In this episode, Serena talks about how to balance gaining new clients with delivering on promises for current clients.
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In this episode, Serena talks about how to balance gaining new clients with delivering on promises for current clients.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper
For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:
Visit our website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com
Follow the Blog: ambitiousbookkeeper.com/blog
Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/ambitiousbookkeeper
Connect on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/SerenaShoup
Connect on Facebook: Facebook.com/serenashoupcpa
Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/serenashoupcpa
Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.
Podcast Publishing Tools we use:
For those of you wanting to continue to grow your business? Chances are you've been battling with the question. How do you balance the scale of delivering on promises for current clients, with marketing and gaining new clients? And if you're new here and starting your business, gaining more clients may be your primary focus. So this may not apply to you, but I do want to let you know, I have a resource for you on this, which is my signature program. The bookkeeping business accelerator. This is a comprehensive program designed to help you design a business that serves you, attract the clients that you love working with and optimize the way that you work, so that you're able to balance your work with your life and the CEO time with the client work and truly have a business that is set up intentionally with the end result in mind. And just a couple of days, if you're listening live to this episode, we are running a sale on the bookkeeping business accelerator. It starts May 22nd and runs through May 26th. It's just open for one week at this special sale price. We are adding some special payment plan options as well to make it more accessible. In addition to the discount. And we are throwing in a special bonus for anyone who joins on the first day, which is May 22nd. So. Go to ambitious bookkeeper.com/vip, and save that link and set your reminders to check it out. On May 22nd. Again, the link is ambitious bookkeeper.com/vip, and the link is also in the show notes. All right, let's now get on to today's episode. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about how to manage and balance gaining more clients with delivering on the promises as with current clients, as it seems to be something that is pretty top of mind for a lot of us right now. And I've had experiences working with other service providers recently. Where they haven't been doing the greatest job of this either. it's allowed me to really reflect on how I'm doing this in my own business. And. Am I managing this correctly? Or managing it well, and a lot of the students and other bookkeepers that I work with are also kind of struggling with this balance. So I figured now is a really good time to talk about this. So one of the biggest challenges that you might face as you grow your business. Is balancing that new bookkeeping client acquisition with delivering on the promises and work for current clients. And as a bookkeeper, you're constantly striving to grow your business, but at the same time, you want to ensure that you're delivering the best service possible to your current clients. So finding that correct balance between the two really is going to be crucial in building. A successful and sustainable business for you. So I'm going to start with a few tips. Actually. I'm going to give you three tips today on this episode. So grab a notebook. Or your favorite notes app and sit back and Jot down some ideas as things pop up for you and just reflect on your current situation in your process to. Just to make sure that you are. Intentional with this and thinking about this and making sure that, you have some certain things in place. So tip number one. Is to prioritize the communication with current clients. Now. Communication with your current clients. Should always be a top priority, but sometimes, and I fall into this too. Sometimes we get to where we're behind and we're like really nervous about. Bringing that to our client's attention. And we just kind of want to like brush it under the rug and hope that like I can catch up and everything will be fine. And they won't even need to know that there was an issue. But regular communication with your clients really can help you understand their needs better and provide them with better service. and it, helps build trust and loyalty, which is going to in the end lead to more work and referrals from those clients. So making sure that you were staying in touch with your current clients or regularly, whether it's through email or phone calls or in-person meetings, if you work locally, ensure that your. Really addressing their needs and concerns and are providing them with updates about their accounts. This will help them feel valued and appreciated. And there'll be more likely to recommend your services to others. Like I said, So even if you're feeling behind or nervous about communicating. Absolute worst thing you can do is ignore your clients and not keep them updated. And this can also really this, you know, this tip, prioritizing communication with current clients. It can also be really challenging for those of us who really enjoy the sales and marketing activities. Cause I know I love meeting new businesses and learning about what they have going on, whether or not I think that we can help them. And when you have a big goal to grow your business, sometimes we over dedicate time to acquisition expert. Efforts, which brings me to tip number two, which is to schedule specific times for these client acquisition or marketing or sales efforts. So. If you're growing a business client acquisition, which is the process of bringing on new clients. So that could encompass your marketing activities, your networking activities, your time to. Build out proposals, your time to take sales calls. Your time too. work on your website and do social media posts. All of that is part of your client acquisition process. So it is an essential part of growing your business, but it's also important to