Spiraling Up — Marketing For Professional Services

Buy or Sell: Do Billable Hours Sabotage Marketing? with Becca Johns

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How do High Growth professional services firms go to market today? Download the 2025 High Growth Study to find out: https://www.hingemarketing.com/highgrowth

In this episode of Spiraling Up, the Hinge team discusses the complexities of time tracking in professional services, debating its benefits and drawbacks. Then, Becca Johns, an expert in accounting marketing, joins the show to play ‘Buy or Sell?’ where she shares insights on the challenges and potential of marketing in the accounting industry. The conversation touches on marketing strategies, ROI, risk aversion, the impact of marketing on M&A, and the importance of building personal brands.

Austin McNair:

in today's episode of Spiraling Up. Did you log your time today? No. Really? Did you log it? Our team is gonna discuss when time tracking helps and hurts, and then we get to speak with Becca. Johns a leading voice in the accounting marketing space. We're going to see if she buys or sells some of the hot takes we hear for accounting marketers. Welcome everyone. This is spiraling up with Hinge. Welcome everyone to Spiraling Up the podcast for professional services marketers and business leaders. My name is Austin and I'm joined with my co-hosts, Mary Blanche. How you doing MB

Mary Blanche:

Doing good. Doing good.

Austin McNair:

and Joe Pope. Joe, how are you doing today?

Joe Pope:

I am gonna say the same thing as Mary Blanc doing pretty good.

Austin McNair:

Excellent. Excellent. Well, welcome to another episode of Spiraling Up. We have a lot to get going, uh, a lot to dig into today. Um. I can tell you that, I had an adventure, this weekend. I'm, I'm glad to be back here in my office. but I wasn't sure if I was gonna make it, because last night, my family took a day trip, about an hour and a half south, uh, of our city. Not a, not a long road trip, but we went to this like really cool surf. Wave Park. It was like a wave garden. It like produces waves. You get to go surfing on it. It was for my kids. Awesome experience, but then on our way home, wouldn't you know it, the car broke down, and it took, you know, what, what was supposed to be a 90 minute drive? Took my family of five, uh, three tow trucks and about 12 hours to get home. So yeah, that was an adventure to have with two young children and a newborn baby, pretty much three months old. Uh, but hey, we made it and I'm excited to be here.

Joe Pope:

three. Right. Three. Three tow trucks. Sounds like you set the record. For most amount of times a car could break down in one trip.

Austin McNair:

Yeah, well there's the tow truck that I had to flag down on the side of the highway, to take us to a gas station. then there was the tow truck to get us back to our actual house. and then there was the tow truck to the mechanic. Uh. So, yeah, it's, yeah, it was, it was a big adventure of tow trucks and, uh, learning how to speak Portuguese about with, you know, about car parts and problems. Yeah, so much, so much good stuff there.

Mary Blanche:

Core memory.

Joe Pope:

If you had to power rank the tow trucks, what, what was the order, you know, was there a, was there a tow truck that stood out?

Austin McNair:

Well, I, I, the, the tow truck that stood out was the first one because you know, when, when you're getting in a tow truck, I'm like, how are they gonna fit, like three kids and my wife and some of our stuff? Like,

Joe Pope:

Car

Austin McNair:

what, what does this actually look like? Yeah. No, no car seats, you know, uh, other than the baby, which she, she was in one. Um, but like we get into it, of course. Anxiety and fear levels were, were, were high. And my wife is the primary communicator in Portuguese. And I'm like, okay, so is he taking us, you know, back to our city, back to our house? Where did you tell him to take us? She goes, uh, actually now that I think about it, I don't think I told him where we live at all. And I'm like, well then where is he taking us? Uh, so that was fun. Uh, he took us to a little gas station where we got more help. So. it was, it was, uh, a little bit of a crazy journey. Not as crazy of a journey as I hope that I'm gonna be having next week. Guys, I'm really excited. Uh, we're gonna be seeing each other at the Association for Accounting Marketing Conference, the, the Annual Summit mb, this is gonna be your first time there. It's gonna be my first time there. What are you looking forward to?

