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6 business development new year's resolutions to help your firm hit its growth targets

29th Dec 2013
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With 2013 rapidly coming to an end,  I was thinking about some business development related new year resolutions that every accountancy firm should make.

Do add in your business development related new year resolutions at the end of the post. I'd love to hear them.

1. Have a strategy for your firm which all the partners buy into

I know that this is meant to be business development related. However, without an overall strategy for your firm, which all the partners buy into, business development efforts get handicapped. One of my clients is a three partner firm with one partner shortly retiring and exiting the business. Unfortunately, this partner has a different view of how the firm should be run and operated. In fact he thinks the firm shouldn't go after ambitious growth targets and just service the clients it has got. As well as stopping the partners working together to genuinely create decent cross-selling between each other, this conflict and tension is sucking up valuable management time.

2. Work with a business development plan linked to the firm strategy

All too often business development is something which happens in an accountancy firm when client work is getting light or patchy. If your firm is really going to grow sustainably and profitably, it needs to be working to a business development plan. Without this plan, far too many firms do the business development equivalent of throwing mud against a wall and hoping some of it sticks. The benefits of a BD plan, linked to the firm strategy, are many, e.g.

  • you can truly measure and monitor what is working or not working
  • you can reduce your business development activities to focus on what really does work

3. Commit to a niche

I am spending a large proportion of my time working with accountancy firms who don't have a problem generating leads. Their problem is generating the right sort of leads. I.e. leads to the profitable clients, rather than the one man band and bag of receipts type of jobs. The key, in my opinion, to generating the right type of leads is being very specific about the type of leads you want to generate. But being specific is not enough, your marketing machine and effort needs to be aligned with the type of leads you want to generate. There is no point in saying you want to focus on specialising in solicitor practices if your website, business cards, blog all state that you work with SMEs and Owner Managed Businesses. Additionally, if you are going to focus on marketing to a niche, then spend time really understanding the needs and challenges of that niche. Once you have done that research offer a menu of services truly tailored to their needs - you will be amazed how easy it then becomes to generate clients from this niche.

To help you choose and commit to a niche download now our free Choosing and capitalising on your niche (email required)

4. Make business development part of the day job - consistency is key

All too often, in my opinion, firms only talk about recoverability and billed hours. Is it any wonder that firms often struggle with their business development? Or that business development is seen as less important to client work?  Or business development, such as networking, stops happening when you get busy. Therefore, it is time to put business development back in the day job. This means KPIs for business development which are measured, and including business development in the daily, weekly and monthly conversations that you have in your firm. Having a tactical marketing plan, which you use to focus you on the actions you will do regularly to generate the leads you need for your firm, is a great way of focusing you and others on hitting those growth targets. Download now our free Guide to writing your marketing plan (email required) to help build your tactical marketing plan.

5. Give you and your fee earners the business development skills to thrive in the social media era

With all this talk of making BD part of the day job and something that your firm just does, you will need to give your fee earners the skills to develop business. After all you can't expect them to just become rainmakers overnight. However, and this is a big however, the BD skills you were taught 5+ years ago are probably now out-of-date. Yep, out-of-date. Any business development training needs to have social media fully integrated, and acknowledge that the buyer wants to work with a specialist not a generalist. Effective lead generation is so much more than turning up to a conference or networking group. But, how many workshops/courses have you been on which only talk about networking as how to generate leads? Our new book, The Go-To Expert, (publishes 1st March 2014) gives you the skills to grow your reputation, differentiate yourself and win business in this social media driven age.

6. Do a client portfolio analysis and ACT on the results

Many accountancy firms in particular have a very long tail of small clients, which are often unprofitable. Therefore, its time to have that spring clean and take a long hard look at the firm's client list. When this analysis is being done, think about:

  • which clients are being under or over serviced?
  • which clients have the potential to take more services?
  • which clients are unprofitable and should be moved onto another firm?
  • where is there potential to cross-sell to clients?

What are your business development related new year resolutions?

Author Credit

Heather Townsend helps professionals become the Go-To-Expert. She is the author of the  award winning and best-selling book on business networking, the ‘FT Guide To Business Networking’ and the co-author of the Go-To Expert, and  ‘How to make partner and still have a life’. Over the last decade she has worked with over 300 partners; coached, trained and mentored over 1000 professionals at every level of the UK's most ambitious professional practices.

Heather blogs regularly at How to make partner and still have a life and Joined Up Networking.

Heather works with owners of small professional practices, as well as  future and current Mid-tier and Big Four partners.

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