focus on delivering that quality work for your current clients. Like we talked about. So to balance the two. I recommend scheduling specific times for those client acquisition efforts, which would be, like I said, attending networking events or doing your social media outreach. Either setting a certain amount of time, daily, like a small chunk of time and setting yourself a timer to hold yourself accountable. So you don't go down a rabbit hole, like 30 minutes a day or 20 minutes every morning. Or a weekly amount if you're just doing it, maybe once a week. So setting aside a few hours each week to do your follow-ups to do your outreach, to batch out your social content, if you're doing it yourself, And even if you don't need clients yet. Doing this consistently will enable you to not stress later on. And by setting aside specific times for client acquisition, you can ensure that you're not neglecting your current clients while you're still seeking new business opportunities. This way, that this the way you can focus on providing quality service to your current clients without getting sidetracked by their pursuit of new clients. Okay. Now tip number three. Consider. Not just considered, but I highly recommend. If you are in a place where you are struggling to balance all of this. And you're trying to grow your business. It is time to start outsourcing tasks. As a bookkeeper, it's important to focus on your core services, which is bookkeeping. However, there are various tasks that require your attention because you are the owner, right? So administrative work, marketing, social media management, managing other contractors, managing your team. All of this takes up a lot of your time. So outsourcing these tasks, anything that you can, that isn't essential for you to be doing? hiring a virtual assistant or another freelancer is going to help free up your time and focus on growing your business. So tasks that aren't essential for you to be performing, but still need to be done because all of this stuff needs to be done. And if something doesn't need to be done, like nobody needs to be doing it, just scrap it completely. This will ensure that you are. Spending your time providing quality service to your clients. And still having time to focus on acquiring those new clients. I would even suggest considering hiring a part-time bookkeeper. If you are a solo bookkeeping owner. To take on more of the simple bookkeeping tasks like processing bank feeds and reconciling bank accounts. You don't have to have them do. The whole thing end to end, but wherever you can have someone support you. In the quote, unquote, lower level tasks to get done. the better. Especially, if you are like trying to focus on growing your business and bringing on more clients, you're eventually going to need that person anyway. So I always like to refer to my situation. When I hired my first bookkeeper, who you're going to hear from in a couple of weeks here on the podcast. I only had five clients and I was only realistically working on client work a few hours a week, but I was also dedicating a lot of time to growing the business. So for me, it was easier for me to find someone to bring on and help me with those. daily bookkeeping tasks. That were more simple and easier to transfer the knowledge on. was easier for me to do that Then maybe outsource the marketing or outsource, my email inbox or whatever. Cause like, even that wasn't that busy. I only. We had five clients. So as scary as it is, I always recommend. Recruiting new hires before you actually think you'll need them, or before you think you're ready, because we tend to really underestimate the amount of time and effort that it's going to take to properly onboard someone and set them up for success, which in turn maintains the work quality. That your clients have come to expect from you. Hopefully. So. like I said, I brought on my first part-time bookkeeper for just a couple hours a week. Helping me on my five clients doing the basic tasks. And that allowed us time to really like create the processes together, set her up for success. Allowed me time to. Be able to communicate with her and help her through things so that she was really confident in what she was doing. And now she, I mean, it's been four years, but now, like she rarely needs my support. And when we do touch base and communicate, it's more on a personal level. And it's just, it's really set. It's really helped create the culture that I was after. So. I know, it's really hard to think about hiring before you're ready. Or outsourcing certain things when it may only be a couple hours a week, but there's. There's always someone out there that's willing to just do a couple hours worth of work a week. And also willing to stick around and grow with you. So take that into consideration. I know there's a lot of advice out there about like, when you should be outsourcing certain things, but only, you know, like what's right for you. So if hiring someone earlier on is what's right for you, then that's what you need to do. it also helps you. Manage the expectation that a lot of us fail to realize is. When you're running a business, if you're doing everything yourself, you're going to be used to taking home all of the profit for yourself. But if you hire earlier on. You will always have a certain percentage of your income that you know is going to be too. Maintain your team and. Your margins are always going to be. Kind of like in the same range, you're never going to have to really worry about like, oh no. If I bring on this team member, I'm going to lose half of my income. Cause I'm gonna have to pay someone if you set that expectation up from the beginning. And even if you're not ready to hire, I would honestly suggest. Not taking home a hundred percent of your profit, like. Take home. I don't know, 30 or 40, 50% of your profit and save the rest in your business to build up. That safety net or that future investment account of hiring and growing your company. Because the money thing is it's a real hard pill to swallow when you've been used to taking home all the income. And then all of a sudden you're like, I can't manage the workload myself. I have to hire someone. And then you end up hiring someone and paying them a lot or whatever. A lot of the portion. That you used to pay