The Unstoppable Accountant - Grow your Accounting Firm

Market Research for Accountants: How we do it

• Arun Mehra

Share episode

In this episode, Arun and Chris discuss how Samera have used market research, analysis and experience to grow the firm.

Speaker 1:

Hello everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the Unstoppable podcast. I'm Chris O'Shea, Head of Marketing, and today I'm joined by Aaron. How are you doing, Aaron?

Speaker 2:

Hey, chris. Yeah, I'm good, thanks, all good. Thank you, how are you doing?

Speaker 1:

I'm good as well, thank you. Right today we're going to be talking about market research. We're going to look into a little bit about how we've done it at Samara, both for Samara Accountants and for Samara Global, just to give you a bit of an idea of exactly how we've done it, and hopefully that can help you all do your own market research and develop your own growth plans. So let's jump straight into it. So, aaron, for those who don't know, we started off as accountants focusing on the UK dental industry. Why don't you give us a little bit of an idea of how you got into that?

Speaker 1:

What made you pick UK dentistry as your niche.

Speaker 2:

This goes back a long time ago, many moons ago, prior to me getting into Samara. Starting Samara, I was actually trained as an accountant with PwC, went into investment banking um, young late 20s, couldn't stand it, I hated it. And I then married a dentist, okay, and I thought, oh, I would always thought I wanted to have my own business. So I quit my job in the city not knowing what I was going to do. But having a chartered accountancy qualification was always going to be useful. And at that point then I thought you know what? I don't know what business I'm going to do. Why don't I just start an accounting firm? I had no idea I'd trained at big four. They don't really train you well to actually know how to run your own firm. It's a big corporate type of organization. So for me to start off my own firm, a small firm aiming at small business, it was like completely alien to me. But, um, fortunately, um, I guess I married smita, a dentist who I'm still married to after over 20 odd years later.

Speaker 2:

Um, and I suppose she was the inspiration I'd speak, spoke to her, spoke to her friends, and she was obviously quite early in her career at that point.

Speaker 2:

But seeing how dental practices were running, what struggles they were having with their accounting knowledge, all that type of stuff, and I thought that was an idea, it's an angle there, and I suppose that she was a kind of an inroad into that sector.

Speaker 2:

So it wasn't any kind of major grand investigation into the sector or kind of real thorough analysis. But when I once I started talking to her, talking to her colleagues, her friends, it kind of opened my eyes. I think there's an opportunity here. No one's really focusing on that sector, really into the detail that I have or want to have, and therefore I kind of got into it. Now there were accountants doing dentist accounts, but I wanted to go a lot further and I think by having Smita on my team, I guess, um, we could do that, because we started to open up around dental practices and that really gave us an insight into how to run a practice and then we could share that knowledge with our clients as well at some point in the future okay, so your I mean initial market research was more get married experience.

Speaker 1:

You married into the, into the profession, yeah, yeah and I've heard you talk before about just realizing that they didn't know themselves like they're trained for so long to do dentistry. But being a dentist, being a medical professional so much of that especially if you're in the private sector is being a business person, but it's the thing they're not trained on.

Speaker 2:

So you saw that gap in them yeah, yeah, their own market in their own knowledge that you could fill, not just in the, the industry totally chris, and I think what what it highlighted was that a lot of them weren't interested in the business side. Yeah, some are, but a lot of them weren't, and they were focused on the clinical side. Understandably, but in order to run a successful practice, okay, you, it's not. In those days, maybe 20 odd years ago, you could probably get away with it to some extent. Okay, you know what, you'll get a contract with the nhs and it'll run and you'll get patients. But in today's world, okay, things are so much harder cost of living, crisis, prices rising, more competition you really need to be understanding the business side of things and if you don't, then you're gonna you're gonna find it quite tough yeah, I can imagine.

Speaker 1:

So did you do any formal market research at first with um samara dental accountants?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so I think yeah, no.

Speaker 2:

So once I identified that was a great sector, I started researching, looking online, reading articles, talking to other people in the sector, um, looking at kind of industry reports I could find which didn't cost the worth for me to understand the market. Um, I remember talking to some quite well known dentists um at the bda who were quite helpful because they could see that this is an area that dentists need. That's where the most problems that arise in dental practice Okay, there are clinical issues, but it's usually clinical issues as a bad as a result of bad judgment or bad financial decisions. Okay, someone might cut corners clinically because they want to save some money, because they aren't running their practice right properly, for example okay, these types of things. So I had a great opportunity to talk to many people and then what I really did actually at that time when I started out, is I put myself out there online very much. So I started writing articles online on my website and then also going out to do public speaking engagements at different places, totally unpaid, but putting myself out there talking about how to run the finances or run the accountancy or how to run a better dental practice.