Mary Blanche:

Honestly, I'm looking forward to the three of us all being together and getting to record a couple of these in person together. I

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Mary Blanche:

a number of these under our belt, but this will be the first time that we're recording a podcast. All three in the same, same room, so I think that's gonna be fun. Bring some good energy to that event.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, it's exciting because we'll also have the opportunity being in a live setting to maybe pull a few folks out of the crowd and join the discussion. We've, we've got a few, uh, neat ideas planned as a part of it. And, uh, our producer, John's actually gonna be there separately on his, on his own accord. So, uh, really good opportunity for all of us together to, uh, make some content magic.

Austin McNair:

Yeah. I mean, and more than that, I mean, just spend time together physically. I mean, uh, I. There's, you know, I, I think we've all, especially our company, and I'm, I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this, but, Folks that work with companies with more remote work. I mean, you do. I I think we are entering like a new era now where it's like, yeah, work from home. We've realized that there's a lot of benefits, especially in terms of like focus and productivity. but especially when you've been working with some of your colleagues for such a long time, as the three of us have, you do kind of feel like, ah, it would be nice to like actually see each other, uh, in person again. So I. It's gonna be a long trip for me, but I'm, I'm really looking forward to seeing you guys at the conference. I think we're gonna have a great time together.

Joe Pope:

Likewise, man.

Austin McNair:

Alright, well let's get into this week's pivotal story. I know this one is gonna be, uh, a, a fun one and, uh, we've got lots of opinions on it. So mb why don't we turn to you now for the pivotal story.

Mary Blanche:

right guys. I, I am excited about this one. today's pivotal story, we're diving into a topic that is beloved by many in the professional services marketing space. Are you ready for it? Time tracking. I can already see the look of the stain on, on Joe's face right now, but hang with me. Okay. so I saw this interesting LinkedIn post this week from Jonathan Stark posing the question, believe every minute should be billable? when you think about it, our world revolves around time, right? So time is fundamental to how we measure costs and. And value for our clients. And, you know, so many of us, it feels essential, but where do draw the line and when does this necessity start to hinder growth? his post goes on to say, um, you know, he suggests that being too focused on billable hours for pricing could have unintended consequences. Does it discourage efficiency? If it means less billable time, could it limit innovation? So the core of our discussion today is when is time tracking a vital tool and when might it be holding us back?

Austin McNair:

Oh boy. Where do we start? I mean, Joe, I know personally you love tracking your time, don't you?

Mary Blanche:

Big fan.

Joe Pope:

It is pretty much the bane of my existence. Somewhere, somewhere in there with, uh, running out of, uh, water in the middle of a pitch, meeting, after meeting like, you know, 30 minute block meetings after each other. It's somewhere in there is timekeeping.

Austin McNair:

I guess I'm more neutral on it. I mean, I understand there's, and I know MB is not neutral on it, so we're gonna get, we're gonna, I'll say, I'll give one perspective. Um, so. One of the, one of the things I do at Hinge with some of our clients is that I work directly with visible experts who are trying to kind of, uh, bolster their visibility in the marketplace and therefore bring more visibility to their companies. And I can't tell you how many times I've had this discussion where literally in the middle of a group training or a one-on-one training. If the expert will stop and be like, wait, but am I allowed to do this? Like, am I allowed to spend more time networking on on LinkedIn? Am I allowed because. Their leadership and what they're hearing kind of reinforced to them very regularly from their company and leadership is about billable utilization and how if you're not meeting certain thresholds, uh, of utilization, then that has consequences for, you know, how the business is operating, the health of the company and stuff. But on the flip side of that, there's something. There in regards to marketing and, and, and like, if these are these non-billable activities, if you're gonna be asking the experts to be more visible, to contribute to thought leadership content, that could be a real mixed message situation. And I can tell you that most of the visible experts I talk to feel like they're in between a rock and a hard place there. Not necessarily in terms of how they log their time, but the fact that the, that, that the tracking mechanism itself is sort of. It can be used against them to, you know, to measure like their effectiveness or, you know, you know how much they're contributing. Whereas, you know, contributing to marketing could be seen as, oh, that's maybe more off to the side or more soft. So I don't know. That's, that's just at least some of what I've seen out there. And b, I know that you have stronger feelings about this.

