3. Old clients = new revenue
The case for marketing to existing customers
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Let’s start with a little exercise:
Do your clients know about all the services you offer?
I ask this question all the time when I’m speaking to accountants. The answer is almost always no.
A better way to ask the question would be: have you made your clients aware of all the ways you can help them?
Because business owners want help and are usually happy to pay for it. And if you can help them, isn’t it your duty as their trusted advisor to do so?
Now let’s imagine you have 100 clients. What if you could sell one extra thing to just four clients a month?
Even a small amount of upselling or cross-selling can have a dramatic effect on revenue as this client marketing calculator I created shows:
14.17% increase in annual revenue
Additional ARR of $144,000 at year end
23.33% increase in average client value
I checked my example numbers with our operations manager who has worked in several accounting firms. She felt they were realistic. What does it look like when you plug in your numbers?
Are you already sitting on revenue growth you need?
Selling = sticky clients
It’s not just about revenue either. Happy clients are sticky clients and the best way you can make clients happy is to do more for them. A cynical view is that greater adoption of services also makes it harder for them to leave. Either way, you probably should be selling more to clients.
What about more clients?
I’ve been preaching the importance of marketing to clients forever, yet many accountants still seem obsessed with “more leads”. That’s ok as long as you’ve got client marketing sorted. If not, you’re leaving money on the table. And that’s amplified by adding new clients into the mix. It’s like pouring water into a leaky bucket.
There’s an obsession with growth generally in business. For accountants, I feel this manifests in trying to add new clients when the focus for many should be growing per client revenue.
As the spreadsheet shows, you could easily add >10% revenue with a few sales to clients each month. For a firm with an engaged client base and good products and services, it could be much higher.
Warm and profitable
It’s marketing 101 that it’s easier to sell to warm than cold leads. It’s even easier to sell to clients who already know, like and trust you. At least I hope they do!
Additionally, these sales should be way more profitable as there is no onboarding, clean-up, or relationship building before you get paid. I can’t factor that into my spreadsheet but it could be an interesting exercise for you to try that.
Practice makes perfect
Business-to-business marketing is hard. Even more so for selling accounting services.
Between long marketing and sales cycles, perceived pain of switching firms and standing out in an undifferentiated market, very few firms break beyond growth via referrals or buying fees or firms.
An added benefit of getting client marketing humming is it’s great training for growth marketing. You can try tactics in the safe-space of clients. See what works and then roll it out as lead generation campaigns. A hidden but valuable benefit.
Growth without growing
If I’ve not yet convinced you to do more marketing to clients, then current issues with hiring good team members should. Many firms won't take on new clients because they can't find good team members to serve them. But often you can sell services or products to clients that don’t require extra people. Perhaps there is software you can on-sell or you could automate stuff like reports which you can charge for. Often small additional services that require people can easily be done alongside existing work.
The net result is you can still grow revenue and profit until the job market becomes more favourable.
I’ll rest my case for client marketing there. Next week, I’ll delve into tips and tactics including the classic email newsletter and how to build community with clients on social media.
Until next time.
- Matt & Jordan