Speaker 2:

Now, to many out there, who's this young upstart accountant. What does he know? He's like doesn't know anything about dentistry. It's very different. But I put myself out there and I did get some positive comments. But I also got some kind of negative comments along the way. But that's all part and parcel of learning and it was a great experience and I'm glad I did that. I put myself out there because that was the only way you were really going to learn and pick up the kind of pieces and understand. Okay, this is what the sector needs. This is what the sector wants.

Speaker 1:

Okay, did your initial research kind of inform the type of client you were going to um go for at first? So like small private dentists or associates, or was it more of a bit?

Speaker 2:

of a, it was a bit of a wider now I'll be honest with you. So I'll just say dentist was my market, okay, um, and ideally and it was practice. So, and as I say, anyone, to be honest with you, that were in that sector and that's how we built originally. We built across that sector, wider sector. Um, over the years we'd started to narrow it down, but again, we still do service dentists all across the life cycle, from start, starting out, all the way to selling up and exiting the sector. So I just think we cover the whole sector. But if I had to look at where our sweet spot is now, it's probably practice owners, whether it's an individual practice or a group of practices either, or those are kind of our sweet spot. But of course we help associates as well, because many associates want to become practice owners at some point as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay. What about price structure? Did your initial market research inform that at all?

Speaker 2:

yeah, well, that was a good question, I think, obviously as any young business, as you fish around and see what other people are charging. But then I learned very early on you don't want to really undercut, it's just a pointless exercise. You need to differentiate yourself and that's what I did the marketing, getting ourselves out there talking to people and really just building relationships with people and differentiating our product offering to other people in the market, because there were other people doing similar, not similar, but doing accounting and doing some kind of business advisory and coaching side of things. But I had a different angle and then we priced it in a way that we thought was competitive and I think having again having a dentist in my team ie my wife, airing kind of my thoughts with her really helped me to shape it and target other dentists as well.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and later on. So over the last five years or so, we've kind of widened the net a little bit on the Samara side to encompass other professions like, um, pharmacists, vets. Was it market research that informed that decision? Was there anything in particular you noticed out there in the market that we decided to start casting that net a bit wider?

Speaker 2:

I think it got to a point where we were getting to be well known because we we don't didn't only just do accounting or that, but by now in the last five, six years we've offered a financing, that type of thing. And so people then started to know about oh okay, you do financing. Oh, my brother is a pharmacist, he needs finance to buy a pharmacy, or my sister's a vet, she wants financing to set up a vet practice. So it kind of widened that net, kind of naturally, and then we thought, well, let's into that, those sectors, a little bit further. And that's, that's exactly what happened. And so then we off through the finance, we then started offering the accounting services to vets or pharmacies or whoever it may be, and that's kind of what's happened. Um, and I think where we sit, as with with the samara business in the uk, the uk business, we're very much a strong force in the healthcare sector. Dentistry is still, by and large, our biggest market, but we're growing in the other sectors, such as vets, pharmacies, those types of things.

Speaker 1:

And when you brought on Nigel and Dan in the finance Samara finance side of things, how long were you going as just accountancy before you brought them on and was there a particular trigger that you saw that made you think I need?

Speaker 2:

I think there wasn't a trigger, but I thought it was about I'd been thinking about it for a while. Okay, so we'd been running over 10 years 10, 12 years and we were referring. We would always get clients asking well, where can I get finance from? Who do I talk to? And we just refer it to a bank and be done with it. But we didn't know if the client was getting finance from them, whether the client was getting a good deal. We had no idea. We just refer it. So that was the impetus to say well, hold on a minute, Clients need money. There's a business opportunity here. Let's try and support them in getting that. And that's how Nigel came on board, and then subsequently, Dan and other team members subsequently.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a great learning point for people. The market research doesn't have to just be going out into the wider industry and seeing what the trends are. Just listen to your clients. Listen to what they want, want what they're looking for. Any either niche or service you can fill or bring someone on to fill for them. Yeah, yeah, just listen to your clients can do a world of good oh, totally, totally.

