Whether they're individuals or organizations, clients are the heart of the accounting profession, the reason why firms even exist in the first place. But finding the right client — or even determining what the right client is — can be a major challenge that takes up significant time and focus.
However Kellie Parks, owner of Calmwaters Cloud Accounting and a speaker at Woodard's Scaling New Heights conference in Orlando, said this process can be dramatically simplified with automated processes that don't even need significant tech investments to implement.
While it might be tempting for a practitioner to take on all comers, Parks said this is bad not only for accountants, who are likely taking on far more work than they can handle, but also clients, as accountants won't be able to bring them value in the way they need. The key to bringing in clients that are a good fit, she said, is vetting them before they even come through the door, whether real or virtual. This means that, first, professionals need to develop a system that filters out unqualified prospects who the accountant cannot really help. While an accountant might be loath to give up potential business, Parks said it's really better for both the professional and the prospective client to know ahead of time if a relationship can work.
"Repeat after me: 'I cannot bring value to your business.' It is super key that your language is always facing the prospect for your client. It's not that their business model doesn't suit you or that they're yucky. It is that you cannot bring value to their business, and that will create an entirely different way of thinking about it for you," she said.
While determining who is and isn't a good fit can take a lot of time, the process can be much easier through the use of a simple electronic discovery form, which can be made with a wide variety of form-builder software solutions. She said links to the form should be not only on the practitioner's website but anywhere people might stumble across the firm, such as social media or referral platforms or marketing materials. The form doesn't have to be complicated, as its purpose is more to screen out unsuitable candidates who do not fit the ideal client profile. She noted this is not an engagement form, so it really only needs about three to five questions that check for disqualifying factors.
But what factors? Parks said it depends on the kind of work the firm wants to do and how. A firm might have an industry specialization, like nursing homes or charter schools, so their form might ask about their relationship to these fields. The firm might only do taxes or audits and so their form might ask about the need for these services. It might only be able to work with clients using a particular software platform like QuickBooks, so their form might ask about their tech stack. Maybe the firm only works with certain entity types like partnerships or C corporations, meaning the form might ask about business structures. Overall, she said, the form should align with the strategic goal and preferences of the firm.
"Who can I make a difference to? … The minute you know who your target audience is, you're gonna have a lot easier time building out your discovery process. If you don't know who you're trying to target it to, you have no idea what those questions are going to look like. And so define your ideal client," she said.
For example, the discovery form could be used to filter for communication preferences and collaboration styles, so if the practitioner prefers communicating over email the form could filter for people who do the same. The form could also filter out clients with international scope if the practitioner doesn't want to deal with multiple currencies, or filter out clients with presence in multiple states if they don't want to manage several different tax jurisdictions, or filter out clients in specific industries the practitioner does not do well with.
"If you don't do inventory, you're probably not going to be serving the manufacturing community," said Parks. "If you don't do multicurrency, you're probably not going to be serving firms that are international in scope. So it's not just about whether you like the client. It's about all these other things that go with how you're going to bring value to their business."
Regardless of what is specifically on the form, a discovery form can take over the long and tedious process of vetting clients, effectively having the clients vet themselves. If they check all the boxes the practitioner needs for their ideal client, they can then follow up, and if they don't, then the form can simply tell them that they're not a good fit for the firm.
Parks said practitioners will likely change their ideal client profile as their own firm grows and scales, which makes it important to revisit their discovery form on a regular basis.
"I'm not saying build an ideal client profile now and then stick to it. You're always going to be iterating, whether it's your ideal client, whether it's your goals, whether it's your form, whether it's your discovery process, you're always going to be iterating. But the hardest part is getting started. So find new things that are key to you for your ideal client, and then take it from there," she said.
Client intake
A similar automated approach can be taken when onboarding clients as well. Parks, in another session, noted there are many ways to automate this process to save time. For instance, at a certain point the client will need to start sending information to the accountant, which she said is "a real sign of how the marriage is going to go."
"If they cannot get things to you when you're dating, they're never going to get things to you month after month once you're in the grind of marriage," she said.
This stage can benefit from automation via repurposing marketing software. She said there are automated marketing solutions that allow people to run email-based "drip campaigns." In marketing terms, a drip campaign is a strategy that involves sending a series of automated, pre-written emails to a targeted audience over a period of time. These emails are triggered by specific actions or events, such as signing up for a newsletter or abandoning a shopping cart.
These automated emails can be easily modified to support, instead, requesting information from clients at specific times.
"People think of it as just for marketing, but it's actually great for onboarding clients, in that you can ask them to do one thing at a time, so you don't overwhelm them," she said. "This used to be an email drip campaign. Now it is actually client tasks, where a client task goes out and they upload something, or they answer some questions, and then the next thing and the next thing happens," she said.
These same automated emails can also be used to educate clients, whether automatically contacting them in the case of tax law changes or instructing them on how to do things like connecting their bank feeds to the accountant's tech stack or providing technical support links for their software.
Overall, she said, clients should be encouraged to help themselves whenever possible so that they're not constantly pinging the accountant with this or that simple query.
"Don't be afraid of clients not needing you. … You have started to empower your clients not to need you for the drudge work. You don't need those. Those are not high value touch points."
