Over the years I addressed this topic many times in training sessions that explained how to make more profits from your smaller clients (without fancy schemes).
It seems that I have yet to include on this blog the opening summary in which I share what seem to me to be the only six ways in which accountants can make more profits from their smaller clients:
You can:
- Increase your charges for doing the same work (which often means increasing the perceived value of what you do);
- Speed up the collection of your fees (this includes adopting more commercial billing strategies);
- Reduce the time you spend doing the work but keep the fees the same;
- Provide more services and charge accordingly for these;
- Encourage existing (good) clients to introduce new prospects (just like them);
- Sack the duff D-list clients who get in the way.
Of course this advice can be adapted to help clients make more profits in their businesses too. But it would be a shame to do this before applying the advice to one’s own practice wouldn’t it?
Very succinctly put. Thanks Mark.
Increasing the fee for the same work is often just a case of changing the pricing methodology and linking the fee to the result.
A good example is charging 25% of the tax saved rather than charging £X an hour X number of hours.
Another way to charge higher for the same work is to deliver the service in a different way, like first class travel.
Collecting cash quicker will not increase profits but being quicker and keeping the fee the same will. However, I think accountants really need to be looking to create new services to replace the old ones.
That’s what we are doing.
This surely is a must-read blog for every single accountant. I am an Accountant in London and I have been looking for tips to increase my profit. This blog has helped me a lot in acquiring effective tips to maximize my earnings. Thanks a lot for the tips.
Bob
Collecting cash quicker will result in higher profit as it will:
– Reduce overdraft fees;
– Increase cashflow resulting in less cash pressure to taker on duff (unprofitable) clients;
– Reduce bad debts;
– Increase interest earned