Speaker 2:

I think you're right and I think that was the finance was one element that we learned. And then, in more recent times, we set up a buying group. Um, and again, again, having our own dental practices, we realized that there's things that we can save money on and we thought, well, we can see in our practices. Let me talk to other clients, let's see if we can help them save money. And that's what we did. We set up a buying group and therefore people joined the buying group. Um, they say the client saves money, we get some money out of it. Everyone's, everyone's a winner. Okay, so again, listening to clients and their pain points, I think so 20 years on?

Speaker 1:

um, what would you say are your biggest tactics and strategies at the moment for market research, for how to develop, how possibly what new services we can look at? Um, is it mainly just listening to the clients at the moment? I mean, we have our finger on the pulse of uk dentistry and healthcare generally. Um, but in terms of things like listening to the bda going to um conferences, what would you say the biggest things you do now?

Speaker 2:

it all helps. I think I think it all helps listening to conferences and going to these events. Don't get me wrong, but you've got to think where's your time best spent as well, and I think you can see a lot on social media what people are talking about, what they're saying, and understand, okay, that those are the pain points. Um, in the sector that's always helpful somewhere like linkedin, um, then youtube videos as well, other people posting and then ultimately talking to my team. Now I talk to clients? Of course I do, but my team are talking to clients more than I am now. Okay, so I can talk to my team and hear what they're hearing, what the problems that clients are facing, and then trying to come up with strategies and solutions for them. Those are the main ways Social media plays a large part now.

Speaker 1:

I can imagine you need to find the places online where your potential clients are hanging out and find out what they're talking about, because the conferences, that kind of thing yeah, governing bodies, they'll talk about what's going well, where they think things are going.

Speaker 1:

But you listen to clients who aren't your clients yet, and listen to what they're complaining about, what worries them, what they're looking for, then you'll be able to find the niches, those upsell opportunities. Okay, so let's move on to Samara Global. What was it in the market you saw, and also what happened in the Samara story that made you decide right, let's cast net even wider and move into offshoring, outsourcing, general consultancy and support.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I'd been running a Samara for a number of years almost 18, 20 years and over that time we had been using offshoring, outsourcing firms based in India previously some other third-party companies and it went okay. But then the quality started to decline, the prices were rising and I'm thinking, hold on a minute, this isn't any good, so why am I sending it overseas when I can do it here in the UK? So just before COVID, I brought all the work back from offshore into the UK, back into the UK, thinking I'd kind of found the solution, found the magic bullet or whatever they say. And then COVID happened and suddenly I'd brought all the work back to the UK and I realised, oh my goodness, I can't find any staff here to actually do the work. So, me being thinking I was so clever at that time, I realized, oh my god, that was a massive mistake that I'd made bringing it back to the UK. In hindsight, but we cobbled things together I've got a team together over a few years and then decided, well, we were just struggling to find people here in the UK to do the work. So then I thought, well, I'm going to go back to India, but this here in the UK to do the work. So then I thought well, I'm going to go back to India, but this time I'm going to do it myself, I'm not going to use a third party, I'm going to set it up myself. And that's exactly what we did. We set up our own offshoring facility in Delhi and the team is now growing and, as you know, we're growing week by week, with more manpower joining um.

Speaker 2:

And then what's happened from that? The idea was that, okay, we can support our own team. We can then support other accounting firms with their pain point, because I think and the best form of market research that I did in this aspect is that I I've been through it myself, I've experienced the pain points myself. Where are the pains I have? And if I'm having those pains, I'm pretty sure most other accountancy firms are having those pain points already. So that's kind of what I did and that's where we've gone now, where we're supporting accounting firms here in the UK and now in the USA, and that's kind of growing at a nice steady rate as well, to supply manpower to support those firms okay, so it sounds like, instead of market research, we've used market experience um to really experience everything.

Speaker 2:

Look how much gray hair I've got. That is that tells you everything, isn't it? It's my experience. Okay, yeah, um, and I wouldn't have known these opportunities if it wasn't for my experience. To be honest with you. Now, having learned that, got into the sector and doing the offshoring, what I've realized is that I thought, okay, I thought I was being very smart about, okay, I'm going to offshore and support other firms, but I've also realized, it's god, there are so many offshoring firms. Yeah, um, in in the uk, in the us, in india, my goodness, like there seems to be an offshoring firm popping up every five minutes as far as I can see. So it's a very competitive marketplace. So, for me, then, you have to kind of think, ok, how do you position yourself, how do you market yourself, and what makes you different as well, and that's what you have to do as well. That's an important thing which we're working on as we speak.

