7. The 6 MOST IMPORTANT Processes for Your Firm

And so I thought we were finally at this place where we could really start to hire some more people so that we could grow the company and start hitting some of those big goals that I set. But what I quickly realized is that we were missing some key processes and procedures. And so what that meant was when people came on the team, they really didn't know what to do because all of the processes and procedures were inside of my head. And I realized that in order for us to grow like I wanted us to, we were going to actually have to take a step backwards and get some of those processes, processes and procedures documented so that people could join the team and help. And when I look back at it, I'm certain that that that pause in growth, it ended up costing the company probably $100,000 in growth just in that year.

When we first start our firms, for a lot of us, we're going fast, and we're just trying as hard as we can to get started some clients in the door so that we can start generating some revenue for our business. And for a lot of us, that is the difference between being able to leave our corporate job and go full time into our firm. But what happens for a lot of us is we're going so fast that we don't take the time to document processes and procedures. And what happens is, you get to that point that you're ready to start hiring somebody to give you some bandwidth to work more on the business. And in the business, they join the team, and because they don't know exactly what you want them to do and how you want them to do it, they've got like a thousand questions for you. You'll start to get frustrated and overwhelmed by all the questions. And a lot of times, you know, for me at least, I found myself, I was like, you know, screw it. I'll just do it myself. It's faster and easier for me to just do these things by myself. You get rid of the team, and then you're back to square one. So my name is Michael King, and welcome back to the Connected Accountant. Today, I want to share with you three reasons why having documented processes and procedures are so important. And. And then I want to share with you the six processes and procedures that I think are absolutely critical to any financial services firm, whether you are just doing it as a side hustle or whether you've been in the game for a number of years. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in. Three big reasons why having processes and procedures are so important. Like I mentioned a minute ago, without them, you're going to frustrate new team members. And you know, we all want to bring great people onto our team. We want to have top talent and people that love working with us and with our clients. And when you bring those people in, they're going to have this expectation that you've kind of got your stuff together. They're going to expect that there's some things in place so that they can come in and start immediately adding value. And so if you don't have those processes and procedures in place, the best talent, they're going to join your team and they're going to quickly nope out because they want to know what to do so they can start adding value immediately. Number two, having processes and procedures means that you're going to have a consistent experience for your clients. And this is so huge, particularly when you get to the point that you want to start raising prices if you're kind of doing something different a month in and month out, it gives clients this sense that it's amateur hour, that you really don't know what you're doing. And so they, they start to get these notions, these beliefs that you're not worth top dollar because you're amateur hour. And so for that customer consistent experience perspective, I can't recommend enough having processes and procedures and finally just some internal efficiencies. You know, I talk a lot about, you want your personal life to drive your business and not the other way around. But when you don't have some core processes in place, you're always kind of reacting and you're always trying to remember how did you do this last time? And that really, really slows. And if you want to have maximum revenue, maximum clients with a great customer experience and a great team around you so that you can build your business up, you've got to have those processes and procedures. But you're probably asking yourself, alright, Mike, I get it. I know why I need them. I'm here today to know what they are. So let's dive into what those six key processes and procedures are. Number one, this one's so huge. Just to start things off on the right foot, you want to have an awesome client onboarding and offboarding process. So let's talk about onboarding first. When you finally get that sale and it's time for clients to start working for you, you want to wow them out of the gate. You want to show them so quickly that they chose you and that was a win for them, like the fact that they chose to work with you was a home run and they're like super happy that they picked you. And so you want to deliver this amazing experience right out of the gate. Because I will tell you from having goofed up onboarding processes before, like onboarding experiences before, when you don't do that, they immediately start wondering, are you the right guy or girl for them? And that's when they start to like, well, I talked to this other vendor that charged a little bit less. Maybe I should have gone with her, maybe I should have gone with him. But when you hit them out of the gate with which is this awesome experience, it really sets the stage for everything else. And I think you've got to be intentional about that. You need to have a process in place. As soon as the sales calls over, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to send them this, and then this is going to happen. And as a matter of fact, another episode, which I will link to as soon as it goes live, where I walk through how to create an amazing onboarding process and experience for your clients. So definitely be on the lookout for that. The other piece of that is you want to have a good client offboarding process. And I think this is like super overlooked a lot of times, but you want, regardless of why the relationship ends, you want the client's last experience with you to be a good one. Because maybe for whatever reason things didn't work out with you guys, but you want them to have that like good vibe, those good feels about you. So that in the future, if they've got a friend that needs somebody, they can say, you know, hey, Mike wasn't for me. My business didn't go where I thought it was or, you know, think needs change. But I think Mike would be an awesome accountant for you or an awesome fractional CFO for you. Would you like an introduction? Right. But a lot of us, we botch the off boarding and we leave a negative taste in their mouth. And regardless of how long, you serve them with excellence, if the off boarding process is rough, if it's like it takes them forever to get the final month's books closed out or to get the permissions handed over in QuickBooks to the new accountant, whatever, whatever the case might be, they're left just kind of feeling meh about you and that's what they're going to remember. Not all the great things you did before. So really, really take some time, be deliberate about that client onboarding and offboarding process. The next one I Kind of alluded to this earlier. You want to have a great team onboarding and offboarding process. So onboarding is when you hire somebody new and are they going to have your company email address? Are you going to need to give them access to LastPass or Google Drive? There's all different things that have to go into place so you want to understand what those things are so that when you bring that awesome new hire onto your team, whether it's a 1099 or a W2, they get the sense that you've got your stuff together. And so you want to create that great experience. And also you don't want to pay them for lost time, you don't want to pay them for hours where like, oh gosh, yeah, I do need to give you access to Google