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How Does Client Sense Support Your Cross Servicing Strategy

This article explains what cross servicing is, why it matters to revenue and client retention, how to generate a Cross-Servicing report in Client Sense, and what to do with the results once you have them.

In this article:

Short answer

Cross servicing, which many firms call cross selling, means growing revenue from clients you already have by connecting them with practice areas they have not yet worked with.

Client Sense makes the connection from data your firm already holds. The Cross-Servicing report compares which departments have communicated with a company and which have not, then tells you who is best placed to make an introduction.

Why it matters

The revenue effect is not proportional. Heidi Gardner's research on law firm collaboration found that the more practice groups serve a client, the more revenue that client generates, and the increase outpaces the number of groups involved. At one firm she studied, moving a client from one practice to two roughly tripled the revenue from that client on average

Retention improves alongside it. The number of partners a client knows has a direct effect on how likely that client is to stay. A single-partner relationship is a single point of failure, and it does not survive a retirement or a lateral departure. A client served by four partners across three departments is difficult for a competitor to displace.

There is a practical argument too. The trust, the conflicts clearance and the billing arrangements are already in place, which makes an existing client the shortest route to new work available to your firm.

For most firms the opportunity is not the problem. Visibility is. Knowledge of who deals with which company sits inside individual inboxes and calendars, so nobody can answer the question at firm level without asking around and hoping the answers are current.

What this looks like in practice

Smith Anderson, a full-service business and litigation firm, wanted to understand where key client relationships sat inside the firm and where cross-selling opportunities were being missed. Their Director of Client Services used Client Sense to map internal connections and identify which relationships were worth pursuing, without asking partners to populate a system first. Read the full account in the Smith Anderson case study. For a related example covering service gaps in an existing client base, see the Allen Matkins case study.

A typical firm-level example works like this. Your Corporate and Commercial team has active contact with 60 companies. You want to know how many of those have never spoken to anyone in Employment. If a company is buying commercial advice it almost certainly has employment questions too, whether it is handling a restructure, a senior hire or a policy review.

The Client Sense Cross-Servicing report returns that list, and for each company it names the people at your firm already in contact with them. That second part is what makes the list usable. A list of company names is a research task. A list of company names with a warm introducer attached is a business development plan.

How to do it in Client Sense

The report takes two inputs: a department that has contact with a company, and a department that does not.

  1. Go to Reports and select Cross-Servicing.
  2. Choose a Department with Contact. This is the team whose relationships you want to build from.
  3. Choose a Department without Contact. This is the team looking for work.
  4. Adjust the timeframe if you need to, then choose Export Results. The file appears in your Downloads.

What the report gives you

The export lists every company that has had contact with the first department but not the second, within your chosen timeframe. Two columns are worth understanding properly namely Top Employees are people within the firm that might be in a position to facilitate an introduction, and Top Contacts are the ndividuals from each of the Companies listed, according to the amount of communication they have had with the firm.

Full steps, a downloadable PDF and an interactive walkthrough are in How to Generate a Cross-Servicing Report.

Two other reports help you prepare before you act. Use How to view the level of engagement your firm is having with key individuals and companies to sense-check how warm a relationship really is, and How to run a heat map report for a specific company to see the shape of the relationship across your firm before you brief anyone.

Tip: Pair departments where the client need genuinely follows the client. Commercial to Employment works. Two teams serving different markets will produce a long list and no conversions.

Turning the output into action

Running the report is the quick part. Firms that convert these opportunities tend to follow the same short sequence.

  • Top 5 Employees. People at your firm ranked by volume of communication with that company, from most to least. 
  • Top 5 Contacts. Individuals at the company ranked by how much they have engaged with your firm, with name, email and title, so you can judge who to approach about the additional service.
  • Shortlist. Take the top ten companies rather than the whole export. Prioritize by engagement volume, existing relationship strength and whether the second department has a genuine service fit.
  • Brief the introducer. Give the top-ranked employee something short: the company, the contact, what the other team does for similar clients, and the specific ask. Partners decline vague requests and accept clear ones.
  • Agree the ask. An introduction, an invitation to a briefing or event, or an addition to a target list. Decide which before the conversation happens.

Doing this exercise quarterly will deliver the best results, only run the report against two or three department pairings at a time rather than every possible combination at once.

Important: Check the relationship owner is aware, and that there is no conflict or client sensitivity, before anyone reaches out. The report tells you who talks to whom. It does not tell you what those conversations were about.

Common pitfalls

  • Close the loop. Record what came of the introduction. Without this follow up you cannot tell whether the program is working, and you will run the same report next quarter against the same names.
  • Pairing unrelated departments. The report is only as good as the logic behind the pairing. If the need does not follow the client, the list will be long and the hit rate will be low.
  • Assuming the top employee is the right introducer. Volume of communication is a strong signal, not a decision. A billing contact may exchange more email than the relationship partner.
  • Treating the export as the deliverable. The report is an input to a conversation, not a document to circulate. Nothing happens until someone asks for an introduction.
  • Running it once. Cross servicing is a program, not a project. The value comes from repetition and from tracking what changed since the last run.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the difference between cross servicing and cross selling?

In practice, very little. Cross selling is the more common term and describes the commercial outcome. Cross servicing describes the same activity from the client’s point of view, which is being looked after properly across more of what they need. Firms that find cross selling a difficult word with partners often find cross servicing easier to introduce.

Which departments should we pair?

Start with pairings where the second need follows naturally from the first. Corporate and Commercial to Employment, Property to Construction, Family to Private Client. Ask the department that wants the work which types of client they serve best, then work backwards to the team that already knows those clients.

How often should we run it?

Quarterly is enough for most firms. Running the report monthly tends to surface the same names before anyone has acted on the previous list.

The report returned hundreds of companies. What should we do?

Narrow the timeframe so you are looking at recent contacts rather than historic contacts, and take only the top of the list by engagement volume. A shortlist of ten that someone works through beats a list of two hundred that nobody opens.

The top employee is not the relationship partner. Does that matter?

It is worth checking. The ranking reflects communication volume, so an administrator or a billing contact can appear above the partner who owns the relationship. Use the ranking to find candidates, then apply what you know about the account.

Do we need a CRM for this to work?

No. The report is built from communication data your firm already generates, so it does not depend on anyone entering or maintaining records. If you do run a CRM, the output can be used to populate target lists within it.

How far back does the report look?

The timeframe is set within the report and you can alter it. A shorter window shows you current relationships, which is usually what you want for an introduction. A longer window is more useful when you are looking for dormant relationships worth reviving.