Getting Close to Clients

Source: CPA Practice Management Forum

Providing clients a wide range of solutions helps you get close to them.

The magic number is five. When clients use five or more CPA firm services, the firm’s retention rate is 98 percent. The rate drops below 29 percent for clients that use one or two services.

Why then do professionals fail to offer more services? Reasons are that they don’t:

• Know the client well enough.
• Know enough about the service(s) available.
• Know how to talk about the services (they need training).
• Have confidence in the person(s) who provides the services.
• Want to increase clients’ accounting fees. (Editor’s note: What irony—clients leave because you don’t charge them enough.)
• Want to spend time with clients who can’t be billed.

Here are some suggestions for increasing cross-selling:

• Offer incentives—a commission or a referral fee.
• Run contests—offer a trip to Las Vegas for the winner.
• Be sure that incentive plans cover sales of services to existing clients (many plans exclude these sales).
• Talk about key clients at meetings.
• Celebrate new sales.
• Don’t wait until year-end to pay rewards. They should be instantaneous and evident.
• Make client closeness a part of every performance review. Concentrate on providing more services.
• At a partner meeting or retreat, conduct an exercise involving a discussion about one or more specific services. Then have participants list the names of clients who might benefit from them. The service expert contacts the client—after discussing it with the referrer.
• Set a goal for each partner to introduce 12 clients per year to other service providers in the firm.

From CPA Practice Management Forum, CCH Incorporated, 800-449-8114, July 2007, p. 15. For the complete article, click here.