Speaker 1:

So as well, and that's what you have to do as well, that that's an important thing which we're, which we're working on as we speak. So would you say that oversaturation of the market is the biggest challenge that market research and, as we said, market experience has really revealed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that is. I think that's certainly a learning point for me is I thought, okay, I went in to think I will do offshore. Before I didn't know many firms, but now I've seen there are plenty of players out there. Okay, now, quality is questionable for many, some of them, sure, very good as well, but my, my experience has also taught me that you can adapt. Okay, and you can, and my experience will tell, it's telling me right now okay, we can not pivot, but we can go a slightly different way, still do what we do, but position ourselves in a different way. Which actually makes it really exciting, and I think that's the most important thing in business is that you don't kind of just keep going the same thing, going doing the same thing and thinking and keep trying and it's going to get better, it's going to better. No, no, no, no. You've got to evolve, you've got to change, you've got to adapt. Um, you've got to be flexible, and that's key, absolutely key in business, and especially in a competitive marketplace like this.

Speaker 1:

You have to be flexible and be ready to adapt so can you give any um either general advice to listeners or specific examples of how we'd form some capacitor analysis, because we talk about how saturated the market is like. So how do we figure out what people are doing, how to differentiate ourselves, how to basically do what they're doing, but better?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I think what I've seen is that there are a lot of players in the marketplace. Where we're putting our efforts in is to content generation side of things, to provide education to our clients or potential clients. I don't see anyone doing that particularly well at the moment. So our, our game angle is to say, well, we want to be the educators.

Speaker 2:

If we're the educators, people will then think, okay, they know what they're talking about, we trust them. Okay, let me give them a call, let me see if they're any good. Okay, obviously we have to deliver. Okay, that's no doubt about it. But I think that's so important and especially in a world, in a crowded marketplace, there are a lot of people just shouting, shouting, shouting, saying join us, come to us, do this. I don't really want to go down that ankle. My angle is completely the opposite, saying, well, this is who we are, this is how we do it, this is what we can share our knowledge with you and in any professional service. It's all about the relationship. It's about building relationship, not just me, but my whole team and the organization and I think that's where we're focusing very heavily on and building those long-term relationships with clients.

Speaker 1:

Okay, ongoing market research. What do we do at the moment, now that we've started, we're growing. We've done our market research initially, we've decided our niche, we've started the journey. How do we keep that going? I know you go to events all around the world, so you keep your finger on the pulse that way. Yeah, yeah. How do you keep abreast of the, the current market in the industry?

Speaker 2:

I think it's actually a really interesting point is that of course, I listen to what's happening in the marketplace okay, in the sector or the relevant sectors, but I think sometimes it's more important to look what's happening outside of the sectors okay, look at the economy, look at what's happening in other industries okay, and if you can see that's happened in those industries and those industries maybe a few years ahead, okay, how can those, how can those factors adapt and, and I suppose, infiltrate your sector, because it will do at some point, okay. Um, a great example is we've worked in the dental sector for many, many years, okay. We've been dealing with private equity houses buying dental practices for many years and that sector has grown and private equity has grown in that dental sector for the last 10 years. Now what we're seeing is in the accounting sector.

Speaker 2:

Private sector has started in the last few years. They're starting to get interested in, ooh, accounting let's kind of rub our hands and try and squeeze as much out of that one and we're seeing that now in the accounting sector. So that gives us. But we have that experience let remember my gray hair of seeing what happened in the dental sector the good, bad and the ugly. Okay. We can then use that to say, okay, how is that going to work in the accounting sector? And we can use that knowledge that way.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's an interesting point because I mean, if you look at, say, the stock market, things like Sage are skyrocketing in the last five years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So there's definitely accountancy is definitely on the up in terms of an industry.

