Accounting Technology

5 Tools To Improve Your Firm (For Accountants & Bookkeepers)

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 21, 2023 | 1 minute

Fl.ux: Helps dampen the backlight from your computer to reduce eye strain. Automatically adjusts your backlight based on the time of day. Highly recommend!

Amelia: This appointment scheduler is helpful for any business with a WordPress platform for your website. More than just scheduling appointments, Amelia allows you to charge and accept money for an appointment, a feature that can help you level-up your consultative services.

Recordit: Quickly record screencasts (similar to Jing but faster). Simply click the icon, record, and a unique, shareable, URL will be generated. The only downside, there’s no sound on the recording (so voice narrations are out).

Followup.cc: Instantly turn your inbox into a CRM but adding simple reminders in your BCC For example: Need to follow up in 7 days? Send a BCC to 7days@followup.cc and it will remind you in exactly 7 days. Need 3 months? Use 3months@followup.cc, and the email will shoot back to the top of your inbox in 3 months.

(Yes, we’re biased. )
Jetpack Workflow Software: Manage and track all the recurring client work, automate the creation of new projects/jobs and tasks, and track staff more effectively. You can schedule a 1-1 demo by clicking here

Podcast

How to Grow Your Accounting Firm With Edward Mendlowitz

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 21, 2023 | 7 minutes

Edward Mendlowitz, Partner at WithumSmith + Brown, knows how to grow your accounting firm. For 50 years, he built up his own firm to later merge it with a larger accounting firm.
Ed Mendlowitz has written 16 books (and counting!), hundreds of articles, and is a frequent speaker for organizations like AICPA, NJSCPA, NYSSCPA and many, many more.

In this interview, we cover:

How Ed has built authority in the space, written so many books (and never has “writers block”)
His management framework (30:30 Training Method) for systemically bringing on new hires
How to increase your profitability per client with his 1/20th rule
How to build referrals through content creation (and promotion) and grow your accounting firm
How to get a Free copy of his E-Book, the 30:30 Training Method (Value $49.95) and much more.

Resources

Enjoy this interview? Email Edward at emendlowitz@withum.com to Get Your Free Copy of 30:30 Training Method

Edward’s Blog: http://partners-network.com/
Edward’s New Book: 101 Questions & Answers for Managing an Accounting Practice https://store.cpatrendlines.com/shop/101qa/
LINKEDIN – Ed Mendlowitz

101 Questions To Grow Your Accounting Firm

Ed Mendlowitz has built accounting firms for over 50 years. He built a reputation not just for strategies to grow your accounting firm, but also sharing his knowledge in his popular book 101 Questions for Growing Your Accounting Firm.

This book came from firm owners asking him questions through the years about how to grow their own accounting firms. He ended up writing 101 blog posts that came together in a book.

He jokingly became referred to as the “Dear Abby” of accounting!

Ed is able to produce such great content because he takes every question he’s asked and turns it into a blog post, article, talk, or book. To become a true advisor, or authority, in your space, you must prioritize content creation.

Ed recommends every accounting firm utilize his secret weapon to growing your accounting firm: share your value.

That’s his best tip: share your knowledge. The best way to start is to blog.

Before you start stressing about “not having time to blog,” Ed has some advice: You can’t just WILL yourself to blog. You must have the “mindset that blogging is important.” Ed’s also a busy firm owner, who also writes and travels giving talks. He finds time to write because it’s a priority.

Many owners approach the “immediate” tasks of the day as the important things. But, long-time growth is what builds firms. That’s what blogging can do for you.

Blogging lets you give the perception that you are better than everyone else. That’s a pretty good place to be in when a local business is looking for a CPA. Your knowledge and value sits out on the web for the world to see. You will beat out your local competitors every time.

How To Keep Your Clients For Life To Grow Your Accounting Firm

Learning how to blog helps with client retention. As you build up your content base, your clients will get more and more value from what you’re sharing. With each piece of information you share, you give dynamite to your current clients to share with others. As they meet friends and businessmen who have questions, they can refer a killer piece of content you produced and thus refer your firm.

Essentially, you treat your clients as a sales force for you.

Here’s how to start

Sit down with your current clients. Set up a time on the calendar when they’re free, don’t let them cancel and not reschedule.
Position the meeting in a way to transform your role from bookkeeper/CPA into business advisor. The way you do that is this: You ask them questions about their personal and business goals: When do they want to retire? What stresses them out right now? etc.
Ed follows a 1/20th rule. Sell 5% of your tax clients additional services every year. Make it personal, and determine what other services could be a good fit for them (ie: are they retiring soon? Discuss additional services to help with retirement). Do not be discouraged when they all don’t “Buy Right Now”, because you’ve also made more clients aware of other services you offer.
Offer to help them with these new NEEDS they have. This puts you in your client’s shoes day-in-day-out. Rather, than just 1x per year at tax time.