Drive and sorry, I forgot to add you as a user on my QuickBooks account. And so you're spending a bunch of time, they're spending a bunch of time. And while that's all going on, the clock's running, they're charging you and the client's not getting a great experience either in the, in the interim. Now a lot of people will have a good team onboarding process, but I would also encourage you to have a good offboarding process. Now normally, maybe, hopefully not normally, but a lot of times when somebody leaves, you've got to cut their access pretty fast. They've got access to all kinds of sensitive client information, whether that's in QuickBooks or Xero or your tax accounting platform or Google Drive. Team members have access to really sensitive information. You want to be able for a data protection and an information protection standpoint. You want to be able to get that access removed quickly and efficiently. Having a good offboarding process will make sure that you know exactly what to do when it's time for that team member to move on. The third process, I want you to really, really think hard about having in place report prep. And this is more important I think for fractional CFOs than anybody else because a lot of our deliverable is in that like CFO or whatever that monthly and quarterly call might look like. But the thing is, if you don't have a systematized or processed out way of generating those reports, they can take a ton of time because you'll end up going down rabbit holes, right? What I found to be the most effective there is understanding what the layout of the report looks like. And then I documented this like analytical approach to how do I analyze the data and what types of things will flag me to Bring up particular metrics on the conversation with the client. And what I found is I had this belief that I can't process this out. Like, there's this art to the way that I look at financials and put that, you know, against company goals. But when I really sat down and said, okay, well, if I had to, if I had to process this out, how would I do it? And I realized that like 80, 90% of what I do could actually be processed. And it was a game changer on the time it spent to prepare for those fractional CFO calls. The next one. Regardless of bookkeeping accounting, fractional CFO work, another great process is report delivery. How are you going to send financial reports or your fractional CFO report or any other reports that you might give to your clients? And when I say delivery, I mean, what is the look and the feel? What are the things that you're highlighting and what manner are you doing that in? And this is less for you, even though there are some efficiencies to be had. But it's more around creating a consistent client experience. I'll tell you now that I've worked with hundreds of clients in my firm, I've found that clients really appreciate that predictable report delivery. They want to know exactly where to go to find the key information that you're trying to share with them. They want to know where to go to find the KPIs or the cash flow forecasting. They want to know where your notes are going to be. It helps them get more efficient in analyzing the data that you're presenting to them. And then when they get more efficient at that, I found that they tend to ask smarter questions because they know where to find, like the most important information in your reports. And then they can much more quickly and efficiently figure out what they want to ask you for clarification. It really just adds to that elevated client experience when it's processed out. Oh, this is a big one. This is one that I think people really like. Day one. If I could go back, day one process that I would have put in place, because when we first started, we did a lot of bookkeeping, and I would put in place a monthly closeout process and bonus points for an annual closeout process in the reason I think this is the first one that I would focus on above all the other ones is because your first hire is probably going to be somebody that's doing tactical bookkeeping work for you. And so now that I work with just getting, getting close to 100 or 150 bookkeepers, accountants, and fractional CFOs now doing coaching. What I found is we've all got our own FL flavor for the way that we like closeouts to be done. And, you know, you could ask 10 different accountants, what's the right way to close out books every month, and you'll probably get somewhere between eight and 10 different answers. And so a lot of the times there's not a right way. Well, there's definitely a wrong way to do it, but there can be multiple right ways to do it. And so to avoid frustration on your part and rework on the part of that first hire you bring in, just take a couple of minutes to document out exactly how you want monthly closeouts to be done, when you want it to be done, how you want to be notified, et cetera, et cetera. Take some time to do that. And then we don't think about this but like once a year. But how do you want annual closeouts to be done? Is there anything in particular you want done after that December closeout to close out the year? Are you putting password protections on the QBO file? Is there anything special that you want them to do? Go ahead and get those documented so that when you do make that first hire, they can hit the ground running and do that super tactical work for you. And then the final one, I preach this one all the time, yet I just don't see that many people doing it. A really important key process is how do you do sales calls as numbers nerds? One of the things that we dislike the most about entrepreneurship is getting on a sales call. And it's because sales calls feel unpredictable. They feel like they're kind of slimy. You're not really sure what to expect. And I'm like, look, you can put a process or a framework in place to, to help step you through that call so that you are a little bit more confident on the call, so that you make sure you're not doing those slimy things that you don't like when other people do so that you know exactly kind of how you're going to walk the client through the things that you can do for them and the ways that you can serve them. Like just come up with a framework. But I know a lot of people are like, okay, that sounds great, but what does that process look like? So if you haven't done so yet, I would encourage you check out 7Step framework.com, that's a free training that I've done. It's like an hour long where I walk you through exactly the process and the framework that I use to handle sales calls with fractional CFO clients. And I'll tell you, it works just the same for bookkeeping, accounting, tax prep. It's a great process to walk through no matter what type of services that you're offering. So check that out@7stepframework.com we'll drop a link in the show notes or the description below so you can just click on it. But look, I know processes and procedures aren't sexy. When we think of entrepreneurship and all the great reasons we started our business, none of us really got into business to have processes and procedures. But look, I can tell you that if you want to make more money as a CEO than when you work somewhere else, and if you want to have a business that doesn't drive your personal life, having some key processes and procedures in place can be an absolute game changer to making that reality. So what I would encourage you today is if you haven't done really good processes and procedures that are really any processes and procedures, I would encourage you to think about making that a goal for the next month to just get one in place and block off an hour and just kind of sit down. Don't think about it needing to be perfect or this elaborate 20 page document to do monthly closeout. As an example, if I was to hire somebody, what would the 10 steps or 12 steps be that I want them to follow to do a closeout and just block off an hour of your time over the next month to get that process in place. All right. I hope this was helpful for you. I look forward to seeing you next week right here on the Connected Accountant. See you then.