Peter Vander WallFounder driving creative community growth

The hidden rule in selling an accounting firm

Name: The hidden rule in selling an accounting firm
Uploaded: 2025-08-05T19:06:11+00:00
Duration: 47 s
Channel: Peter Vander Wall
Description: Short excerpt from a YouTube video ("The hidden rule in selling an accounting firm" by Peter Vander Wall) describing practical steps for handing off an…

5 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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Short excerpt from a YouTube video ("The hidden rule in selling an accounting firm" by Peter Vander Wall) describing practical steps for handing off an accounting practice. The speaker explains that client consent is required to transfer files, and outlines their outreach strategy (handwritten-style emails, paper flyers, phone calls, in-person visits). Reported retention outcomes: ~65% retained via email alone, an additional 10–15% regained by phone calls, reaching roughly 80–85% total retention.

Chapters

What's the process for the actual handoff of the business? So in the accounting space, you can't just hand over client files without the client signing consent. So one of the things is you have to get consent from all the clients in order to get their information over. We did email marketing and we did paper flyers to their addresses to announce the ownership change. I personally like handwritten the emails, knew exactly what to say to be able to have the ownership transfer. We probably got 65% of clients to say yes. They're staying with just the emails out of the entire list. And then we probably picked up another 10 to 15% by calling them. We hammered emails for like two weeks announcing the ownership change. I flew in before we bought it to like meet some of the potential clients that were kind of on the fence. And then we just hammered out phone calls to get us to that 80 to 85% retention.