Mary Blanche:

No, I mean, I, I hear that pain point for sure. I mean, I think from where I sit as someone who's very focused on our day-to-day business operations, tracking isn't just about building our clients. It's, it's absolutely essential for our business intelligence. I.'cause it provides the raw data that we need to understand our operational efficiency and to make those informed strategic decisions. You can't make it without, without that data. Uh, and if you know, if you think about it without accurate time tracking, how do we really know where our resources are being allocated? I mean, we can, we can guess. Sure, we can guess, but we can't definitively analyze project profitability. It allows us to see which types of projects are most efficient, where we might be experiencing bottlenecks. It's crucial for capacity planning and ultimately to see. Where we're generating the most value for our clients. and then when you look beyond the individual projects, uh, aggregated time data gives us insights into the performance of different service lines, different teams. And then that's where you can start identifying, okay, or we need more training here, or, you know, we need to improve this process. Over here to get us where we're going. And then it allows us to benchmark our performance over time and check the impact of, of those changes that we're implementing. So, yeah, you know, I feel strongly on this. Um, it's, it's a non-negotiable for me.

Joe Pope:

Right. I mean, I, I hear all of the useful arguments, uh, especially the performance generated ones. I think a lot of that makes a, a, a good portion of sense. I I think part of the challenge here is that everybody's role is different, right? So let's, uh, from my perspective, I mean, one of the bigger challenges is that, um, making the magic of a sale happen is not something that fits in a linear fashion, and therefore it doesn't break. it doesn't break neatly into various buckets. Uh, I've constantly ran into the challenges being somebody who is focused in, in business development and therefore very limited in terms of billable work, if you wanna refer to it in that form or fashion. Uh, and so, you know, I think there's been times where I've worked at companies in the past where they tried to break up every single piece of a sales cycle into a bucket, and I'd end up with like these 20. Tasks that I had supposedly needed to enter at the end of the day, 10 minutes sending emails, 20 minutes doing follow up, 15 minutes doing proposals. It's just a ludicrous action of like the amount of time that gets spent in something that isn't going to be performance based. So I, that isn't necessarily even gonna be actionable. Like, I don't think I ever saw a report telling me, uh, how it maybe we could reduce our proposal time and our e and increase our email time 15% each way. So I, I, I hear it. I, I think part of the challenge here is the complication that people sometimes put around it, the amount of idea that, that, okay, we can break all this down into every nitty gritty detail. And, and at that point, you're gonna start to lose folks like myself who gets emails from Mary Blanc and her team about not filling in my time sheet, uh, on regular occasions.

Austin McNair:

I know that I'm perfect at filling in my time sheet. Isn't that right? Mb

Mary Blanche:

Honestly, Austin's Austin, you do a pretty good job. You, you, you hang in there with the, with the best of them or,

Austin McNair:

I maybe not the best, but.

Mary Blanche:

maybe, maybe middle of the road we'll say. We'll go with that. That sounds good.

Joe Pope:

I was gonna say, I need an AI tool that just kind of follows my brain around and like jots it that, like, isn't Elon working on that, that Neuralink thing? I know that's to like help people with like, have challenges and need, uh, specific needs, but for, for the. We'll call it the 2.0 version for when, uh, all us with first world problems, uh, need something. I just, it can jot down where my brain was going, uh, in one moment or the next, and we can neatly put it into a time sheet.

