Right now in the current market, ring fencing your customer base is a critical and urgent part of successful practice management. A firm must protect clients. Your customers are at more risk than ever before and also need greater support from their most trusted professional advisor. This also presents for most firms a very real opportunity.
Some firms have been complacent, others have been down-right lazy. Truth is, if you’re not using twitter – your competitors will be. If you’re not online to market and sell, your competitors will be. If you’re not actively protecting your clients, your competitors will be actively courting them...
To talk 1:1, without obligation, and to get expert independent advice for your firm and your goals please call +44 (0) 800 8030826 or email me direct on danielr@insight-marketing.com
2. Insight Intelligence
Who are Insight and what do we do?
•Nearly 30 years of working with accountants of all sizes, helping
them to grow
•Over 3000 delegates to live events this year
•Over 10,000 reports downloaded
•Over 25,000 subscriber to bulletins pm
•Over 300 consultative 1:1‟s with partners of firms this year
3. Insight Intelligence
It‟s more critical than ever
•Right now in the current market, ring fencing your customer
base is a critical and urgent part of successful practice
management
•Traditional firms can be careless with customers assuming they
will last 7 years or more. These days are changing, and fast.
•Clients are at more risk than ever before
•“bombarded”
•Ever increasing need for support and proactive ideas
•Banks have a „plan‟ to „replace‟ accountants on the high
street
•Firms are marketing more than they ever had using multiple
channels
•Unique economic times
4. Insight Intelligence
7 ways to ring fence your customers
•Apples to Accounting
•Mobile to MYOB
•Banking to Bookeeping
5. Insight Intelligence
#1 – Have a strategy
•The most basic step that so few firms simply do not take
•It should be agreed across the practice
•Must incorporate both in firm, online and offline
•Social networking will become an increasing part
•The strategy should be reviewed every 6 months
•One thing is more certain than ever – if you don‟t have a
strategy to protect your customers your competitors will have
one to „tempt‟ them away
“If you always do, what you’ve always done, you wont
get what you’ve always had – it will be less.....”
6. Insight Intelligence
#2 – Your database, the heart
•Most firms have significant gaps in the completeness and
quality of their client database
•How is it managed? What software is in place for ease of
communication?
•Does it have full contact information, mobile, email, LinkedIn
profile etc?
•Without this being completed, becoming and remaining a
cultural „norm‟ within your firm, your ongoing client protection
strategy will be hampered.
7. Insight Intelligence
Have a „fit for purpose‟ CRM system
Small practice medium – multiple site National firm
Insight Intelligence
8. Insight Intelligence
#3 – face to face contact
•The number 1 area of perceived value a client says they have
with their accountant is face time or communication time
•How can you create more of this to ring fence your clients?
•Meetings
•Hospitality
•Business breakfast meetings at your office
•Workshops and seminars
•Webinars and audio‟s
•Pre- scheduled 1:1 telephone reviews
9. Insight Intelligence
#4 – Online reputation
„Online‟, LinkedIn and Social Media are not a bubble that is going to
burst, instead all of the facts indicate the opposite – it’s going to grow
in importance. Now, more than ever you have to have a great online
profile and positive brand.
10. Insight Intelligence
#5 – Join the conversation
•At the end of busy day, you are relaxing at the local health club
which happens to serve a good pint and a question is asked....
•Can you join in this conversation?
•Do you have some questions to ask?
•Might you be bale to help him legally, ethically and
appropriately?
•Could it save him significant sums of money?
•Could you win out of this conversation?
•The same tools, tactics and rules apply online – great news for
accountants!
11. Insight Intelligence
#6 – engage through multiple
channels
•Newsletters/budget updates etc are fine, but...
• Push/pull emails create real value, differentiation and crucially
analytics
•Send an email to 500 people
•Know the 60 people who read it
•Know the 20 people who clicked through to your landing
page on your website
•Know the 2 people who downloaded a report
•Personalise your next message to their clear interest
•Focus your follow up on these key contacts
•How can you use direct mail, text messaging, APPS, audio –
what are your clients preferences?
