Successful Accountants’ Blog
What is holding you back?
Most accountants are justly proud of their technical skills. No doubt you make time to keep your technical knowledge up to date. Most accountants I know focus a majority of their CPD efforts here. Equally most accountants seem to undervalue the importance of ensuring that they have
How you can stop being scared of losing prospective new clients
Many accountants appear to approach the idea of finding new clients with conflicted emotions. If you do this you are probably making life harder for yourself than it needs to be. On the one hand your website and marketing activities try to promote you and your firm
6 ways you can stop making the same mistakes on social media as everyone else
Regular readers will know that I am both very active on social media and highly ranked for my online influence (such as it is!) Equally you will also know that I do not routinely encourage accountants to use social media for promotional and marketing purposes. And I
What to say when you call a client to ‘Keep In Touch”
This post follows on from a previous post in which I set out the 12 ways in which you can Keep In Touch with clients and why it is so important to do so. As I explained in that post, this demands personalised 1-2-1 contact. It is
The 12 ways you can Keep In Touch with clients and why this is so important
You want your clients, certainly the better ones, to stay with you. By implication therefore you want them to appreciate that you care about them, that you are interested in them and that you want to help them as much as you can. Those are just some
3 key lessons for accountants from….a children’s party entertainer!
As a teenager, before I started studying to become an accountant, I was a children's party entertainer - and I continued doing this for about 25 years. When I look back I realise that I quickly learned 3 key lessons that now, many years later, still inform
What has the biggest influence on your ability to retain clients?
Accountants have a distinct advantage over most other service professionals. Your clients need your help on an ongoing basis, at least once a year and often more frequently than this. This leads some accountants to be a little complacent about client retention - certainly as compared with
How to find out what your ideal clients REALLY want
It's all to easy to assume that all clients want the same things. But unless you ask, you won't know for sure. It's probably true that most clients want their accountants to help them pay less tax and to keep them straight with the authorities. Probably true.
Why accountants need to plan their approach to the 3 Rs
In an educational context we refer to the three Rs as being those crucial elements that all children need to master. That is, Reading wRiting and aRithmetic. This is somewhat ironic given that only one of the three topics actually starts with an R. (The phrase is used apparently
An essential new way to categorise your clients and focus to boost your marketing efforts
Do you ever think about how your practice and your client base might be impacted by changes and developments over the next few years? Historically most clients stay with their accountant for many years. They generally move only when they feel their accountant doesn't care enough about
How to feel more self confident with clients and prospects
Do you consider yourself to be a confident person generally? What about in terms of your ability to attract and win over prospective clients? And to keep clients happy and willing to pay you the fees you deserve for the work you do? Whilst many accountants I
What you can do when clients won’t play ball
Many an otherwise savvy sole practitioner tells me about similar problems with their client base. "They won't pay higher fees, they don't want additional services and they leave everything to the last minute" If you have clients like this, you're not alone. Often it's a direct consequence
What can you do if you want to attract a better type of client?
When I ask accountants what they would like to be different in their practice, one theme is more common than any others. They frequently express the desire to have better quality clients, to increase their average fees and to be doing more interesting work.One sole practitioner accountant I
A quick five point plan to get more referrals
So many accountants tell me that most of their new clients come from word of mouth and client referrals. In most cases however this seems to be a function of luck rather than planned in any way. Have you ever thought about how you could make it
Ten things the most successful accountants do
Over the years I have worked with hundreds of accountants. I have also judged hundreds of entires for multiple accountancy awards. Having completed the judging process for a recent competition I reflected on what it takes to win and to be successful generally. Let me be clear
