Build to Enough

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Keila Hill-Trawick: Hello. You're listening to Build to Enough, a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to scale at their own pace. I'm your host, Keyla Hill Traywick, and I'll be your chief storyteller and cheerleader in a world that glorifies endless expansion, we're tuning out the noise and discussing the beauty of enough. Each episode will dive into inspiring stories, practical insights, and strategies to cultivate sustainable success on your [00:00:30] own terms. So whether you're a solopreneur, small business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur, get ready for a refreshing take on the entrepreneurial journey. This is build to enough. Hey, welcome back to the Build to Enough podcast. Now, this is part two of a four part series about turning the second half of your year into success for professional service firms, specifically accounting firms. But I think that this is information that can benefit everyone. So we are talking about strategies [00:01:00] and actionable insights to make sure that the second half of your year feels even more successful than your first half. That being said, if you haven't listened to the first episode in this series, go back and grab that before you listen to this one. So each episode in this series is going to talk about a critical component of business success. Last week we talked about benchmarks and KPIs. We also went over profit margins and business strategy. And we ended with a review about your pricing and your service offerings. [00:01:30] This week we're going to talk about understanding your client mix and really an emphasis on maintaining strong client relationships, because that's really the key to your firm's success.

Keila Hill-Trawick: We'll dig into how we use technology because that definitely affects our clients client satisfaction. So are they happy with what we're doing? And then feedback and relationship building, really taking that information that clients are giving us about the service that we're offering and turning it into actionable items or events [00:02:00] that we can do within the firm to make it better. So let's dive in. So when we talk about tech, the first question that we want to ask is how is our onboarding process. And that starts from the engagement and proposal process. How are we getting clients in? How does it feel for them to be able to automatically move through different phases in our service? Are we adding the right questions from the very beginning to see if they'd be a good fit, and to know what to ask for once they get in. [00:02:30] And part of that starts with, do we have the correct client mix? And probably a better question, are we targeting the right people? And so the reason that I bring this up is because our ability to implement technology, to be able to use it to automate a bunch of things in our service, is partly dependent on whether or not we are bringing in clients that are going to use it and are the people that are that we're already serving, using the technology that we've brought in. So many firms and agencies, [00:03:00] accounting firms specifically, will build out this whole new process using technology, and then the clients are not using it.

Keila Hill-Trawick: They are going around the portal and sending in email or calling you, instead of updating the chat functionality or email structure that you've put in place. And this can be especially hard for legacy clients that you're trying to bring forward. And so as we're in the middle of the year, one of the things you want to look at is are people using it properly? Does it work? Like [00:03:30] was it supposed to create an automation that triggered you to do something? And it didn't, but we were in the middle of a busy season, and you didn't have time to fix what was broken. When you're thinking about the right clients, it may not be that they're the wrong clients. The tool just isn't working as expected, or clients aren't being redirected to tell them that they should be uploading their documents there, or replying to you in a very specific place. Onboarding is going to be really important because this is where you set the expectation for everybody that's working with you. Is [00:04:00] it a very structured, step by step driven process that's using technology, or are you giving the impression that you're going to do everything manually and then kind of throwing them into technology once they start working with you? That technology assessment is also going to tell you whether or not you need to keep some of the clients that you currently have. So one of the things that we saw at Little Fish is that we implemented a rubric of sorts, that kind of reviewed our client makeup and said, are we still the right fit for them and are they the right [00:04:30] fit for us? And that was made up of a couple of different metrics responsiveness.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So client behavior. Are they responding when we need them to. Are we able to because they're responding on time. Do the things that we promised like pay estimated taxes or schedule their tax planning calls? Do we find them to be rude or dismissive? That's really important. I want my team to keep wanting to work here, and it is very hard to do that when people treat them badly. Also, do we think that they are the right fit [00:05:00] for what we're offering? Are they making enough to really be able to actually afford our services and again, take advantage of the value that we offer? For example, tax planning may not be as helpful for you if you are constantly running a loss. We at least want to bring it up to you. So we're having a conversation about that. So you're going to want to look at churn rates, but you also want to start making some decisions internally about who should stay, who should go, and what kind of clients you're willing to bring on in the latter half of the year that you may not have been paying as much attention to [00:05:30] in the first six months leading to that or leading from that, is client satisfaction.

