Welcome to a free edition of Start Up To Grown Up: Your source for ideas, insights and tactics to take back control of your business and scale it sustainably and profitably by Heather Townsend, award-winning author of The Accountants’ Millionaires’ Club and Founder of The Accountants’ Growth Club
This week, we got formal acknowledgement that we’d won a large ‘how to make partner’ programme for a law firm in India.
This nicely sorts out a small gap in revenue in Q3 and Q4. As I review our committed pipeline of work for the next 18 months, it all appears very promising.
Of course, stuff can go wrong! At this point last year, we’d won £100k of business spread across a law firm and a mid-sized consultancy firm. Then the consultancy firm decided to get bought, so they never started their ‘how to make partner’ programme, and the law firm had a leadership disagreement, which led to the firm going bankrupt.
I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch! As ever, when I review our pipeline, I see where our opportunities come from.
Assuming nothing materially changes, we will bill £300k over the next 18 months to our corporate clients. Of that £300k, £150k is to clients that we run regular programmes for. The other is to a completely new client. We still haven’t found out the source of this client, but suspect it’s due to our profile and books on our niche specialism, ‘How To Make Partner’.
Given where we are with our workload for ‘How To Make Partner’, it’s made everything much simpler. We are no longer concerned about our pipeline of new business. I’m guessing you’d like that as well. To know that the right amount of new work is coming in month after month.
However, when you are tied to fee-earning, your pipeline of new business can be haphazard at best. And you've run out of time for consistent marketing and business development. Of course, you want to profitably and sustainably grow your business. But the path there feels obscured by an endless to-do list, needy clients and team members that need more support than you can give them.
What if there were a way to put your marketing on autopilot? Not by becoming a digital marketing guru or spending a fortune on external agencies that often over-promise and under-deliver, but by building a system that fuels itself. The secret lies in something you already have control over: your client's experience.
The problems with traditional ‘Marketing’ for Professional Services Firms
If you are like me, you probably receive between 1 and 3 unsolicited messages a day from salespeople promising to solve your lead generation problems with complex software or outsourced campaigns. You probably know that these lead generation businesses are unlikely to generate good quality leads for your firm. After all, you are not selling widgets. There is always a degree of personal risk and financial risk for anyone using your firm’s services.
If you did decide to outsource your marketing and sales to an external agency, they often don’t work. The agency may be credible, and your intent may be good. But we’ve seen it fail so many times. This is because so many firms have only a vague idea of their ideal client, describing them in general terms like ‘a growing business’. Or they add in lots of jargon speak, such as “digital transformation”. (And what exactly is “digital transformation?”) Without a clearly defined niche, marketing messages become generic and fail to capture the attention of the right people, leading to a situation where you’re marketing to everyone and appealing to no one.
Furthermore, activity can become a 'tick box' exercise, such as churning out bland content that doesn't resonate with your ideal client. This is a common pitfall for service firms struggling to differentiate themselves in a crowded market where clients, unable to tell one expert from another, often resort to buying on price.
Your Marketing Flywheel
There is a theory or methodology out there, I forget who came up with it, that talks about needing a flywheel to scale a business. This is a series of processes and underlying systems that you run each month that consistently brings you new business. I.e. a Flywheel.
Forget complex funnels and conversion rates for a moment. The most powerful and sustainable way to get this Marketing Flywheel - whilst also putting your marketing on autopilot - is to deliver exceptional service, week in and week out. For a professional services business, your reputation is your greatest asset. As we are proving, a happy client doesn't just pay their invoices; they become a source of referrals and repeat business.
I use the number of referrals or repeat business a practice wins each month as the key performance indicator (KPI) to measure the quality of its client service. When you build a system around creating delighted clients, you create a self-perpetuating marketing flywheel.
Here’s how to build it.
Step 1: Systemise your client service so delivery is flawless
A common challenge for growing firms is that existing processes become inadequate, leading to bottlenecks, errors, and a decline in service quality. Work builds up, a backlog occurs, and it can take far too long to complete a standard piece of client work. This reactive firefighting consumes your time and energy.
When the business was just you and possibly a few others or hand-picked associates it was easy to keep track of client deliverables. But as soon as you are running a team of more than 3 people, part of your day job is to manage not just deliver client service. Given the demands on your time, you may not have the time to give this the right amount of focus.