12. Insight Intelligence
#7 – Customer Satisfaction Programme
•Done by telephone
•Client care at its heart
•Live unscripted questions to draw your clients out
•Powerful and precise feedback to encourage and improve
•3x the volume of detailed response and more than the „usual
suspects‟
A Scottish firm also used this approach to cleanse their data list and
understand their clients preference for contact:
-Mobile and text messaging
-Email marketing
-Client login areas on websites
13. Insight Intelligence
Case Study
Small specialist firm - Principals proven across firms of all size
“By getting an independent organisation to pose the question I
feel that 3 distinct benefits have accrued.
1. Firstly clients are very pleased and impressed that we‟ve taken
the trouble to ask them for their views.
2. Secondly the feedback will enable us to make a couple of
simple changes to our operation that will make a big
difference to the way clients perceive what we deliver.
3. And finally the independent confirmation of the aspects of our
work that clients truly value means that we will have greater
confidence to charge properly for such work in future.”
14. Insight Intelligence
Retain and Grow your clients
•Heavily personalised „customer care calls‟ to your clients
•Protect against attrition
•Up and cross sell with integrity – generating requests to do
more
•“what a good idea, we should do this with our own customers!”
•„live the value‟ of being proactive
•This one area alone has averaged a 7x ROI for firms of all sizes
15. Insight Intelligence
How to plan a customer
satisfaction programme …
Option 1 do it yourself
Option 2 let us do it for you
Insight Intelligence
16. Insight Intelligence
A free resource pack for everyone
There is a limit to what can be covered by webinar; that‟s why
we offer the following.
1. The Holy Grail report - your free 12 page report that outlines
step by step the most powerful customer protection
programme for accountants
2. Free 1:1 together by phone - expert, independent advice
from the comfort of your office and without obligation
3. Invitation to join us for a full day live
4. Free evening with our senior team over champagne and
Canapés
Hinweis der Redaktion
Screen shot of s4a training/events tab or image of events – make intro shorter....This is not a sales pitch, we hope that off todays webinar a couple of you might join us for a live event in london, and one or two might want to work with us.INVITE to events etc, DON’T TELL
Some firms have been complacent, others have been down right lazy....Your competitors are not being lazy, as firms are using more channels and more ways to contact your client base.If you’re not using twitter, your competitors will beIf you’re not online to market and sell, your competitors will beFor the first time in the history of relationships between accountants and business owners, and your clients be being contacted by firms without you even knowing....If you’re not actively protecting your clients, your competitors will be actively courting themWe know this because we here the real life stories from firms and business owners directly and we are winning clients....Its not just the competition that exists now, its where the market is heading:Apples to accountingMobiles to myobBanking to bookeepingYour fellow professional service firms – solicitors – this is not a future, this is a reality for them already with ‘supermarket solicitors’....
Some firms have been complacent, others have been down right lazy....Your competitors are not being lazy, as firms are using more channels and more ways to contact your client base.If you’re not using twitter, your competitors will beIf you’re not online to market and sell, your competitors will beFor the first time in the history of relationships between accountants and business owners, and your clients be being contacted by firms without you even knowing....If you’re not actively protecting your clients, your competitors will be actively courting themWe know this because we here the real life stories from firms and business owners directly and we are winning clients....Its not just the competition that exists now, its where the market is heading:Apples to accountingMobiles to myobBanking to bookeepingYour fellow professional service firms – solicitors – this is not a future, this is a reality for them already with ‘supermarket solicitors’....
This webinar is about helping you put a strategy in place where it simply doesn’t exist and where you have parts of one, then improving it further.
You might be feeling right now that this is not you, you might be thinking you have a plan in place, but if I were to ask you one starter question about your client database than how many of you have 100% contact details including mobiles, direct emails, linkedin profiles where they exist, and have software that enables you to quickly and easily communicate with them?For example:How many of your A prospects are connected with your senior partners/team on linkedin?How many of your B prospects are?In most of the hundreds of firms we’ve consulted with 1:1 this year, their database has been lacking and there has not been an understood, comprehensive, effective plan in place.The first step in ringfencing your customers and implementing your strategy is updating your client base. We recommend before you do this that you have a CRM solution in place. Don’t worry we don’t sell these , simply that many firms struggle with finding something that will work so here’s three options for you....