Mary Blanche:

That's that that's the first problem that you would like it to solve for you if you had access to that kind

Joe Pope:

I acknowledge the true meaning of what that tool was for. It's, it's, it's to help people and then when those people have been helped, it can help me do my time sheet.

Austin McNair:

I love that for you, Joe, and I think it'll definitely get there, I'm sure. so we're gonna, I. Pivot now to, our interview with Becca Johns. Becca is a friend of Hinge. She is a huge influencer in the space of accounting, marketing, and we're gonna ask her for some, if she's gonna buy or sell some of these hot takes in the accounting marketing space. And I'm really curious. What she thinks on this whole topic of billable time, utilization, time tracking. So we'll make sure to ask her a question about that. Uh, so let's turn now to our episode with Becca. Did you guys know that content creation is the number one marketing priority of high growth firms?

Mary Blanche:

Well, did you know that high growth firms spend twice as much on their marketing than their slower growing competition?

Joe Pope:

I am about to blow all of your minds. Did you know that high growth firms have two times the number of marketers per capita employee?

Austin McNair:

See, I think if we downloaded the new edition, the latest edition, the 10th edition of the high Growth study, we would all know these things. would all the people listening to this podcast. So if you haven't done so yet, head over to hinge marketing.com/high growth. And there you can download the free executive summary. I. On what we've learned about the fastest growing professional services firms. It's free, it's 40 pages. Wrote a bunch of great analysis in there. You're gonna learn what marketing techniques are working for the fastest growing companies. You absolutely want to pick it up if you haven't yet. So go ahead and do that. Hinge marketing.com/high growth. Alright, so we, we'd like to Welcome to the podcast Becca Johns. Becca helps accounting and advisory firms grow smarter, backed by deep industry experience, a practical point of view and fresh perspective. She is a consultant, strategist, and collaborator who understands. Your world and helps you move forward. She brings clarity to complex challenges and energy and new ideas. Becca, we couldn't think of a better person to have on the podcast here to talk about the accounting, marketing space. How are you doing today?

Becca Johns:

I'm doing really good

Austin McNair:

I.

Becca Johns:

I was really excited when you invited me. I was kind of gonna. Light into your DMS at some point and ask if I can come on. So I'm glad it didn't have to come to that. So thanks for having me.

Austin McNair:

Yeah, absolutely. So, as I kind of outlined there in your introduction, um, you are a seasoned accounting marketing professional. You were with your firm for almost 20 years before just recently taking the step to being more of an independent consultant. We'd love to know, just, you know, as we're getting started, like tell us about that big step. What are you, what's next kind of in your, your career here in your journey? What are you, what are you gonna get out of it?

Becca Johns:

Yeah. Um, like you said, I just left my firm after almost 20 years, um, and found the consulting path. Um, so I've been on my own for like two and a half weeks and I'm absolutely loving it. Um, I'm working with a really cool client right now, um, on some marketing and strategic communications. Um, programs and plans related to some significant m and a activity that they have. and it's really cool to be able to like, develop the strategy and also have my hands in the execution, which is

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Becca Johns:

I was missing. Um, and I'm really looking forward to working with a variety of different firms and kind of having that little bit more variety in my day to day versus working for, for one firm for so long. You know, it was just time for something fresh and, and new and I'm really excited.

Joe Pope:

Our, our colleague Will, Casserly likes to say in his intros that the agency guys got to have all the fun. And, uh, he was somebody who had done in-house work for, I think three, three decades and, uh, made that switch over to come join us. But I, I think having heard how you just described that Becca, that that was the, immediately, the phrase that came to mind, this idea that you really kinda get to pick and choose now. How you get to work through some of these different challenges and the excitement of getting to, uh, work with a diverse group. Uh, so I, you know, one other thing, Becca, I think that's awesome is, uh, your relationship with Hinge goes back a few years as well. Uh, I know specifically with the Association of Accounting Marketers, Is there more on the horizon there for you as well, uh, and as you launched this initiative?