To counter this, part of your day job is leading on delivering excellent client service across your business. Think of client service as the person actually delivering the work. Then the person who ensures that the work flow gets done in the right way. I.e. as effectively and efficiently as possible, in a way that is replicable and scalable if more work came in and new team members were needed.
Tip: Hold regular operational meetings: Do you and your team have weekly meetings focused purely on workflow? A regular session to discuss priorities and capacity is a great opportunity to standardise your processes and nip any potential client service issues in the bud before they escalate.
Step 2: Proactively manage and measure client happiness
If you were spending over £1,000 a month on a marketing agency, you would track its results carefully. But why is it that we don’t think about tracking the results of our client service? To turn on the Marketing Flywheel via happy clients means that you apply that same rigour to your internal client service efforts.
Measure referrals: Track how many client referrals you receive each month, their value, and who they came from. If you find a core group of clients who regularly refer you, put them into a special category to ensure they always feel valued and supported.
Measure repeat business: How much of your work comes from existing clients? And which of your clients has the potential to take more business? It’s these clients that you need to spend an extra bit of account management time. Even your small clients can be a source of new business. For example, I get on really well with my client at the smallest of our corporate clients. I know that I am not going to get £100k+ of work from them. However, they have been invaluable to me over the years by always giving me work. But most importantly they are willing to act as a case study and referee for us to potential new clients.
Monitor a client satisfaction score: This can be as simple as an automated Google Form sent to clients after you complete a key project milestone or deliver a final report. The most essential question to include is,
"On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend us?"
If a client scores you 7 or less, make it a priority to follow up personally to find out what your firm needs to do better to earn a higher score. This feedback is invaluable for improving your client service levels and also understanding what your firm needs to properly differentiate itself.
Step 3: Turn client relationships into a marketing asset
How often do you make contact with your current clients when you’re not trying to sell them something? Creating valuable, non-sales touchpoints is crucial for building trust and staying top-of-mind. It demonstrates that you care about their success, not just their fees.
Here are some simple ways to stay in touch proactively and positively:
Connect with your clients on social media and engage with their content. A simple 'like' on a post can go a long way.
Send a regular, helpful email. This could be a targeted newsletter or a more personal 'saw this and thought of you' type of message.
Schedule regular account management meetings with your most important clients to check in on their progress and goals.
Step 4: Empower your team to drive the Flywheel
As a firm owner, business development often falls entirely on your shoulders. But to scale your practice so it can truly run without you, your team needs to step up and help.
This is a major challenge. Your team members were likely hired for their technical skills, not their sales prowess. Business development is unlikely to be at the top of their priority list, particularly if they are an associate, and they probably lack the time, motivation, or skill to participate effectively. It's unrealistic to expect your team to suddenly replicate the credibility and reputation you've spent years building.
The solution is to reframe their role. They are not 'selling'; they are enhancing the client experience. Start with small, easy actions:
Ask the right question: Train your team to finish any client conversation with the simple question, "Is there anything else we can help you with today?" This opens the door for clients to raise other issues and opportunities.
Boost your social proof: In team meetings, ask everyone to take two minutes to like and comment on the firm's latest social media posts. This amplifies your reach instantly.
Have a photo and bio of them on your firm’s website: Your clients and prospects need to build an emotional connection with the wider firm. This means getting your team to understand why its important for their photo and bio to be on the firm’s website.
Encourage connections: Get your team to connect with the clients they work with on LinkedIn.
Provide simple content: Give your team ready-made social media updates they can post to their personal profiles.
Make it a priority: You must talk about these activities constantly. If you stop discussing business development, your team will revert to what they've always done. Make it a visible priority and provide simple training, even just on the right way to answer the phone.
By embedding these small, consistent actions into your firm's culture, you create a team of ambassadors who fuel your marketing flywheel every day, freeing you to work on the business, not just in it.
Final thoughts
Life is so much easier when you are not worried about where your firm’s next piece of business is coming from. Your best route to market is to get most of your new business from your existing clients, i.e. a marketing flywheel based around happy clients. However, most firms often don’t put the management time into making sure that the client experience is flawless. That management time? That’s now your role.
Your action this week:
Pick up your client list and consider who is well positioned to either send you more business or refer you. What can you do to put in place regular account management meetings with these clients to turn the potential into real, invoiceable work?
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