Even better, when your client has a question, write it down. Produce a post about it. Send it over to them. They’ll thank you for it and probably hire you for the task needed. Ed’s done this for years and always wrangled a new client out of this process.
This puts you above all the other firms who might also blog.

Many accounting firms (perhaps your own) write blog posts and wonder why no one shows up to read it.

“Build it and they will come” worked in the 90’s, but not today with so much information on the inter-webs.

Instead, grow your readership one-at-a-time. When a client needs help, or has a question, write a blog post and send it to them.

Suddenly, every client or prospect who ever had that same question have a great resource to cite. Ed met with a client who mentioned his son was getting married and was curious about prenups. Ed went home and wrote a blog post about a “pre-nuptial checklist.” The client saw the post after Ed sent it over and he was hired. Other prospects did the same after Ed sent them the article.

It takes time, it takes work, but it’s really not hard to do. In fact, you’ll get better at it as you go. All you need is 300 words and a couple hours per week. I know, your schedule’s already booked up. Why not delegate out pieces to the partners. If you have a firm with a handful of partners, each may only need 1 post every other month over so.

Point is: You can make time for blogging to grow your accounting firm.

You already know the top questions you get from clients. Compile those into a document and start pounding out the posts.

Firm Management Principles

Another topic Ed specializes in and mentors other firm owners on is firm management. Ed’s built his firms up with groundbreaking training with inexperienced accountants.

Every firm’s different, but Ed prefers hiring inexperienced workers so he can mold them from the beginning. Those who come to your firm with “2 years experience” left their old firm because they actually didn’t get “2 years experience.” They want something more.

Those are harder to train.

Especially young people, they want to work; not listen. It’s incredible how many firms “train” their new hires with 2 hour sessions of “watch and learn.” The inefficiencies are unbelievable!

Want to train a new hire? Here’s what Ed, who’s had 50 years experience, does:

Don’t give them anything that takes more than 30 seconds to explain and 30 minutes to finish. This way: they learn something quick, they work as quickly as possible. As a bonus, they feel accomplished at the end of the day.

New hires don’t remember 95% of their training.

As you hire more young guns, try out this tactic and send Ed an email with the results.

Find these talking points here:

28:30 On hiring, training, and management Why Edward often prefers new hires that have no experience vs ones that have 1-2 years of experience.
33:10: How to train a new hire using the 30:30 training method framework You don’t give a new hire something you cannot explain in 30 seconds, and it shouldn’t take them more than 30 minutes to complete.

Email Edward to get his E-Book, the 30:30 Training Method, for Free! Email him at: emendlowitz@withum.com

Have a question for Edward? Email him with your question and phone number.

Accounting Firm Tips

The Core Elements of an Accounting Client Lifecycle

By jetpack workflow | Updated on Dec 21, 2023 | 7 minutes

Do you find your marketing efforts falling short?

Perhaps we need to deconstruct what “marketing” actually means.

Within every firm, you can look at an accounting client’s lifecycle for your top performers.

An accounting client’s lifecycle takes the 1 dimension view of marketing, and creates a robust, multi-dimension viewpoint that you can systematically use to build your firm.

The Core Elements of an Accounting Client Lifecycle

First Encounter

What this looks like: This is the time the prospect first encounters your services or firm. It could be a referral from a friend, or they found you through one of the example tactics below.
Tactics Used: Networking events, Adwords, email marketing, conferences, Linkedin Groups, websites, landing pages, SEO, direct mail, print advertising, etc.
Mindset & Goals: This comes before a prospect goes into “research mode” because at this moment, they are determining their level of need and urgency. Some prospects will see the service and say “I need that!” and move into research mode. Others will store it in their back of their mind for another time. For both prospects, you want to engage enough level of interest to get them into research mode. You can channel interest by creating research materials that are focused on the pains and desires they are experiencing (more detail below).

Research Mode

What this looks like: A prospect know they will be making a decision within the next few weeks or months, and now they have to research the best option (*note: 50% of your prospects move into research mode- only a small minority (2-3%) might be ready to “buy now”).
Tactics Used: Free lunch and learns, speaking engagements, free whitepapers, Ebooks, PDF’s, video training.
Mindset & Goals: The prospect wants more information at this point. But remember how I said you must provide information that meets their interest and desire? This is the goal of your research material. Instead of having a brochure on your company, include a free PDF that teaches them the fundamentals or provides “quick wins” for their business (or whatever market you might be targeting). Examples of these free training/research materials would be “10 things you can do today to improve the cash flow in your (Insert target industry) (Ex: your small business, non-profit, commercial printing company).
[images style=”0″ image=”http%3A%2F%2Fjetpackworkflow.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F12%2FWorkflow-Solution-PNG.png” width=”730″ link_url=”https%3A%2F%2Fapp.jetpackworkflow.com%2Fusers%2Fsign_up” align=”center” top_margin=”0″ alt_text=”Jetpack%20Workflow%20Solution%20-%20PNG” full_width=”Y”]