Speaker 2:

I think it's always been there, but I think it's definitely got more of a. It's always been the laggard to the IT or the tech sector and I think it's always been there, but I think it's definitely got more of a. It's always been the laggard to the IT or the tech sector and I think the tech again a great example. If you look at tech offshoring, you hear of companies like Infosys or Wipro or TCS, which are all massive Indian offshoring firms. Okay, but they're about 20 years ahead. What's going to happen over the next few years is more and more accounting giants will emerge. Okay, to provide back office functions for organizations. Now we've got the big players like pwc and young those types of things out there which are which are building bigger organizations and teams overseas in asia. But there are other players like ourselves. We're a small player, but we'll do our bit and let's see what happens. It's an exciting time. I just feel it's a very exciting sector yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Um. So just to finish off, um, we talked about how we've done our market research and how we used our market experience to build first samara dental and now samara global. What advice would you give to accountants either people just looking to start up their own practice, people looking to grow their practice, maybe people looking to expand a niche or add new services, or cross-sell and up-sell what concrete advice would you give people in terms of market research and market analysis to really help them put themselves on a successful footing?

Speaker 2:

Sure, help them put themselves on a successful footing, sure, I think. I think the first thing is find a sector or an industry that you're interested in, okay, and a sector that will actually pay their bills. Okay, I know it sounds silly, but it's so important. There are many sectors out there that you'll be chasing money for and it's just a headache. So you want a quality sector. So, for instance, the dental, the healthcare sector. People tend to pay their bills okay, pretty on time, which is good, um, and obviously choose something that's of interest.

Speaker 2:

Um, but for anyone starting out, my my view, if you're trying to grow a firm, you want to build that firm where it's, where it's actually not reliant on you as an individual. Therefore, you've got to build that team. So you can build that team here in the uk, but it's it's. It's just getting harder and okay, to be honest with you. So the focus for any practice owner in my mind going forward, is to really get strong on the marketing, understand who your potential clients are, build those relationships, get those customers to you and then you have the opportunity to say, right, who's going to do the work?

Speaker 2:

Okay, I might give Aaron a call. He can help us with the offshoring or talk to someone else. Maybe they can help with the offshoring. But that's where I think what's going to happen. There's a kind of um, kind of a not an endless supply, but there's a huge supply of manpower overseas that can use the technology that we're using in accounting today. Um, that skill level will get better and better as well. Their communication skills overseas will get better and better. So, therefore, the job of an accountant today here sitting in the uk, if you're starting a firm, is to build those relationships, to build that um, get those clients and then, either through technology and a combination of technology and offshoring um, I think that's the way to to go forward in terms of building a firm okay.

Speaker 1:

So bottom line in terms of market research be find a niche, preferably one you have experience with already. Build relationships, find your perfect client, find what they want, not just in terms of services, but in terms of things like content. How are you going to draw them in? What are the lead magnets? So yeah, find your niche, find your clients and build relationships. That sounds like the bottom line for market analysis and research.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally, and I think if your research proves to be oh my God, it wasn't as lucrative or positive as you thought, be ready to change and adapt. Okay, I think that's so important. Don't keep flogging a dead horse. Um, it won't. If it's something, if the feedback's telling you it's not right, move on and adapt yeah, that's a really good bit of advice.

Speaker 1:

It's one of the hardest things for anyone to do in any walk of life is to cut their losses, to admit when they're wrong, step back, take a new direction correct, correct yeah, market, market research and analysis will be the key to that.

Speaker 2:

You won't know that until you do that market analysis correctly yeah, but I think, but, I think, but you'll, only, you'll only. You do the market analysis correctly. But the only way you actually prove the model is actually by doing it and it's only at that point where you know, oh god, my analysis was correct or oh my god, it was absolutely, completely wrong. But yeah, take the action, do it, okay, brilliant right, well, that's everything I wanted to talk about.

Speaker 1:

Um, sounds like we covered pretty much everything we've done so far in the last 20, 25 years to in 25 minutes. In 25 minutes, yeah about a minute a year. I'm happy with that. Cool, um, okay, excellent, um, right. So everyone, in the next episode we're going to be talking about vision and mission statements, um, how we both cause um. Was that teddy up in here barking in the?

Speaker 2:

background that's my dog barking about that.

Speaker 1:

Dearly sorry about that maybe one day we'll get teddy on a call and ask her her opinion. The postman's arrived.

Speaker 2:

That's why she's got, so that'll be it. Yeah, okay excellent right.

Speaker 1:

So until next time, everyone, when we talk about vision and mission. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much, aaron thank you, chris see you all again soon.