Becca Johns:

yeah, of course I'm, I'm serving on a lot of different committees, for aim and we'll continue to do that. I'll be at the summit in a couple weeks, um, and looking forward to connecting with everyone there. but yeah, AIM is, aim is a great resource and, it's really nice that it connects members with organizations like Hinge, for the resources that you offer and kind of helps get your expertise and knowledge in front of us too. so yeah, big fan of aim. Big fan of Hinge. I love it.

Austin McNair:

Well, yeah, you, I think with, with all this experience you have, Becca, like we said, we, um, you know, really wanted to have a, a, an episode here that was centered around the accounting, marketing space. So many of the people that we talk to, a lot of our clients, they are, you know, in the accounting or consulting space, advisory space. Um, and we really wanted to bring together some. Some questions for you in terms of what's going on in that world. So, um, we'd like to play a game with you and it's called Buy or Sell. So very simple. Essentially. Uh, we're gonna give you a series of statements about the world of accounting, marketing. Some of them may be more on the controversial side than others. And really we just want to hear from you. Do you buy this statement? Meaning you think that it's true or do you sell it? Meaning now that's, that's not really true. Or, uh, there's, you know, a lot of caveats there. We want to hear kind of, you know, your perspectives on all this. So, yeah, honest reactions, your reasoning behind them. buy or sell. This is the accounting marketing edition of Buy or Sell, so we're super excited about it. Mary Blanche, do you want to kick us off with kind of our, our buyer sell SEC section?

Mary Blanche:

Let's do it. All right. Here's a good one to get us started. So, Becca, buy or sell, firms are too risk averse in their marketing

Becca Johns:

Bye

Mary Blanche:

buying it. She's

Becca Johns:

yeah, I think, um, especially if, if budget is a concern and your budget is tight. it can be hard and, and I don't know if it's the accounting firm or the marketers or, you know, a combination, but, um, I think we can definitely be a little bit, more. Adventurous. and I've always admired the smaller firms because they're so much more agile and nimble And they can just try things easier without having to get like, you know, through all the red tape. so I know that can contend to slow things down. But yeah, I would love to see the profession, adding a little bit of edge to it.

Austin McNair:

You, you brought up budgeting, so I wanted to just kind of throw in some data here. Um, so in both of our recent high growth study on accounting firms. And in the AIM study that's coming out, we've seen that the percentage of revenue dedicated to marketing in the accounting space has actually gone down. it, it looks like during the pandemic time, it looks like maybe accounting marketers were given a little bit more extra marketing dollars to kind of adjust sort things out, maybe take a little bit more risk. But since then we've just seen. Continued pullbacks. I'm wondering has that been your experience? Has that been the, the experience of your peers when you've had conversations with them in terms of the risk adverseness and budgeting that you were mentioning? I'd love to hear a little bit more detail there.

Becca Johns:

Yeah, I think I saw some of that, at my firm and with others, but I also see firms that are, you know, still making investments in branding in technology, whether that's a CRM or marketing automation. I. So I don't know if I'd say across the board, but sometimes if you are making those bigger investments, you know, you do have to cut back in other areas. Um, so I think it's just really important to be strategic with your budgets and, you know, think about are you getting the results that you want from them? And then also like making the case to firm leadership about, you know, this is why we're doing it. This is how this ties back to the firm's strategic plan. This is how it impacts sales. Um, and make sure that you can make that case for yourself. And then if you feel like it's something worth keeping in the budget or worth investing in, that you can sell that.

Austin McNair:

How about when it comes to like, um, being risk adverse in terms of, the kinds of marketing that goes on at a company or maybe the, the, um, you know, some of the techniques that are invested in like, I. We've had experiences working with some of our clients in the space where there's a little bit of an apprehension to, do things like video or invest more into things that are maybe more of the top of the marketing funnel, more brand awareness, like as you mentioned, there might be some sensitivity there to like marketers feeling like they need to, to show ROI and demonstrate everything and sometimes. making investments in things like a new brand video or a new website, those can feel kind of like softer marketing initiatives have to take place. Like, do you feel like that that continues to be a big sticking point in the space as well? Like in terms of being risk adverse? Yeah.

