How to enhance client value for growth

Is your team is stuck in a vicious cycle of high-volume, low-value compliance work? Would you like to focus on what really matters to you—bringing value to your clients and ultimately growing your firm?

In this article, we explain how adopting the right technology and a client-first approach will help you maximise the potential of your clients.

From digital firm to human firm

Embracing technology is essential for transforming into a client-centric firm. By automating tedious, time-consuming manual tasks like data entry or invoice processing, your firm can free up time and resources to prioritise client relationships.

Accounting firms have made giant efficiency leaps by moving to digital processes with cloud accounting software like Sage for Accountants.

Human firms take this one step further by prioritising personal connections and relationship-focused services over mere compliance. This means that technology should complement rather than replace the human element.

So, while cloud accounting software allows you to generate valuable client reports, sending routine reports alone is not enough to meaningfully enhance client satisfaction.

You can increase client retention dramatically by moving away from conversations that are tied to the accounting calendar and toward regular personalised services for clients such as forecasting and scenario planning using live data. The goal is to become indispensable to clients’ business decision-making.

Will Farnell, author of The Human Firm, says “with the advancements in technology, we now engage in daily and weekly dialogues with our clients.”

Asking the right questions

There’s often a lack of understanding when it comes to how to increase client value, with many accountants overcomplicating the process or sending tons of reports to already overwhelmed business owners.

You can really begin adding value to your clients if you first understand their goals and concerns. Start by asking your clients questions like: What are your ambitions? Where would you like to see your business in a year’s time?

Encouraging clients to express their goals out loud gives you a valuable starting point for helping them get where they want to go.

You may find business owners have got stuck in the weeds and haven’t even thought about their goals in a long time. So, they are likely to jump on this opportunity to focus on the big picture and chat with you about their future rather than their balance sheet.

Empowering your small clients

Judging which clients will be receptive to these discussions can be challenging, and often leads to making assumptions based on business size. However, the reality is that businesses of all sizes need support.

For example, partners often assume smaller businesses won’t want to pay for forecasting or scenario planning, especially those who are reluctant to pay for compliance work. But these are the same clients who do spend money on business memberships, coaches and mentors.

It’s quite possible many of your small clients don’t realise there’s more you can do for them outside of standard accounts and tax return preparation and need to be walked through it.

Will Farnell says “I find that most clients are often unaware of their specific needs. From my perspective, we carry a responsibility to help clients understand the importance of things they may not even realise they need.”

It’s all about helping them understand their potential. When you speak specifically in terms of achieving their business goals, suddenly these price sensitive clients (at least from a compliance perspective) are far more open to a discussion on paying for value-added services.

Building repeatable services

In a traditional firm model, value-added services for clients are typically delivered as bespoke services by partners and managers. This is time-consuming work and limits senior management’s ability to offer these advisory services to every client.

But now you can leverage cloud accounting add-on services like smart budget and scenario building tools, that will shift your value added services from bespoke to repeatable. Use Futrili, for example, to run any client Sage ledger for an accurate 3-year forecast—no more building scenarios in Excel.

Not only do tools like this streamline the process for senior management, they’re easy to use and make it possible for all members of the team to get involved in the process.

And you can offer repeatable services at a price that small business clients can afford to pay—a win-win for both their growth and yours.

Grow and scale your firm

Show your clients you care. Unlock your clients’ value and grow your practice with purpose-driven processes and a human-centric approach.