All posts from January 2010

We recently spoke to an accounting practice owner in Portland, Oregon who told us his practice was growing 20% a year, year over year. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October of 2007, the unemployment rate in Portland, OR was at 4.5%.  By October of 2009 the unemployment rate had jumped to 10.7%.  (It is now hovering around 12%.)

Between the end of 2007 and 2009 while the unemployment rate more than doubled, this accounting practice had grown 40%.

What is the owner’s secret?  He told us he does not know, he just gets lots of referrals.  Although he does not know what he is doing to acquire new clients, he does know what he is doing to serve them.  He values his clients highly, provides exceptional service and stays in regular communication with them through a monthly newsletter.

“We stay in touch with our clients and manage the relationship.  Even if we have a problem client, we do our best to treat them right.  Even if we have to let them go, we try doing it in a way that leaves them with a positive experience.”

Following his intuition about the value of customer service, this practitioner has inadvertently developed a client referral program that works.

A Referral Ready Accounting Firm

No client will refer friends and neighbors to a service they do not believe in.  Some clients may refer people to a service they find helpful.  Most clients will refer a service that they experience as exceptional and unique. 

What can you do to create a referral ready accounting firm? 

1. Manage the relationships with the clients you he already have. Make sure they are well-served.  Anticipate their needs.  Respond to their concerns in a timely fashion.  Work to maintain a relationship of value with each and every one.
2. Stay in contact with your clients.  Distribute a monthly newsletter.  Survey your clients to check your quality.  Ask how you may better meet their needs. 
3. Educate your clients on how you firm can serve them. Use a monthly newsletter to make it easy for them to talk to their friends and neighbors about how you can help them solve their problems.  Tell how you have saved a particular client money, or resolved a tax issue, or provided sound advice.
4. Give your clients something to talk about. By being intentional about how your clients experience your service.  Find small ways to make it special, unique:  One practioner we know has M&M figures throughout his office...many given to him by clients over the years.  When you visit his office, you tell people about it.  People do not tell stories about a work product.  They tell stories about what they experience.

What are your thoughts on developing referrals?  We would love to hear them.

Comments (0) • Posted January 27th, 2010 at 1:23pm

In an earlier entry, we mentioned conducting a SWOT Analysis as part of your business development strategic planning. Let’s take a look at how this will be of benefit to your practice.

SWOT Analysis—short for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—is a strategic planning technique that offers insight into your practice and those of your competitors.  This process will help breakdown your practice and identify ways to maximize your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses. By examining the opportunities and threats you can identify new service opportunities to pursue, identify highly competitive new services you may want to avoid and recognize steps you can take to avoid losing clients to your competition. Taking that information, formulating a plan and executing on that plan will help you grow your business by design by matching your services to your current clients and new prospects.

The benefits to your practice include:

• determining practice growth potential,
• evaluating the competitive marketplace,
• concentrating your marketing and business development activities in the most beneficial areas,
• identifying possible threats and ways to minimize them.

An old baseball maxim says that, to be successful, you have to “hit ‘em where they ain’t.” That can also apply to your practice. By analyzing and planning, you will know what areas to “hit” and what areas not to “hit” while you are executing the strategy developed during the process.

Taking time every quarter to measure your performance and adjust accordingly will help you build a much stronger and much more valuable practice. The SWOT Analysis can be an effective tool during that process.

Comments (0) • Posted January 6th, 2010 at 10:23am