One of the key drivers for the future success of your accounting firm is your ability to win new high value clients, new high value work for new clients, as well as certainly cross selling additional services to your existing clients.
Well on this Humanise The Numbers podcast discussion with Jenny Sparks of Cedar and Co in Derby, you'll hear Jenny share her insights from working as a marketeer in a top 10 firm, and then her experiences more recently of working in a smaller sole practitioner firm and what's needed, what's necessary to generate a flow of high quality, high value leads into the firm. Jenny states that in the last 18 months they've identified and won more new client work than they have done in the previous six years.
So she's got some real experience in terms of what works and she signposts the little things, the important things that ensure that Cedar and Co continue to win new, valuable clients that they love and that they like working with.
So why not join Jenny and I on this Humanise The Numbers podcast discussion and work out which one or two things you can take from it and apply to your firm, so that you can bring greater confidence and greater certainty to winning new high value clients for the future of your firm.
The Solution:
It's taking the time to stop and it not just be about the numbers and to take the time to look at what's going on in the company.
We can log onto their Xero or QuickBooks and see what's going through in terms of the numbers, but why is that happening and then getting them to pick up the phone and talk to the client.
I don't know that we have affected that yet, we’re still working on that, but our Business Services Manager and Neil, the Owner are picking up the phone and not necessarily even to talking about the business.
“Hey, Paul, how's your week been?”
During the pandemic we talked to our clients, we were in constant contact with people, we were sending out regular emails and picking up the phone, asking:
“What's going on? How can we help you? How can we help you apply for that loan?”
“What do you need in your business? Do you need a forecast? What do you need us to do to support you to get through this time?
And all of a sudden all of these other companies had been speaking to their friends or colleagues, and saying,
“Well actually, our Accountant doesn't do that, I've got no idea what I'm doing”.
So, we took on in the past year and a half more clients than we've taken on in the six years I've worked at Cedar.
SHOW NOTES
Connect with Jenny
Connect with Paul
Resources relating to this podcast:
During their conversation Jenny and Paul discuss how great marketing is about relevance and timing and that just pushing content out to clients and prospects will not guarantee success.
This Bitesize Business Breakthrough features a fantastic story of how PULL Marketing not PUSH Marketing actually convinced an entire country to change its mind.
So, rather than use a PUSH approach to persuading people to change, adopt a PULL approach to win their hearts and minds.