From over 10,000 calls to uk business owners every months and the contact we have with clients of many firms across the UK, the number one thing they say they perceive most value from is face time and personal communication with their accountant. If that is the case, how can you create, recreate or improve this in your firm?Some of you will have tried one or more of these ideas before. Often firms have struggled to get them working well because of over reliance on partner time to establish and gain attendees normally due to poor data or lack of effective crm. Once you’ve got a database in place it makes all these more easy to deliver – in some cases allows them to be ‘possible’ in first placeOne chap we met yesterday gets over 120 people to his seminars every quarter by having a quality database in place that he can communicate with easily and nurture these relationships.
‘Online’, LinkedIn and Social Media are not a bubble that is going to burst, instead all of the facts indicate the opposite – it’s going to grow in importance. If you want to progress in business, you cannot wait to be discovered. Now, more than ever you have to have a great online profile and positive brand. You would probably all agree that historically the ‘value’ of your firm has been measured simply put by the ‘offline’ loyalty of your clients. That has now changed, how loyal your clients are online is a key consideration. When they look, they need to be able to find you online with a great website that differentiates, on LinkedIn, twitter, in groups – and all of these need to represent you and your firm in the very best possible way.Still many firms are not grasping the importance of this point, and for those who do it presents great opportunity to gain competitive advantage and proactively protect/ringfence your clients.
Right now, the number of your clients using tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter is growing. They are joiningonline groups of like minded people to talk and interact with. If you don’t grasp this, and position yourself to participate inconversations, your competitors will. Our team believe that we are about to witness an online revolution.Your firm needs to listen to and join in conversationsAll this can sound airy-fairy, technical, complicated and to some, perhaps ridiculous so let’s paint a picture:At the end of a busy day you are relaxing at the local health club which happens to serve a good pint.You are sitting with a number of sporting friends after a game of golf, squash or similar. In conversation, one of them raisesa point about his personal tax bill. You know he and his wife run a profitable partnership. He also mentions that he is lookingto sell off a large piece of land he owns for a significant figure and mentions that his accountant has not advised him onthis transaction.Can you join in this conversation?Do you have some questions to ask?Might you be able to help him legally, ethically and appropriately?Could it save him significant sums of money?Could you win out of this conversation?Of course you could!GREAT news for accountantsNow, just imagine that same conversation online on LinkedIn or Facebook. You’d want to join in, wouldn’t you? After all, itcould lead to serious fee income! The tools you need to join these ‘online conversations’ are exactly the same as the onesyou use offline. Remember the days of the Rolodex or Filofax when you used to talk honestly face-to-face with prospects?Well they are the same online, with the same rules of engagement – no crass selling or hype, just honest, down to earthconversation. Just like the example shown above, conversations like this are happening right now, in real time, online.These are conversations you can follow, listen to and comment on where appropriate.The digital world is full of these opportunities to connect and one of the first to get to grips with is LinkedIn. It gives you theability to link to one another, extend or request friendship and add yourself to a community or group and joining them iseasy:1. Listen to a conversation2. Where appropriate respond to the conversation3. Join/engage the conversation already in progress4. Start a conversation5. Increase the number of conversations you haveThis is not a replacement for face to face contactThis online connection is not in any way supposed to replace your face-to-face contact with clients and potential clients.Offline conversation has significant challenges; it’s fragmented, isolated, geographically challenging and tough to scale.Put the two together though and you have a powerful integrated communication strategy for your firm.
Many firms receive the same whitelabelled tax newsletters etc from different firms simply with the logo’s swapped out. There is little or no value in this, and worse – with how the markets have changed and are changing, this lack of differentiation will begin to reflect poorly and become a negative rather than the positive it might have historically been.