Becca Johns:

Yeah. I do. Um, I think, you know, especially things that are, if you're just doing like some top of the funnel email campaigns and you already have the software, all that really takes is time to develop it. But for firm leadership, like time is literally money. Um, I've had a sticky note on my bulletin board for probably 20 years that says my competition is the billable hour. And like really important to remember that like you can just say, oh, it's not gonna cost us anything, but they think, oh, that's costing your teams time to build that. Um, and the, those branding activities are really important to do, but those are the hardest to show ROI on because

Joe Pope:

Mm-hmm.

Becca Johns:

isn't gonna be like, oh yeah, we're gonna get a new client out of that activity. But it's just getting the name out there and the awareness, which are really important to do. Those can cost money, especially if you're doing something like video or a new website like you mentioned, the ROI is so abstract. It's, unless you're, unless you're doing an awareness survey before and after, you know, there's really no way to measure how effective it was. so there has to be a level of trust there with your marketing team to, be able to not only try things and. Also be able to measure whether they're successful. And sometimes that's just a gut reaction. You know, is that worth our time and the money that we're spending on it? do we think we're reaching the right people? so I think you have to be kind of honest with yourself too, and be willing to make those hard decisions where it's like, yeah, that's fun to do. I like doing that, but it's, we could probably be spending that time or those dollars better.

Mary Blanche:

Becca, I think you just made the perfect segue into our, uh, second Buy or. Sell. Uh, so I'm going for it. Buy or sell. It is impossible to accurately measure the ROI of marketing for accounting firms.

Becca Johns:

Impossible. I think I'm gonna sell that one. you know, I think you can measure ROI, again, it's not always like this. event got us X dollars in revenue. but I know a lot of firms are starting to measure marketing influenced revenue where it might not say, you know, we landed this client because they attended this event, but when you look at a new client that you acquired, what were the marketing touches that they had before that? and so, you know, imposs, is it impossible? No. That you can measure certain things. but I also don't think that you should rely solely on. Solely on those ROI metrics.

Joe Pope:

we actually pulled that one specifically from doing some search online where people are just complaining and talking towards some of these challenges. And actually, ROI has been a reoccurring topic on this podcast already, a couple episodes. And you referenced those multi-touch pieces though, right? And that it may not necessarily involve dollars at the end of the day if we're talking about our return. What are some of those metrics though, that come to mind? Like so, If we're talking touches, what are some of example touches where, you get from point A to point B, CD and you end up with a new client or reoccurring revenue? Talk about some of those different, uh, ways that we can measure.

Becca Johns:

Yeah. Um, you know, depending on what your tech stack looks like, um, you know, let's assume you have a CRM and a marketing automation platform and you can track someone's user journey through the website. you know, for, for us at Ray, even if someone, you know, if someone filled out the contact form on our website, and even if they said they were referred by another client or a center of influence, you know, we still counted that as a website lead. Because they came to our website to validate that. Like, yes,

Joe Pope:

Amen.

Becca Johns:

I wanna work with that I trust. so, you know, you can track their user journey through the site that led them to that contact form. you can look at the emails that you've sent them, the marketing emails that you've sent them, what they've opened, what they've clicked on, that kind of thing. So if you're looking at that like individual level, definitely relying on the tech stack and the kind of the creepy stuff that we're looking at behind the scenes. my firm also used Intro Hive, so we could look at, you know, how sticky the relationship was at a company. Um, how many contacts did we have? How recent is, are those interactions? and you can look at your top clients and see like, okay, we haven't been touching this client recently. Like we need to make sure that someone's. Consistently in contact with them.