Keila Hill-Trawick: One thing that we do at Little Fish is at the end of every call. I always ask and the team always ask, is there anything else that we could be doing that would make your service more valuable or easier to work with us? Do you have any suggestions that we should be aware of? One I want clients to know that they're being heard. It matters to me if something isn't working as planned, or if you're starting to get some resentment and just didn't tell us yet. But I think the other [00:06:00] part is it gives us an opportunity to look within, to see if there are any things that we need to update now. We're not going to be able to implement every single thing that a client wants. There are wish lists that we just cannot make happen, but at least once we know we can monitor client satisfaction, go back to them with beta options or some solutions that we've come up with to see if it's really what they were asking for. I guarantee if one client brings it up to us, there are probably some others that might find value in this, [00:06:30] and we need to find that balance of what we can actually do versus what people ask for. But it's important that we're giving the people what they want. And as much as we want this to be a service that we know best, um, it's important that we find that balance between what clients feel is valuable as well.

Keila Hill-Trawick: You'll also want to look at various channels, whether that's social media or the tone of emails or comments that you see. Make sure that the team is recognizing that too, so that we can get ahead of any issues before clients ultimately [00:07:00] want to leave, because we weren't resolving issues that they were coming through in working with us. Finally, feedback and relationship building, especially after major services, you want to talk to clients about how things went. There are really key, um, spaces where you can do that at the end of the onboarding session. Was that easy for you? Is there anything that you feel like we missed? Is there any information that you think that we need that we didn't ask for? After major projects? [00:07:30] In some professional service firms, this will just be kind of the end of a big service that you did, maybe in an accounting firm that's after a big cleanup project or a tax return, What you really want to see is, are you happy with a big thing that we just did, and not just the individual task that we do along the way? I want to know if your experience was good and not just, did I check this box for you? You want to check in separately with ongoing clients so that it's not just at renewal time? [00:08:00] Overall, are we performing in the ways that you would have expected? Are we making you happy with the service that we're providing, and do you feel like it's valuable and aligned with what you thought you were signing up for? As we start thinking about this, you want to ask questions of yourself and your team to say, are there any gaps in our engagement process that could improve relationships? Are there any things that we could be doing better to make sure that not only are we a better referral partner, right, we want clients to tell other people [00:08:30] that we are really good at what we do for them, and building a good client experience is going to make that even easier for them to do.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Ultimately, the client makes and your client relationships are going to play a huge impact and be a huge factor in how you manage the second half of your year. The clients that we have loved working with, we want to make sure that we keep them happy and the clients that we don't feel as happy working with and maybe don't feel like are as happy working with us. We want to assess whether it's still [00:09:00] a good fit. We want to determine before we get to renewal, whether they should come back, or whether we should offboard them with care, giving them a soft place to land with, maybe a referral partner that could be a better fit for them. Ultimately, we want to enhance transparency so everybody knows exactly what to expect from each other in this partnership. And we want to make sure that we are giving what we promised in terms of the client relationship.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. If you have any questions, [00:09:30] we'd love to hear from you at podcast at Little Fish Accounting Comm, just so that we can have some insight on how the first half of your year went, and whether anything specific came up for you that you want to be paying special attention to in the second half. Thanks for listening. Next week we'll be back with part three of four of this series. We want to say thank you again to ignition for sponsoring this series. Ignition is giving you the opportunity to try them out for free, which I highly recommend. We have loved using ignition [00:10:00] from our proposal process to the first invoice being paid. It's made our jobs really easy and a seamless process for our clients. Not only do you have the opportunity to get it easy and get paid quicker, they include engagement letters and a clear scope of work so that you're setting really good client expectations from the beginning. Click the link in our show notes to get started with a free trial. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Build to Enough. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget [00:10:30] to subscribe, rate and share the love with your fellow entrepreneur friends, and make sure to sign up for the Build to Enough newsletter. The link is in the show notes. Stay tuned for more episodes as we continue to redefine success one intentional step at a time.