A couple of the benefits you receive when you’re outsourcing accounting work are obvious – you receive access to a deep pool of highly trained and certified accountants, and you save a bundle of overhead costs. Those two benefits combine to form a third that you might not have immediately thought of – they give you lots of time to woo more A-list clients to your firm.
Your firm’s health
You might feel that you’re all set with the clients that you have and that you don’t want any more. But consider this – if you’re set in your ways you’re not innovating, and that means eventually your firm is going to lag behind others.
That in turn is going to make your competition look increasingly more attractive to your clients. If you leave it too long, you’re going to find yourself way behind when it comes to putting together value packages that can both retain new clients and help you find new ones to make up for the ones that you’ve lost.
Outsourcing accounting work gives you the time to build those plans and to constantly be looking for ways to improve and update your firm. When you focus on what you can do to bring in new clients, you’re also looking at ways to improve the services you offer to your existing client base.
You focus on how to attract A-list clients
As you build your improvements go straight to the source – your existing A-listers. See what they love, like, and dislike about your firm’s current services. Create new packages based around their recommendations.
Now when you bring in potential new clients you have a vetting system. If the new client refuses the new A-list packages then you know that they may very well turn out to not be A-listers themselves, and you can move on to richer pastures. You’re no longer meeting a minimum standard for clients, new clients are now meeting the minimum standard to be accepted by your firm.
Do this enough and you’ll be able to say good-bye to your D-listers, and then the C-listers, until you’re only working with the clients that you prefer. Plus these new top tier clients have an extra source of info for you – they can tell you what it was about your pitch and/or firm that made them sign on.
Boost morale
Outsourcing accounting work not only boosts morale in and of itself through its increase in your firm’s productivity, it also gives you the time you need to focus on what will be an enticing draw to bring new clients in.
The more A-listers you bring in, the better your team is going to feel because they’re going to see that their hard work is being recognised for its outstanding quality.
Added bonus – every new client you bring in is another reason to have a celebration.
You’ll be forced to try new services
Your new A-listers are likely to bring one or two new ideas for your firm to try out. Outsourcing accounting work gives you the money and time to give these ideas serious consideration and even give them a trial run.
As you add new qualified services you’re only going to become more attractive to future top tier clients. It’s a positive feedback loop.
Outsourcing accounting work even takes most of the risk out of trying out these new services. You don’t have to go through the hassle, time-loss, and money it takes to hire a specialist for your in-house team. Instead you find out if your outsourcing provider has such a specialist already in their pool, sign them on, and give the new service a trial run. If it doesn’t work out then you simply put a stop to that service without having to pay severance fees for that specialist or keeping them on without having anything for them to do.
New A-listers have friends and colleagues
Let the new clients know that a year from now if they’re happy with your services that you will be asking them for three referrals.
What all of this means is that outsourcing accounting work not only provides you with the means to grow your firm, it also gives you the ability to prune away the clients who are a drag on your firm’s growth. That makes for happier clients, happier employees, and an overall healthier firm.
