The Receipt Bank Blog

If you’re looking to grow your accounting or bookkeeping practice, the best place to start is with the clients you already have. Here we show how to use your current client data to get more clients, faster.

First steps in growth

It can be difficult to know where to begin with growing your practice. Perhaps, like many many accountants and bookkeepers, you know you want to grow but not much more than that.

The mistake many businesses (not just accountants) make is jumping right into marketing their firm to new clients. The priority is getting any new clients, rather than getting the right new clients. The instinct is usually to look for more of the clients you like working with, or the ones who pay the highest bills, but this could backfire, for reasons we’ll go into later.

The reason that accountants and bookkeepers do this is because they assume that the marketing is the hard part. After all, they’re not marketers. So they dive straight into promoting their firm, thinking that once they have their name out there, they can start picking the right clients as they come in.

However, there are two big issues with the “marketing first” approach. The first is that even though you say you’ll be picky, it’s hard to turn down business, so you end up taking any client that comes along, even if they’re not right for your firm. The second is that having a concrete idea of the right client actually makes the marketing much easier and more effective. After all, if you know you’re primarily looking to increase the amount of freelance hairdressers you work with, you can target your prospecting/ Facebook ads/ flyers much more effectively.

The numbers behind the ideal client

So how do you work out which clients are the best for growing your firm? You’ll be glad to know that you already have all the data you need. We’ve put together a handy guide that walks you through each step on the process, which you can download below.

You need to find the clients who have the best ratio of effort input to profit output. While this is related to invoice size and how they are to work with, it can’t just be based in that.

After all, a client you enjoy chatting to might still be terrible at getting his paperwork in on time. Likewise, a client who pays a large invoice may think that entitles them to a few extra “perks” that eat into your profit margin.

How to create a data-driven client strategy

Luckily, there is a straightforward way of analysing your client data to show which clients actually produce profits. We’ve put together a guide to walk you through the method, step by step.

You’ll find out:

• How to organise analyse client data to reveal real profits
• How to identify problem clients
• The fastest way identify and close new clients