how to use client ‘touch plans’ to stay in touch

bonus: three sample plans plus 31 quick ideas.

by sandi leyva

are your current clients happy? or are they on the verge of leaving you?

more small firm growth strategies: create your marketing plan | how to determine your ideal client | clients need advisory services more than they know | 10 tips for more energy | marketing vs. sales and how to plunge in | when you should answer questions for free
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if you don’t know, that’s a bad sign! if you haven’t asked your clients how you’re doing (not how they’re doing), it’s likely you have unhappy clients without even knowing it.

please note: if you are starting or restarting your business, you can still start this idea on the few clients you have now. if you have lost a large number of your clients, you may want to try to reconnect and let them know what you’re doing, so use these ideas in that manner.

if you’re guilty of reaching out to clients once a year or if you never reach back out to clients you have completed work for, then you’re likely losing more opportunities than you should be. they’re simply forgetting about you, and you’re leaving money on the table and costing yourself more pain in the marketing department, having to replace those clients.

the number one complaint of accounting firm clients is that the accountant does not communicate with the client often enough. it’s been that way for years. you would think we accountants would change, but here’s the problem: we often feel we’re bugging the client if we reach out, so we don’t.

if we could only learn that most clients want the extra interaction, then we would all have less client attrition in our firms.

you might also have the best of intentions, but never get around to it. you may truly have a time problem, but more than likely you’re not getting to it because of that feeling of “bugging the client,” which is truly hard to shake. you almost have to close your eyes and do it anyway.

in order to turn things around and stop leaving money on the table, you’ll need to recognize if there are any mindset issues or feelings stopping you from action so that you can fix it. perhaps the answer is to put some automated systems in place to avoid the persistent procrastination.

trust must be present to create the client relationship that sticks. it’s easier to maintain trust than to rebuild it, and staying in touch with clients regularly is your insurance policy to keep both trust and client retention high.

a ‘client touch plan’ or client communication plan

a top business priority is to make sure we keep the clients we have. a large part of our marketing time should be devoted to strengthening and expanding the current client relationships we already have. and there’s no way to better do that than to increase communications with them through an annual communications plan.

as accountants, we tend to feel like we are bugging people when we reach out. but small business owners are not always as introverted as we are. they already trust us, so it’s ok for us to share our opinion, just say hi or even let them know of something new we are offering.

your client communications plan should have some goals or outcomes:

1. make clients feel important
2. make them feel like they are listened to
3. make you memorable
4. provide service that they will remember positively for some time to come
5. make them feel like you are interested in them
6. keep your promises
7. make it clear what you can and cannot do for clients
8. handle any complaints immediately and thoroughly

don’t worry; you don’t have to take every client to lunch every week! instead, i suggest that you incorporate both personal and not-so-personal touches into your plan. it’s ok to send a newsletter to everyone, for example. but you also want to make time to pick up the phone once a year, or more often if the client is very important to you.

also, prospects may need to be warmed up. only 3 percent of sales occur in the first meeting, and a substantial majority (over 80 percent) of sales occur after five touches. you will definitely increase your conversion ratios by adding your prospects to a touch plan as well. in marketing, this is commonly called a drip campaign.

here are some ways to keep in touch with customers and prospects:

1. newsletter, emailed or printed
2. quarterly mailing with a book or gift
3. special note
4. note at project completion
5. note welcoming them as new customer
6. thank you note
7. request for testimonial (it’s ok to ask them for things; people generally like helping other people out.)
8. birthday card
9. anniversary card (date you started working together)
10. cartoon
11. send a referral
12. share a case study
13. send a white paper
14. send a free report
15. share a news story about you
16. send an announcement about a new service or special offer
17. send them a news story about them
18. share an article that made you think about them
19. invoice
20. email
21. phone call
22. free seminar
23. open house invitation
24. party invitation
25. go to an event together
26. send sports or entertainment event tickets
27. articles
28. free products
29. free promotional items
30. lunch or breakfast or coffee (this time is not billable, by the way)
31. spa certificate, flowers, chocolates, luxury items, gift basket

you’ve likely thought of other ideas as well.

