After many months of consideration and research, you purchased a new CRM system. You were optimistic that many of the operational issues your firm had been facing would disappear and things would never fall through the cracks again. However, six months into the deployment you’re not receiving the benefits you had hoped. Sure, you have noticed some improvements, but the workflow efficiencies have not materialized. Did you just spend thousands of dollars in out-of pocket expenses and opportunity cost for what seems to be a glorified Rolodex?

This is a common scenario among advisors that we see all the time. Let’s start with the basics. What is CRM? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM is not a technology or a piece of software; rather, it is a business strategy that can be enabled or assisted by adopting technology. Like any business strategy, the results are only as good as the quality of the execution.

In the financial advisory space, CRM is a strategy to deliver a consistent and high-quality financial advisory experience to all of your clients. It is also designed to deliver an effective relationship development experience to prospects. However, in order to drive a CRM-based business strategy, you need to have a well-defined client service model or models. The operative phrase is “well-defined.”

I have yet to find two advisors that have the exact same definition of well-defined. For the purpose of CRM, well-defined means that the processes and tasks are defined at a level of specificity and granularity that when specific tasks or meetings are triggered, everyone involved in completing the tasks is totally clear on what they need to do and when, and they understand the dependencies within the overall process.

Following are four simple (but not easy) steps you can use to effectively implement a CRM business strategy:

Step One: Develop a clear purpose and vision as to why you want to deliver a consistent client experience to your clients, and why using technology tools will assist in enabling that. If you don’t know the results you’re hoping to achieve, then it is impossible to create a plan that will take you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow. Create a “vision story.” Actually write a story on what your client service model will look like with the perfect CRM strategy fully implemented. Envision how your clients will benefit. Imagine how you and your staff will use CRM to increase efficiencies, eliminate bottlenecks, automate tasks, and free up time to spend with clients.

Step Two: Define your client service models. Conduct a workshop where you gather all of the relevant employees in your practice together to discuss what the client service experience is today and what it should be tomorrow. Share your vision and make sure to ask questions of your staff so you clearly understand their vision. Use a large wall chart to diagram how the client experience should flow and what the specific meetings, processes, and tasks are that will enable this experience to occur.

Step Three: Refine, validate, and detail the content from the workshop. Make sure that everyone is in general agreement on what meetings, processes, and tasks should occur for each service model. For example, when you bring on a new client, does everyone in the firm do the same thing, every time? When preparing for a client annual review meeting, does every advisor follow the same process and produce a consistent report, meeting agenda, and summary letter? Spend time with the people who are responsible for each task and understand what triggers each element.

Step Four: Once you have clearly defined the business strategy and what it will look like on paper (or the computer screen) you are ready to implement it using your CRM technology. The important point is not to put the CRM technology in front of the business strategy or assume that because everyone is trained on the new CRM system that they understand how to use it to deliver the practice’s client service model. Remember—people first! Make sure everyone on your team is fully trained on how to use the workflow capabilities of your CRM system. Then make sure everyone understands their role in performing workflow-related tasks in CRM, and how it will help the firm achieve its objectives.

Placing your emphasis on improving your processes, and getting all of the key users’ input in the process, greatly increases the probability that your CRM system will yield the business benefits you intended.