five questions to help forecast your firm growth.
by martin bissett
passport to partnership
if i could give you one tip that would assure that you could predict your consistent practice growth, it would be to look at your calendar.
more: forged in fire: the pains of leadership | perception is reality, client version | 10 questions for reconsidering your prices | would you make yourself a partner? | a list is not a pipeline | prepare the next generation now | are you committed to your firm? | nine points to check before hello | why clients struggle with growth
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you need to look at what is on your calendar and to look at today’s date and ask, “where is the money coming from this month?” look at what recurring fees you have, look at the value of those fees and what they bring in. then consider what would happen if any of those fees did not recur. look at what would happen if those fees dropped out of the equation and think about how you would replace that income.
that would be the question that the bank manager would ask, the question that an investor would ask and the question that you should be asking yourself.
so, if you lose a client, where is the money going to come from to replace that income? most of us will not have the answer to that question immediately, so here’s the starting point. ask yourself the following questions:
- how do i get more appointments with prospective clients on the calendar?
- who do i need to speak to in order to gain a referral?
- do i need to bring more value to my clients and cross-sell additional services?
- where do i need to look to in order to find new business?
- what do i need to do next to get the best results for my efforts?
now go back and ask the main question again, “where is the money coming from this month?”
you need to always be mindful of this question. personally, i would be asking myself this question every few days, but realistically you need to be asking it every two weeks, at a minimum.
make it as often as you can because this is a fluid situation and it’s always changing.
if you have prospects that were in the pipeline three months ago, then you have a problem. the pipeline process is constantly changing and it has to be monitored closely so that it does not go stale. as we work through the pipeline and new clients come on board and others drop off, we need to be sure we have new prospects continually coming in. consider what it will take to bring in just one new client per month.
one new client each month is going to likely require two proposals. two proposals will probably mean you need four first meetings. so your task becomes figuring out from where you’re going to get your first four meetings.
now you need to work backwards. this is why asking where the money is coming from is so powerful. thinking this way will snap you into action rather than allowing you to always be consumed with the technical role of performing accounting services. you need a process so you don’t have the gnawing worry about where to find new clients. they will be coming through your pipeline on a regular basis.
to do this, you must take the initiative to schedule time to work on your business development habitually. in a certain sense, you can think of your practice in a similar way to if you had a pet dog to look after. you would not allow your dog to go hungry. you would make sure that he was fed and walked regularly. you would find the time to make sure that your dog was taken care of.
if you didn’t have the time to look after your dog yourself, then you’d get someone else to do it for you because you know if you didn’t, the poor pup would suffer, and possibly die. if the growth and feeding of a pet is a high enough priority that we find a way to do what needs doing, then why would that not be the same for our business?
once you have invested the time to get regular systems into place to support your business growth, half an hour should be all it takes to keep your pipeline producing a stream of new clients. of course, you will need to balance this with your entire list of priorities, but making a schedule ensures that consistent progress happens.
so let me ask you, where is the money coming from in your practice this month?