here are some specific ideas i’ve seen in practice:

• send your clients a book you know they would be interested in. for small business entrepreneurs, almost anything in the business books section will do. michael gerber’s the e-myth revisited is a classic. anything by stephen covey as well as any of the leadership books is appropriate.
• be a go-to source for referrals. whether your client needs an attorney, banker, cpa, dog groomer, electrician or family doctor, have a database of names to share. once they know you’re a wealth of resources, they will be calling (and doing more business with) you all the time.
• be a source of expertise for your clients. offer an open house with a guest lecturer on a topic that you know your clients are interested in.
• send promotional items. understand that anything with your logo on it is not considered a gift to the client – it’s an advertising mechanism.
• send your clients gifts. a $10 gift card to starbucks or a gift certificate for the client’s favorite masseuse is a nice treat after the client has spent some money with you.

the cross-sell

here’s a quiz: do all of your clients know all of the services you offer? it’s not a trick question. even if you’ve told your clients what you do, they will forget if they don’t need that service right away. part of your communications plan, then, should be to update your clients on what’s happening in your business, and what you’re doing with and for other clients.

one of my clients, a service manager of an auto maintenance company, called his existing clients to let them know of a pickup service they had. most of the clients didn’t know about it, and they signed up on the spot. he generated two months worth of business within a week.

getting repeat and new business from current accounting clients is one of the overlooked ways we can increase our revenues.

all it takes is a conversation to bring in new business. your clients really want to know. they already trust you. (it deserves repeating.) if you think about it, the last thing they want to do is take a big risk and hire a brand new vendor they don’t know if you offer the same service.

you don’t want to cheat your existing clients out of doing additional business with you, so it’s really a disservice not to let clients know.

i am often guilty of moving into reactive mode with a client by doing what they tell me to do. but interestingly, the client hired you in the first place because they don’t know this area. so in many cases, the client is better served when you take the initiative and make suggestions to the client that you know would be high-payback moves for them. they can always say no, but i believe they will appreciate that you are constantly thinking about how to improve their condition.

systems you’ll need

if you decide to send out a newsletter or if you want to email your customers all at once, you’ll need a list management system such as constant contact. and you’ll either need to purchase or write your newsletter articles.

if you decide to send out thank you cards or notes, consider sendout cards. it outsources and automates the thank you note process and you can still personalize each note. if you prefer handling the paper yourself, you’ll either need to go to a stationery store such as papyrus (in a mall near you) or have a printer automate thank you notes with your company logo on them. if you decide to print your own cards, i suggest you use a layout with your logo on the front cover, nothing inside, and your website address on the back, center-bottom.

here are some links to help you with all that:

• my accountants accelerator constant contact partner link. you can get a 60-day free trial (disclosure: we do receive a small commission if you go through our link; i believe it’s $9): http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?pn=accountantsaccelerator
• a link to our strategy-focused client newsletter, bizboost news: http://acceleratornewsletters.com/client-newsletter/bizboost-news/
• here is longtime aa member cindy schroeder’s affiliate link for sendout cards: http://sendoutcards/brightcards
• here is a link to papyrus: http://www.papyrusonline.com/
• here is our printer; they ship all over, just ask for danielle: http://chasevp.com/

once you’ve selected these systems and materials, you’re ready to create your plan.

create your communications plan

here are some sample communications plans you can use to keep in touch with your clients.

client touch plan 1:

the less often you provide services to the client throughout the year, the more touches you need. for once-a-year tax clients, we recommend more than 20 touches per year, mostly automated. the danger zone is having fewer than three touches per year.

client touch plan 2:

it makes sense to send a newsletter because that will take care of the majority of touches you need to make throughout the year. it’s far more costly for you to do 12 or 26 individual touches than it is to send a newsletter, especially if you have someone else write it.

client touch plan 3 (higher touch, larger firm):

 

 from these samples, please take a minute to create your own client communications plan for the year.

posted on june 9, 2017