's performance based on our ability to help our clients meet those goals. That's, I mean, that's really when you're getting in the foxhole with them. And when you're in the foxhole with them. You're gonna be their first call because they know there are no less than a dozen law firms that are all the very best in a particular area. There is no very best. Don't kid yourself. So you're in the pack and you're always trying to differentiate yourself a key client program at the end of the day. That's all about differentiation. So you, you have the ability to do the service. They know that you've hired these fantastic associates out of great law schools. You've trained them up, and you're known in the marketplace for XYZ. But then what else, what else is gonna put you in front of them on a regular basis? It's all these various value add things that you do within this key client program that keeps you top of mind and then making sure that you're doing that regular check-in, you know, understanding what the team metrics are for intern, only listen at the law firm. It's an expansion of revenue and expansion of the number of team members and practice areas you're serving them in, right? And then tracking that data metric, whether that's fees collected year over year or collected by practice or matter or even by lawyer. And I will say understanding within a key client understanding who serves them the bulk of it because there's gonna probably be, if you've done this right, and you've been doing it for years, there's gonna be a variety of touch points in a variety of different practices. So you may have five different lawyers serving a particular client and partners with really big numbers attached to them, right? So the fees, that's the look back. Okay. Now what happens when a lawyer leaves your firm and goes to another firm? And we all live in this lateral baseball market where, you know, new lawyers coming in, lawyers leaving every firm is dealing with this understanding what the revenues were by that lawyer in that particular practice. And having been tracking that data will tell you, OK, we need to go and have a conversation about XYZ and, or hey, we've never gotten work in this particular area probably because we, they didn't think we had enough expertise. We need to go and sit with our client and tell them we have this great, you know, new lawyer who just joined us, who has this expertise and this team behind them to help serve them.

James: Absolutely. I completely understand and that is your role of orchestrating all of that effort and orchestrating all that feedback and preparing for what's down the road for that client relationship so that you can, you can get the very most for the client which ultimately then leads to the very most for yourselves. Absolutely. That's fantastic. Thank you so much. I've learned an awful lot from our quick chat there. Now we're gonna, we're gonna move on to our CMO series, we always do a quick fire round. So  I'm just gonna ask you a few questions and just there should be short sharp answers. So the first is, what's your favorite business and non-business book?

Michelle: Business book is Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. It's a great lesson in the power of your network in paying it forward. The non-business book, I'm gonna say Little Women. I liked it when I was a kid and I liked it as an adult.

James: Fantastic. What was your first job? 

Michelle: Ah. Well, other than babysitting, the first job I got paid for was I was a waitress at BB Dairy. I was wearing a yellow shirt with a big yellow bumble bee on my shirt. There's a visual for you.

James: So the answer to the next question is what makes you happy is obviously the outfits,but what makes you happy at work?

Michelle: Yeah. You know what, helping people succeed. Whether that's like winning new work from a client or creating a solution into a problem. It's like this grand satisfaction from like, yeah, that happened and I got to be a little piece of that.

James: Yeah. And what are you listening to at the moment? Podcast, music, audiobook?

Michelle: Well, besides Passle’s CMO Series podcast, of course, I'm a huge country music fan. So whether that's Old Dominion or Morgan Wellen or honestly, when my girls who are around it's me listening to Taylor Swift. We're all swifties in this house.

James: And where's your favorite place to visit, and why?

Michelle: Martha's Vineyard. We go on a family vacation every year for the past nearly 30 years. It's a combination of family time, sea air, beaches and boats, biking, and tennis. A little slice of heaven, James. You gotta get there.

James: I've been there once when I was young and it is beautiful. Yeah, I'll get there one day. And then finally, we always like to just concise pieces of advice, one piece of advice for others taking on a key client program.

Michelle: You know what I would say, it's about fostering a culture of client service throughout the firm and including the entire team and making sure they prioritize the needs of the key clients that you determine are part of the program.

James: And on that we will, we'll finish off. Thank you so much, Michelle Murray. You've been extraordinarily kind to Passle over the years I've known you, you've welcomed us into America. You've helped us grow here and I'm extremely grateful. So, thank you for joining us.

Michelle: Thank you so much for having me today.

James: All right. See you soon. Bye bye.