Nurturing

What this looks like: A prospect has downloaded your whitepaper, or heard you talk, now it’s time to follow up and continue to provide value and help educate them further.
Tactics Used: Automated follow up emails to check in, and provide more education content. Follow up phone calls or webinars.
Mindset & Goals: The firm that stays on top of the mind will most likely be the one a prospect goes with, so the goal here is to continue to educate, inform, and be of service to the prospect while they are going through their decision-making process.

Closing the sale

What this looks like: So a prospect is interested in your service, but perhaps needs a final “nudge” in order to become a client. You can use free consultations, meetings, even follow- up calls to check in and get them started.
Tactics Used: CRM & follow up tools. (Example: Followup.cc)
Mindset & Goals: To stay on top of the mind make sure you’ve answered and addressed all objections, questions, worries, and comments.

Client activation

What this looks like: What does a client need to do in order to get started, and how to make it extremely easy and frictionless for them to do so?
Tactics Used: Managing them in your client management tool (workflow software, project management, etc)
Mindset & Goals: What steps do they need to take to get started, and how are you systemically ensuring these steps are in place for each and every client?

Client Retention

What this looks like: The goal is to not only provide the service, but articulate the work you’re doing for a client. They don’t need to know the details, but a one-page highlight demonstrating your value will go a long way. The #1 cause firms lose clients is because the client forgets about the firm, and the firm forgets to communicate with the client (it’s very easy to leave a firm when, as a client, you feel there is no relationship/loyalty and just purely transaction).
Tactics Used: Use workflow software to track and manage recurring work, and set up reminders to check in and send clients updates, reports, or additional content that would help their business.
Mindset & Goals: To stay on top of the mind so you can continue to build the trust and relationship with a client. Remember, the best client is your current client!
[images style=”0″ image=”http%3A%2F%2Fjetpackworkflow.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F12%2FWorkflow-Solution-PNG.png” width=”730″ link_url=”https%3A%2F%2Fapp.jetpackworkflow.com%2Fusers%2Fsign_up” align=”center” top_margin=”0″ alt_text=”Jetpack%20Workflow%20Solution%20-%20PNG” full_width=”Y”]

Client referral

What this looks like: Once you bring in a new client on board, the next step in an accounting client’s lifecycle is to put in a referral system with incentives and encourage referrals by word of mouth marketing.
Tactics Used: Email signatures, discounts, revenue share (Click here for a list of tactics to get you started)
Mindset & Goals: You can systemically grow your client base by making it frictionless for current clients to share the value of your services and or educational content. Again, the best client is your current client, and nothing accelerates the speed of trust than having an existing client base as your raving fans!

Client profit maximizer

What this looks like: Providing a clear picture of all the services you provide and the value they bring to the client. Also, a chance to go over what your own resource/referral network looks like in case the client needs something you do not provide.
Tactics Used: Cross-sells and upsells to other service or complementary services and products
Mindset & Goals: To make sure your clients know about all the services you provide, and to build an entire referral network so that you can both give value to your clients and build additional revenue streams.

Closing Thoughts:

This blog post on the core elements of an accounting client’s lifecycle, is by far one of the most in-depth pieces of content we have created so far.
My recommendation: Don’t try and pick apart each one to start. The best thing to do is to get a baseline set of numbers and activities that you’re doing for each one. Assess and determine where the gaps are in your firm.
For example: If you’re getting a lot of interest, but little in terms of new clients, I would examine what you’re doing in terms of “Research Mode”, “Nurturing”, and “Closing”. If you’re getting every new client that becomes interested in your firm, I would look at tactics around “First Encounter” or “Referrals”.
As always, it’s our hope you take this content and put ONE thing into action. Without action, this content becomes meaningless.
**What are your thoughts on determining an accounting client lifecycle? Leave a comment below!
If there’s any questions, comments, or you want to dig into a specific topic, you can email me directly at David (AT) JetpackWorkflow (DOT) com
To your success
David Cristello
Founder, Jetpack Workflow Software

The Double Your Accounting Firm Book

5 Tools To Improve Your Firm (For Accountants & Bookkeepers)

32 Free Workflow Templates

See Jetpack Worflow In Action

How to Grow Your Accounting Firm With Edward Mendlowitz

Resources

101 Questions To Grow Your Accounting Firm