Joe Pope:

and with your organization kind of being, not with, with Ray being, you know, in an organization that isn't near your top 20, top 30 of accounting firms, but it's still of a decent size and making that type of investment. you see a benefit for organizations that maybe even smaller than Ray and potentially starting to go down that avenue and, how do you kind of make that. Argument to, uh, to leadership in making those types of investments.

Becca Johns:

Yeah, for sure. you know, for me, CRM, it started off at Ray as a marketing tool, but over the years it definitely became just like, this is something we need to operate the business. You know, all new clients were set up that way. and I honestly think as the smaller firms, like I mentioned earlier, they're more agile, they're more nimble, and it would be easier to set up a CRM system and keep the data consistent and clean when you are smaller, versus, you know, a bigger firm trying to make sense of all of that. I think it's just easier to evolve the software with the firm as it's growing and changing. and yeah, I feel like marketing automation, if you're doing any kind of content marketing, thought leadership, which you should be. you know, marketing automation, I feel like is, a necessity too.

Austin McNair:

One thing that was interesting from our recent high growth study data, out of all the industries we studied, the accounting and financial services industry was the worst when they talked about, capturing and using marketing and BD metrics, it was kind of a surprise to us because, I mean, we, we know so many accounting marketers who super sharp and we know there's like a pretty high. Utilization of these marketing technology tools in the accounting space yet, like when, and, and we're trying to figure out like, are accounting marketers just being more hard on themselves than maybe like consultants might be or engineers might be. but like out of everybody that we asked, they were like, yeah, we're, we're not proficient yet in capturing and using the data. I, I'm wondering what you kind of would make of that kind of data finding. Does that. Seem reasonable to you? Is that kind of track with some of your conversations with your peers? knowing there's a lot of challenges there, but there's definitely this feeling that people feel like there's still a lot of room to grow here.

Becca Johns:

I would wonder if that's just because it's hard to get. partners in the firm to actually adopt the technology and use it. You know, you have the CRM, but unless they're putting their. Updating their pipeline, keeping their contacts in there, keeping them updated. Like there's only, there's only so much we can do. and again, our competition is the billable hours. And I literally had a partner say to me once, like, do you want me to be out selling or do you want me to be updating CRM? And I was like, well, I want you to do both. but you know, find an admin to update it for you if you don't have the time to do it. But that is their mindset. It's like I could either be servicing my clients or. Developing new business instead of spending time in this tool. And you know, of course the more you use it, it just, it becomes easier and easier. But, that is the mindset that they have. And so I would, I would imagine that that's kind of where that, that level of detail that you saw in the responses is that it's just like, yeah, we have the software and we would love to use it more, but we just don't have because we can't force people to use it.

Mary Blanche:

Okay, so I love this for us because you just gave us a really good segue into our. Next buy yourself question.

Becca Johns:

it.

Mary Blanche:

We we're just keep going.

Joe Pope:

we did not, we did not give Becca the prompts be.

Mary Blanche:

Alright. Buy or sell. The expert practitioners within your firm should spend no less than 90% of their time on billable work.

Becca Johns:

Oh, sell. They need to be spec. I mean, billable work is important of course, but 90% is, I feel like that's a really unrealistic target to hit, um, to be 90% billable. when you think about all the other things that we're asking them to do, you know, developing team members that are below them. developing new business, meeting with referral sources and centers of influence, you know, all the administrative stuff, CRM, that kind of thing. I think 90% is, pretty unattainable.

Mary Blanche:

Outta curiosity, what is, what is a more, um, split between billable and non-billable?

Becca Johns:

Um, I don't

Mary Blanche:

Um.

Becca Johns:

I, if I have a number. I think it really depends on the person and what their strengths are. You know, if you have someone that just wants to be heads down and doing client work, maybe it is closer to 90%. But if you have someone, again that's like a mentor to younger staff in the team, or that is really proficient at business development and has a lot of strong relationships that you want to be out in the community, theirs would be lower. So I don't know if there's like a one size fits all. I think it should be flexible enough to like. How can we best utilize this person's skill sets? And maybe if it's just cranking out tax returns, that's great. But, you know, there were partners at Ray that didn't have their own book of business. They were just responsible for, you know, client relationships, client satisfaction, bringing in new work. so their billable target was obviously much, much lower.

