Most customers search for services and compare products online. So, your digital footprint is more important than ever.
According to a Harvard Business Review study of B2B buyers, 53% of buyers turn to social media when assessing tools and technologies. Currently, 94% of B2B buyers perform online research before making a purchasing decision. If you do not have an online presence and a strong identifiable brand you will miss out on most online inquiries.
In my last article, I showed how professional accounting services firms had room for improvement, now let’s deep-dive into Scale Your Sales strategies to accelerate growth. Branding should evoke an emotional response that motivates your ideal customers to sign on as a client. Your brand must reinforce the brand values, engage new customers and make clients want to remain with the firm over their lifetime.
With 72% of firms struggling to win new business and a third of existing clients considering switching to competitors; your engagement and education process is critical.
Even if you are not planning to grow your accounting firm or sole practice, you will want to retain your existing client relationship.
Scale Your Sales is the ultimate relationship system that helps professional accounting services engage, educate and elevate your client relationships into trusted and loyal partnerships.
Scale Your Sales Engagement Strategies
Engagement starts long before the first meeting. It is in the brand messages the resonate with the ideal customers. The brand is the first impression, that set their expectations of what will follow. Do you encourage the customer to schedule their own appointments, is this process easy? What is the on-boarding process in the first, and subsequent years? Are clients invited to an introductory webinar before the meeting? Are they sent a list of questions to ask their accountant? With the confirmation is a photo of their accountant sent? Do you have an engagement process in place? Although a great deal can be automated, it is important that engagement is not overlooked.
Start by asking,
- What would be useful for the client to know?
- What is the best way that they want to receive information?
- How do you know you are exceeding their expectations?
Do you have the benchmarks in place to measure the level of deepening relationship?
Online engagement is no different from offline. It is just a conversation, sharing relevant information. You know what is relevant by asking relevant questions and commenting on other relevant posts to strike-up a two-way conversation. The key is to be active, be helpful, informative and genuine.
Scale Your Sales Educate Strategies
Customers lack knowledge leading to a lower perception of value and higher buyer uncertainty.
Not all your messages will relate to your entire database of clients. Segment your database by the customer stated preferences, characteristics and business sector. Then you are better able to align the relevant messages and offers to the most interested clients.
This is your push strategies, but you must have a pull strategy as well. This allows prospective and existing customers to draw down relevant information as and when they need it. It is important your clients see you are a source of knowledge and insight. The person that can solve their business problems. You must enable your customers to self-select and self-educate from your knowledge platform. If you do not your competitor will.
It is important to educate prospective customers on how best to access accounting services and what best fit looks like. Make it your mission to stop business owners like me, making mistakes that cost them.
Every other industry, technology continues to make inroads into accounting. Yet, technology will not replace relationships. Trusted professional advisers are needed to interrupt the data, to educate clients on the more information created from technology.
The firm itself must be at the leading edge, embracing technology and this includes getting a grip of social media and social selling. Technology plays a significant role in gaining clients and creating brand awareness.
Education creates opportunities that can lead to loyal clients and lifetime partnerships.
Scale Your Sales Elevate Strategies
Satisfied customers deliver an average of 7% higher revenues, what is your retention strategy? Do you know your level of churn and whether you are retaining your customer relationships?
Attracting new customers, retaining existing clients and growing existing revenue. Are all business goals that require defined benchmarks and strategies to drive your accounting firm’s growth results.
It’s about building relationships to help your clients achieve their business goals. This takes professional accounting firms beyond handling the taxes. To elevate the relationship to a trusted partnership.
When the on-boarding team meet with clients, focus on asking questions that help identify the client’s business needs. To help your clients set a direction of travel to greater financial opportunities. A partnership relationship will enable the accounting firm to sit at the client table (either virtually or literally) in key financial business decisions as a trusted independent partner. Without a deep understanding of the information held on your clients, along with a strong trusted relationship. Professional accounting firms must invest in internal systems to easily serve customers’ needs and meet their expectations.
The customer experience is more important than ever with 72% of businesses saying they switched due to a reactive service. Some customers want a lite touch, however, if this is not their expectation, you are delivering a poor customer experience. Firms must lead in creating the best possible personalised customer experience with a commitment to engaging, educating and elevating customer relationships. If they are to increase the customer base, retain clients and grow their professional accounting firm.
To hit your growth goals and to develop stronger relationships into long-term partnerships.
You need:
- Clearly defined brand and brand values.
- Customer data segmented for your most valued customers.
- Personalisation engagement strategy that elevates your customer relationships.
- An education strategy that builds credibility.
- An engaging onboarding and retention strategy.
Very few people love to sell much more love to build relationships. The more focused you are in serving your customers, the better your chances of scaling your accounting firm. You must in inject more than a bit of personality but fill-in your invisible box with colour and character. Make your professional accounting firm identifiable for the things your client cares about. By completely immersing your firm in partnering with your clients on their journey to business success.
Janice B Gordon is a Sage Business Expert and awarded 25 of the #TOP100 Global Business Influencer 2017 and founder of Scale Your Sales. Janice will be sharing brand building strategies at Accountex. Make sure you book your seat on May 2 in the Sales and Marketing Theatre at 11 am, for 6 Ways to Scale Your Sales Building Brand.