During such difficult times focus can often be to batten down the hatches, focus on getting your own business through difficult times, delivering what you need to current clients and getting paid for the work you’re doing.
But now more than ever, you need to focus on the longer term and building you pipeline of future work and future clients. There are some key areas you should consider first in order to get more work and more clients. Below are my top five.
1) Current Clients
It’s widely reported that acquiring new clients is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. (Source: Harvard Business Review).
So often in professional services firms, I see clients that only buy one service from the firm. Whether it’s just accounts preparation or R&D Tax Relief. Many partners are so focused on delivering the services the client currently or have always brought that they forget to have the right conversations with the client to continue to develop the relationship and find the right opportunities to sell in additional services.
In many firms, managers are managing client portfolios and often these people simply haven’t been trained to ask the right questions or have the right conversations with their clients. So why not focus on upskilling and rewarding your team when they bring in new work from existing clients?
Your business owner clients will no doubt have additional needs as their businesses develop and grow, you need to be there as the trusted advisor to talk to about all of these challenges and needs and be able to spot opportunities from those conversations and have services that will meet those needs.
2) Past Prospects / Unconverted Leads
Accountancy often has a very long sales cycle and what I see in many firms is partners simply not having the time to continue to keep potential clients they’ve met ‘warm’ or remain in contact with them. Just because a company didn’t sign up with you the first time you met them, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future.
Often business owners will stay with their current ‘under whelming’ accountant for ease or because it’s ‘better the devil you know’ or they simply feel they don’t have the time to get to know and build a relationship with a new one.
Old unconverted prospects could be absolute gold for your firm in the future if you just continue to keep in touch and engage with them. This can far more easily be done today via email marketing, social media, invites to events / webinars or just every 6 months picking up the phone for a courtesy call and a quick catch up.
When was the last time you looked back at the last 3-5 years of prospects that you’ve had initial meetings with, done proposals for or met at events that didn’t convert? Whose keeping in touch with them and do you know what their current situation is? No? Then now is the time to reconnect and reengage with them.
3) Referrals
Many accountants get business via referrals but much of this is down to luck, rather than a planned and co-ordinated approach to referrals. You’re probably four times more likely to sign a client from a referral, than through a telemarketing lead. You should have a system in place to help you get referrals. You need to be clear with your current clients that you like to build new work through referrals and word of mouth and ask them to recommend you.
Get everyone in your business thinking about new business. How? Put in place a referral scheme and payment for employees who refer work into your firm. This could be £100 for each referral that you sign up – a small price to pay for what could be a client for the next 10 years. You’d be surprised how many people in your business will have family members, friends or acquaintances that are business owners that could be potential prospects for your firm.
4) Your Digital Presence
Is your online presence and channels destroying your credibility and stopping you getting new business? What do I mean by digital presence? Fundamentally, your website and your social media channels. I’ve reviewed the Top 100 accountancy websites and some of them are shocking! I’ve also studied and trained professionals on LinkedIn, including how to create a great LinkedIn profile.
Your website and your social media accounts could be destroying your ability to sign new business.
Badly designed or executed websites and social channels fall into a number of categories:
They look the same as everyone else’s. In recent years, many accountancy firms have got more ambitious in the use of brand colours, imagery and bespoke up to date content that adds value. But still there are so many firms out there that use blue as their predominant colour, use ‘business people’ stock imagery, have a bunch of static service, about us and contact pages and little else in the way of new content and think that a prospect will see them and want to buy from them over the numerous other firms on offer.
They’re out of date. Out of date content or no new content for months on your social channels or your website will destroy your reputation and your brand. People want their accountants to be up to date, understand what’s going on in the marketplace and most of all offer opinion and advice. A LinkedIn profile that has a 10 year old profile picture that looks nothing like you today, a twitter feed that hasn’t had any new content for a month or a website with no recent content or news on it will make people click away and find someone better than you.
They tell and don’t sell. So many accountancy websites are heavily focused on themselves, their services, their people and give little back to the end user. The other big problem with many websites is a lack of calls to action across the site. Websites need to be designed to drive users to either click on the next thing for them to continue engagement with your brand or to encourage people to get in touch with you. So, on every page you need to give the user an option to do something else. Whether that’s to download a piece of more in depth content and leave their details to get it, contact you or have a free initial chat (make sure to give them email, online form and telephone contact options) or read more content on their area of interest (tag and categorise your blogs, so people see related content). Websites should drive people through the sales funnel.
Bad user experience. It’s not just about how a website looks; it’s about how it works and how easy it is for an end user to find what they need quickly. Many people will quote the ‘8 second test’ (research shows that on people have an average attention span of just eight seconds. So, your website has 8 seconds to either give some value to your visitor, build your credibility, or help them understand who you are and what you offer. A website with a complicated menu structure, long pages, broken links, or multiple clicks to find relevant content will just make them go elsewhere.
5) Invest in marketing and business development
During such difficult times, I’ve seen so many firms slash marketing budgets and furlough marketing teams. Clearly there is a pressure to cut costs; cashflow in many businesses is tight and partners are still preparing their firms for what may still be yet to come. But continuing to invest both time and money into marketing and business development is crucial for the longer term future and growth of your firm.
Most accountants continue to see marketing as a cost, rather than an investment. Stopping investing time and budget into marketing and business development is unlikely to damage your business in the short term. However, when the current crisis ends or at least business begins to pick up, you’ll realise that your lack of investment in marketing and business development will mean little in the way of future pipeline of work and potential clients.
It’s hard to get new business or even get a first meeting with a potential client, so after all that effort in marketing etc, it would be a waste to let that opportunity slip through your fingers. So, if necessary, invest time in improving your own sales skills. So much opportunity is lost in professional services through ineffective selling. Whether its sales meeting planning, asking the right questions, overcoming objections, writing proposals or follow up techniques – now could be the time to sharpen up your sales skills to convert more of your prospects.
In the coming months as you potentially begin to lose clients because of the pandemic, getting additional business through the door will be the key to the survival and growth of your own business.
There are so many other things you could focus on to help you get more new business and clients. Above is just a quick round up of my Top 5 areas that can be easy wins or can make a huge difference to your ability to sign new business.
What do you recommend?