Professional lobbying firms are always trying to attract new clients. Professional firms typically have two types of clients: regular clients return each year with reoccurring legislative issues, and organizations that are affected by new legislation that are looking for experts to help them deal with the issues. Like all businesses, professional firm must also deal with clients that have a change in management which can shake up the client relationship. As a result, retaining and creating new clients is always in the forefront for a professional firm due to the business environment in which it resides. While solid performance, strong contacts at the capitol, and great people skills are all important to clients looking for the right firm, a new component is entering the mix. Clients need a steady flow of legislative information that creates two-way client/lobbyist communication.
Capitol Impact tackled this issue by developing the first Legislative Tracking System designed specifically for Professional Lobbyists. This version of our legislative tracking software has all the basics you would expect to find in a standard tracking system: access to all the bills in your state, updated bill statuses every 4 hours, reporting capabilities, and more. What sets the Professional System apart is the Client Bill Portfolio feature. With our bill portfolio approach, a single bill can be assigned to multiple clients, and each client can view the information that is just for them. The Professional System enables you to create a portfolio of bills for each client, and connect it to specific people that work for each client. Capitol Impact delivers a website for their tracking system, and as a result, each client can be provided with a user id and password that connects them to their portfolio. When a client logs in, they see only the bills that you are tracking for them.
The professional system focuses on two way communication. The lobbying firm can add global comments to each bill which will be seen by all clients tracking that bill. Additionally, the lobbying firm can add private comments for specific clients, enabling the firm to address each client’s issues more specifically. When each client logs in to the professional system, they see their list of bills and can view the history of a bill and its latest text. Clients have a POST YOUR COMMENTS button on each bill that that enables them to provide feedback to the lobbying firm. Client feedback is only visible to the lobbying firm staff through security settings, keeping client comments away from other clients. The lobbying firm sees all client comments on each bill in one place.
The environment created by the Professional System is a single bill management portal that acts like a private tracking system for each client. Firms that are prospecting for a new client can offer to set up a bill portfolio for the prospects, demonstrating how responsive they can be in keeping clients informed while providing the client a rapid means of communicating back input on each and every bill. Need to do a weekly summary of what happened at the capitol? The built in blast email tools let you create professional emails with graphics, add the text for the week, send them out and provide a link for your clients to login and view the bills being tracked for them. No more cutting and pasting bill lists into emails.
If you are a professional lobbying firm with multiple clients, you need to be using a collaborative legislative tracking environment with communication tools to better engage your clients on the issues. It will save your staff time, make your more professional, and provide the tools to grow your business.