In this webinar replay, Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara is joined by Monroe Horn from TransformITy Solutions to discuss why Nimble is the best CRM for legal practitioners.
Monroe has over twenty years of experience in legal technology leadership. He’s installed and managed the most popular legal CRM products. As the Principal of TransformITy Solutions, Monroe helps law firms and other professional services organizations use technology to increase efficiencies and drive higher profitability.
Of course, one of the biggest contributors to profitability is sales and marketing. Attorneys and accountants don’t typically think of themselves as salespeople; in reality, they are, as they have a hand in the sales process to drive business.
“What’s different about lawyers and other professional services people is that they are both practitioners and they are also responsible for business development,” says Monroe. Law firms have a unique set of needs in the business development area that are different from those of companies that have a dedicated sales force, and many of the most popular sales and marketing tools don’t meet these specific needs.
That being said, CRM is a tool that is a must-have for legal business development. Building new relationships and keeping track of contacts are key to running a successful legal practice. Lawyers and legal marketers agree that CRM is critical for lawyers because the vast majority of business comes from referrals and relationships.
What do lawyers need from a CRM system?
As mentioned before, law firms have different needs than salespeople. Some of these needs include:
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- Contact management: Easily add new contacts and manage existing contacts everywhere you work
- Tagging & grouping: Organize contacts into segmented lists in order to streamline communication
- Activity tracking: Track past interactions to determine the next steps
- Reminders: Stay in touch with clients to stay top of mind
- Team collaboration: Share contacts and deal information with your team
- Integration with other marketing systems: Collect and transfer data across systems to create a unified system of record
While legal CRMs do exist, they come with a set of drawbacks that make them incompatible with small- to medium-sized law firms. They don’t have cloud capabilities, tend to be over complicated, and are too expensive to implement.
Similarly, other cloud CRMs don’t cater to smaller law firms, either. Nimble’s competitors are built with companies who have dedicated sales teams in mind, with a heavier focus on advertising campaigns and sending out mass emails. This mass-outreach type of approach sacrifices the ability to build and maintain relationships with clients, key aspects of driving sales as a legal professional. These options are also much too expensive, making them inaccessible to small- and medium-sized law firms.
What makes Nimble CRM perfect for law firms?
According to Monroe, Nimble is the best CRM for law firms because it focuses on contacts and relationships, which drive almost all new business for law firms. While Nimble is complete with group email capabilities, it’s built to help its users maintain valuable relationships.
Secondly, Nimble CRM is tightly integrated with Microsoft 365. This means that you can synchronize your contacts automatically, saving lawyers time and energy that they can then put back into their practice. Additionally, Nimble also tracks activities including email interactions, calendar events, and deal information associated with all your contacts.
The third reason why Nimble is perfect CRM system for modern law firms is that it’s totally customizable. Nimble users are able to create custom fields that allow them to understand more about their relationships with contacts, store data, and more.
Additionally, Nimble includes advanced sales functionality which is perfect for lawyers looking to track leads and view multiple sales pipelines. This means that users can do everything they can do in more sales-oriented CRMs without having to sacrifice the benefits of Nimble’s focus on contact and relationship management.
Finally, Nimble makes it easy for users to work together as a team. Nimble allows users to easily share contacts and also integrates with a wide variety of other applications that teams use on a daily basis.
Why do lawyers love Nimble CRM?
Automatically create enriched contacts
Nimble will automatically create contacts from emails with the Nimble CRM Add-in for Outlook. Nimble also automatically searches the web for social profiles, enriching contacts with profile pictures and links to their LinkedIn page without making users do any extra work.
This functionality saves lawyers a lot of time and effort while allowing them to learn even more about their contacts. Check out this video to learn how to install and use the Nimble CRM Add-in in Outlook.
Log activities across platforms
Nimble keeps track of activities so that teams can always be on the same page with every opportunity. This is crucial for those in client services who are constantly interacting with contacts through email and meetings.
This feature also allows users to view previous activities to determine the next steps or assess the frequency of their interactions.
Tag and group contacts
Nimble users have the ability to add tags to contacts in order to organize them into actionable groups. Nimble users are also able to be creative in how they use tags. For example, users can create a group of contacts to send a holiday message to, or track a group of contacts that were invited to certain events. Similarly, users are also able to create segments that group contacts based on some common property. These features allow users to easily organize and view their contacts for quicker action.
Stay in touch reminders
Nimble users can set reminders for keeping in touch with contacts. Users are able to select their preferred intervals for checking in with contacts and can view how long it’s been since the last interaction. This feature is great for lawyers who don’t have a lot of time and need reminders to stay top of mind with their clients.
Easy collaboration
Users are able to easily collaborate with their teammates by sharing contact data with just the click of a button. It’s also just as easy to customize viewing options to keep contacts private, make contacts view-only, or only share them with certain members of the team. Check out this article to learn more about contact-sharing options.
Deal tracking functionality
Nimble gives users the ability to create customizable, unlimited deal pipelines as well as other advanced features. This gives users the ability to quickly scan their deals and identify any stuck stages in their pipelines. Users can choose to use Nimble as either a simple contact management tool or as a full-blown sales management system.
Nimble enables lawyers to build relationships and close more deals
Small- and medium-sized law firms need tools that meet their particular set of needs. Nimble has all the functionality that small- and medium-sized law firms need at a fraction of the cost of CRMs that focus on businesses with full-blown sales teams. Nimble is the smart and simple CRM that can help lawyers build relationships with their clients without eating into their time and budget.
