How to build an extraordinarily successful accounting firm

Hello and welcome. It's Mark Wickersham here. And in this video, I want to share with you six critical steps to building an extraordinarily successful accounting firm. Whether you're an accountant or a bookkeeper, and I take you through these six steps that you want to do in the right order.

So what are those six steps? Number one, we have to start with our plan, with our strategy. And this is something that's so critically important for any accounting firm, in fact, any business. But many small firms, many small businesses, they neglect this. They do not create a sound strategy. And what we have to do as part of that is we have to start with creating a vision. What do we want our business to look like when it's finally done? And we take that vision and then we work backwards and say, okay, if that's what we want to achieve, what's the strategy? How are we going to achieve that? What are the things we have to do this year? What are the key things we have to do? We also have to think about as part of strategy. Who are our ideal clients? What do they want? What are we going to do that's different to everybody else? How are we going to deliver extraordinary value? So number one is we have to figure out strategy. The second thing we do, once we have our plan, what we then have to focus on is pricing. And the reason for that is because I've learned over the years that of all the things that are important in building accounting firm, pricing is the number one. It's the most powerful lever in the profit equation. Most people make the mistake of looking to win new work, of growing their business, winning new clients. And I know that because that's what I did back in 1996, when I started my accounting firm, I was obsessed with winning new clients. Three years later, I was working crazy hours and I was struggling to make ends meet. And the reason for that was because I was pricing wrong. I was pricing too low. If you are pricing wrong, then every time you win new business, you just end up becoming busier and busier and busier. And when we become too busy, we then solve the problem, usually by hiring people. When we hire people, then we have other problems. We become busy training, managing and supporting a team of people. And all that happens is all that increase the top line from winning new business. We also increase our cost base. And our bottom line doesn't change. We just work harder and harder. We have to get the pricing right first. So number two, the second thing we have to do is we have to recognize that the old fashioned way of pricing, pricing based on the hour is crazy. We have to shift to value pricing and understand the foundations of value pricing and learn the principles and how to transition from hourly rates to fixed pricing or flat fees onto value pricing. Because that's the future of the profession for pricing. That's where we get better prices and make more money. Now, once we've then done that, the third thing we have to do is we have to systemize it, because systems are so important. If you've ever read the book by Michael Gerber, the E Myth Revisited, he talks about the power of systems. And systems are so critically important. And you know that every accounting firm knows that because we have systems for what we do. We have audit checklists, tax return preparation checklists. Bookkeeping is all about processes, procedures, checklists. We are very systematic, we are great with systems. But the one area that's the most important in our firms is pricing. Pricing. How many pricing systems do we have? We must have a system in place so we price consistently the best way, every single time. So once we figured out how to value price and we then systemized the process so we price with confidence consistently. Now in step number four, we are ready to start growing our practice. We have our strategy in place. We know how to price, we know we have the systems to price more successfully. So now we start to think about growing. And what we want to do is make sure that we grow by building a list. A list is, if you like, a prospect database. It's people who you've identified as your ideal clients, the sorts of people you want to work with, and you want to attract those people. You attract them by having a list based on building strategy. That's where you give some free information and in return they give you their email address, their name, and they go into your system and you have a system in place which is the heart, the foundation of your marketing, which will grow your firm. Because as you build your list, people on that list at some point in time will want to work with you. It might not be straight away, but at some point. And you do that by using that list to nurture and keep adding value to those prospective clients. And you automate the entire process with a lead generation system. It sits at the heart of your firm. When you have a great, awesome lead generation system, then marketing works almost on autopilot. Now, once we've then done that, we're building up our list of prospects. In step five, we, we want a system to turn them into great clients. And in our profession, the Way that we do that is with meetings. We meet with people either face to face or these days perhaps using online meeting software. We meet with people to see if we're the right firm for them and if they're the right person for us, if we're a good fit. So what we want to do is make sure we systemize that process through an appointment generation system. We want to make sure we put in place a system that saves us time, that attracts the right people and has built into it a pre qualification system to weed out the clients that don't meet your strategy, your ideal client. Because your time's precious and what you don't want to do is spend time wasted time meeting with people that aren't your ideal client, that aren't a great fit. Now once you've done those five steps, you've got your strategy in place, you've started to move to value pricing and you have a system in place for pricing in step three. In step four, we are now got the foundations of our marketing in place to build our list. In step five, we now have a system to turn people into clients through an automated meeting system. Now we've done that. In step six, we're ready to now start changing clients lives. And that will be in whatever way you've identified as part of step one, your strategy, what, what's your ideal client and what are you going to do to differentiate yourself? So let's say for example, you've identified that what you want to be known as is the expert in business advisory, changing clients lives by helping them build more successful businesses. And at the moment business advisory is a hot topic in the accounting profession because we have to start as the world's changing move from compliance and start adding more value. Advisory is, is a great thing to do. But we can't start doing business advisory until number one, we've worked out our strategy and we have a plan. We can't start doing advisory until we figured out value pricing and have pricing systems. Because advisory is premium work and should be charged at a premium rate. So you must have your pricing figured out and then you need marketing systems, lead generation and appointment that attracts the right sort of clients. Those clients that are going to be open, receptive to help with growing their business. They're the six steps. So as a quick recap, we need to have a strategy in place. Number two, we need to start to move to value pricing. Number three, we want to systemize our pricing so it happens consistently. We price with confidence. Number four, we want @ the foundation of our marketing. We want a lead generation system. Number five, we then have an appointment generation system and then number six, we're ready to start changing clients lives which might be of course offering a business advisory service. Thank you for watching this video. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up please and you'll find some more information underneath in the comments. Bye for now.