yourself and you may become resentful and that's not a good place to be. So. Anyway. All right. So our three tips to rehab. To balance the client acquisition efforts with the client work and keeping your clients happy. Number one, prioritize communicating with your current clients. I cannot stress this enough, even if you feel really scared that you're going to make them mad. I promise you. As a business owner, I would rather just somebody tell me if they are not able to get the work done in the timeframe that we had set up in the first place. Rather than just be left in the dark and not know what the heck is going on with my stuff. So just remember that like, think about what you would prefer. And swallow your pride a little bit. And then let your client know, Hey, I'm not going be able to get this done in the time that I expected. This is when I expect to have it done to you. I just wanted to keep you up to date nine times out of 10. They're going to just be super grateful that you communicated with them and it's no big deal. But if you wait and then they have to outreach to you to ask, like, where's my stuff, dude. Then it's not going to be good. They're going to, they're going to lose trust in you. And it goes the same with team members, but. Just always prioritize communication. Even if you're afraid of the backlash, because it's worse to later on, just lose the client. Or not get the referrals that you would have otherwise. So number one Prioritize that communication with current clients. Number two. Schedule specific times for client acquisition efforts, whether that's a little bit of time every day or a few hours per week on a certain day. Put it in your calendar block off that time guard that time. And then, you know, throughout the week, if you start to get distracted with, oh, I'm going to like go on LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. Or Upwork and engage with people. Apply for jobs, you, whatever, like whatever your method is. You can pull yourself back in and look at your calendar and be like, Nope. I have scheduled this specific day in time to do those. So I'm not going to get distracted right now and you can hold yourself accountable. And then tip number three is outsource stuff. Start outsourcing things, or look at what you're currently doing and get real with yourself about like what actually needs to be done versus. Done by you versus perhaps done by someone else. Nothing will ever get done as good as you can do it. I promise you that. So you have to let go of that for one. You are the business owner, you're the entrepreneur. You are the person who is capable of wearing all of the hats. And doing things exactly how you want them and doing them well, most likely. I mean, sometimes we are in denial and lie to ourselves about how well we actually do things. But for the most part, we are the entrepreneur because we are good at all those things. However, You are not going to be able to grow and bring on those new clients. If you are so attached to doing everything yourself. So tip number three is to consider outsourcing those tasks kind of went on like. A whole second form of this podcast. When I'm recapping this. But when it comes to balancing the client acquisition with your client service, it really is important to remember that. Each of your businesses are unique and what works for one business. What works for me may not work for you. It may not work for you to hire someone when you only have five clients, but that's what worked for me. So it's important to experiment with different strategies and find out what really works best for your business. And don't get latched on to, like, for instance, if you decide to, okay, I'm going to set aside 20 minutes every morning to go on LinkedIn, engage with people. And then another 10 minutes every morning to go check. Upwork and apply for jobs. And you do that for a week or two. And you realize it's really stressful or you, you start going down rabbit holes. If you try to log in every day. So then you switch to maybe every Friday morning, you block off a few hours. To do all those activities and that works much better for you test things out. I wouldn't assume that you're going to get traction from doing those things. If you just do it for like one week. But you might so be open to the possibilities. And then another really important aspect of balancing all of this is setting realistic expectations for yourself and for your clients. Be honest about your capacity for taking on new clients and delivering the quality of work that you want to deliver. Because this can prevent really over-committing, which a lot of us tend to do. I'm very guilty of it, myself. And it'll ensure that you're delivering on your promises to clients. And my last little tidbit of advice is don't be afraid to ask for help or advice from your peers, your others in the industry. Networking with other bookkeepers or, Even if you're technically competition. You might be surprised someone might have just one little tidbit of advice that you never would've thought of. So don't be afraid to ask for help. Um, And with that, I hope these tips have been helpful in guiding you towards finding the right balance between your client service and client acquisition. And remember it is all about prioritizing communication with your current clients, scheduling that specific time for your acquisition efforts and outsource those. Non-essential to you tasks because like most things are going to be essential to run your business, but not everything actually needs to be done by you. And it's actually detrimental for you to be spending your time on a $15 an hour tasks when you can, you know, be doing things that are going to bring in $20,000 a year. So, thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you haven't already, please don't forget to subscribe or follow our podcast. For more tips and insights like this on growing or starting your bookkeeping business. And don't forget the bookkeeping business accelerator. It is on sale from May 22nd to May 26th. And I truly, truly hope to see you inside. If you have any questions on whether this is the right fit for you, you can, shoot me a message on LinkedIn or Instagram. And those, links are also posted in the show notes. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.