get clients to understand firm processes … or say goodbye

with just a little advanced marketing, you can get paid year-round and have more satisfied clients.

by frank stitely
the relentless cpa

when i’m frustrated, here’s how i explain the importance to clients of letting us work our process:

“when you get your car repaired, you don’t look over the mechanic’s shoulder and tell him which wrench to use. the same principle applies to us. if you knew the best ways to prepare tax returns, you should become our competitor.”

more: train now before it costs you down the road | keep clients from “balance due” shock | it’s ok to say no to clients (even the large ones) | you train your clients, whether you mean to or not | business owners face one of three exits | how small firms can win the talent wars | do you know your turnaround time?
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let’s be perfectly honest with each other.

there’s a reason you aren’t actively training clients to allow you to work efficiently. you’re afraid that you’ll lose clients.

i guarantee that you will.

clients have trained you to be inefficient. they’ll resist retraining. some of them will leave and infect someone else’s practice.

you fear losing clients because you fear you can’t replace them.

that’s a marketing problem.

this isn’t about marketing. however, here’s frank’s rule of marketing. revenue cures a multitude of ills. many of you shut down your marketing efforts years ago. you stopped marketing because you feared that you couldn’t manage growth.

you couldn’t manage growth because your existing clients made you inefficient. you need a steady stream of new prospects to select the ones who add value to your practice. a steady stream of new clients removes the fear of losing the bad ones. you’ll want to fire the bad ones.

i inherited a large-revenue client from my retiring partner a couple of years ago. we billed them nearly $18,000 per year on a fixed-price contract.

my retiring partner had dealt with the owner for years and had a great personal relationship.

i took over the relationship as the owner retired and passed the company to his sons. in the middle of my second year with them, i had some serious misgivings. first, they weren’t a very profitable client for us. i was unhappy with the time we were spending on what seemed like a never-ending growth in new tax returns for us to prepare. they were also sensitive about price.

worse than the money, however, they wouldn’t take advice, and then they would complain about the consequences. one of the sons wanted to decide when i could take a vacation, because he wanted to close his books in mid-december – not the end of the year. why? he wanted to take a vacation the last week of the year.

how many red flags do you need to see this is a bad client? apparently, i needed one more. i had a phone call to discuss a draft tax return with one of the sons.

he said, “you don’t know who you’re talking to.” yes, i did. i was talking to an ex-client.

we have a steady stream of new clients that gives us the freedom to say no, even to a big-revenue client. i would rather have four $4,500 clients than one $18,000 client. large clients think they own you and want to control the relationship. that’s how you end up doing bad things.

our saying is, “we’ll replace them by close of business today.”

posted on january 3, 2024