Know your market & your resources

Find who your best clients and resources are, which clients are new or inactive, and which resources are underperforming

Lesson #46
Inquiry – Marketing Inquiry function

Know where your business is coming from and which resources are your most valuable assets. Discover problems, such as inactive clients, to deal with proactively, such as sending them reminder cards.

Client-focused inquiries

Evaluate clients on a firm or contact level in terms of jobs scheduled and revenue generated. Review new client entries and check for duplicate entries. View individual clients’ details. Then use this information for more targeted marketing efforts.

When you start using RB9 review new firm and contact entries for errors or actions to take. Then periodically review new clients within a range of dates to acquaint yourself with them. You can also use these reviews as a form of quality control, especially if you allow resources to enter new firms and contacts when they turn in jobs through RB Connect to check that they’re not a duplicate entry.

As clients schedule jobs and you invoice them, you can use other filters in Marketing Inquiry to find out more about your clients and tailor your marketing efforts.

Find your best clients by firm or contact in terms of most jobs scheduled or most revenue generated within a date range. You can include or exclude copy sales in revenue generated. Including copy sales gives you an overall view of your real top revenue-generating firms and contacts because it’s not only including their invoices, but any other invoices posted for the jobs they schedule with you. You can also search by ordering client, usually lawyers, or scheduling contact, usually secretaries and paralegals.

Find inactive clients by searching for which firms or contacts have not scheduled any jobs during a range of dates as compared to the year prior. Seeing who fell off the calendar gives you a list of clients to contact and see if there are any services you can provide for them.

You can also search to see which clients generated no revenue with you within the date range searched as compared to the exact same time period in the prior year. If a client appears in the results, it means they had at least one invoice posted between the dates searched for the previous year.

When searching for clients to market to you can exclude any firms or contacts that have requested that you do not market to them.

If you searched for firms the listings in the results includes firm name and address. If you searched for contacts the listings in the results includes contact name, firm they work at, address, phone numbers, email, and the email’s category in the contact’s listing. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB9 will revert back to the default order).

Use the email category for further targeting your marketing. For example if you want to offer a limited time discount for paying invoices early, you can generate your list for Accounting email notifications only then select the contacts in the list with an accounting email address.

Export the results as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use to create reports in other applications. If you see any incorrect or missing information in the listings, you can update entities directly from their listings.

Print envelopes and labels from Marketing Inquiry results for your targeted marketing efforts. For example generate labels for holiday gifts to your best clients.

Resource-focused inquiries

Find new hires, top producing resources, non-performing resources, and top commission-earning resources. Queries run in this section will give you an idea of which resources are assigned to the most jobs and earning the most money. You’ll also be able to run queries on the opposite end of the spectrum as well, comparing those resources that are not assigned to jobs and not earning money.

Find resources added during a particular time period. Review each new resource’s details to check for errors. Print envelopes or labels for sending welcome cards or new employee packages.

Find your best resources by searching for who had the most assignments or earned the most income during a particular time period.

Find resources that received the highest commissions from their own clients/assigned cases (AKA Client Of resources) or sales representatives that earned the highest commissions during a particular time period. You can include or exclude copy sales in commissions generated. Including copy sales gives you an overall view of your real top commissions-generating resources because it’s not only including their clients’ invoices, but any other invoices posted for their clients’ jobs they schedule with you.

Find resources that had no assignments during a particular time period but were assigned to jobs for the same time period in the previous year. Find resources that did not get paid by closing payroll in RB9 in a particular time period but did get paid during the same time period in the previous year.

The listings in the results includes resource name, address, type of resource, email, and the email’s category in the resource’s listing. You can sort your results in the grid by one or more columns in ascending or descending order (but when you exit the function, RB9 will revert back to the default order).

In all resource queries you can view and update details of any individual resource listed. Print envelopes and labels from inquiry results. Export the results as an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) file to save, print, share, or use to create reports in other applications.

NOTE: This is an RB9-only function. It is not included in RB Lite.

TL;DR: Lists clients or resources in a range of categories, so you can see who your best clients and resources are, review new client and resource entries, find your highest commissioned resources, see which clients are inactive and need marketing to, and which resources are underperforming, so you can address any issues. Print envelopes and labels from inquiry results. 

RB concepts in this lesson

Client Of: Resource that receives a commission for jobs their clients scheduled or that are part of a case the resource was designated as the Client Of resource. You can also give reporters right of first refusal on their clients/cases’ jobs by displaying unassigned jobs from their clients/cases in Resource-side online calendars in RB Connect.

Contact: Person who works for a firm you do business with.

Firm: Business you provide services to, usually law firms.

RB Connect: Online repository, calendar, and access to your office for clients and resources. More >

Resource: Person or thing that provides your business with a service, such as a reporter.

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