Mary Blanche:

Is that something that's like typically talked about? Like, well, I do have a lot of business development, so you know, I'm really gonna be targeting more around 50%. Or is it really just it is what it is based on, like you were saying, that specific person's kind of responsibilities.

Becca Johns:

I think a lot of firms have like a scorecard that they use when they're thinking about at least the partner compensation. Um. Maybe the billable hours is part of it, but I don't think it should be the biggest part. I think you need to look at what you're trying to accomplish as a firm and are the partners supporting that? are they meeting the targets that have been set for them? I know a lot of firms have partner plans that might spell out what is expected of each individual partner for the year, and I'm sure billable hours is. Part of that. but I think it can get dangerous if you say you need to hit this billable hour threshold. That's like, okay, well I'm gonna review this tax return because I need some billable hours this week. Whereas you should really be pushing that work down. so I think, you know, I think there's ways to fudge that. And I think if you, if you set the billable hour target too high, you might just get people doing work that's actually below their level just because they're trying to hit the number. So yeah, I would say be flexible and. kind of tailor it to each person.

Joe Pope:

So as a, um, you know, coming outta Ray and where you had that role as a, as a marketing leader and being so focused on how to incorporate growth strategies into that, you referenced a scorecard, but what are some of the other ways of which you, I. Either used a scorecard or meeting processes or, just looking across the field of potential folks who can be a part of the BD team, if you will, and identify them and, and, select them and put them into the right positions. What were some of the ways that you went about that Becca?

Becca Johns:

Um, so the, well, the first thing that comes to mind is, you know, we went to market by industry. So we built out the industry teams and obviously each team had a leader, that had to have knowledge in the industry, leadership skills, capacity to take on this kind of thing. then building, you know, based on what that industry group was trying to accomplish, they built their teams with people that could help them accomplish that. So, for example, not-for-profit was a lot harder to cross sell to existing clients.

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Becca Johns:

developers involved who could help bring in new clients. manufacturing and construction, we have a lot of advisory services that. We could offer to those clients. So that was, we had more of a cross-selling approach to those. so again, you kind of have to look at what the strategic objective is and then fill in, fill in everything to support that.

Joe Pope:

And I, and I hear you describing this, and the only thing that can come to mind is the death of the rainmaker, right? Because you're discussing multiple different approaches of which, depending on industries or depending on, uh, various challenges that might exist that you need this team. I. That can support it in different lenses. And so then you go back to that discussion about billable percentages and so forth. If, if you need a team, then you need bodies across that team that can be able to act upon that. And that's not necessarily billable work. Right? So I, I, I think that supports that argument really.

Becca Johns:

For sure. Yep.

Mary Blanche:

All right. I'm gonna switch gears a little bit, shift gears, I should say with this next question. marketing plays a critical role in the success of mergers and acquisitions, but is often an afterthought or so.

Becca Johns:

I buy that one. I definitely think they play a critical role. and especially for firms that haven't had a lot of m and a activity. They might not have figured out that, that you need to be including marketing in those conversations early on, like even in the due diligence phase. some, some firms have, like the internal culture piece falls under marketing, like internal communications. Some firms it's separate. But aside from that, just integrating the branding, client communications, um, looking at those cross-selling opportunities, getting all the data into CRM, Yeah, not involving marketing. And that would, I think, be a, a big, big mistake. Um,

Joe Pope:

have any,

Becca Johns:

I

Joe Pope:

do you have any horror stories that you've heard that come to mind? You don't have to name names, but any, uh, any circumstances.

Becca Johns:

I've heard of some strange branding decisions, um, with mergers. I'm not gonna name any names, but like, okay, let's, we're gonna bring in, um, a merger in one of our markets and instead of integrating under the whole firm name, they might have a, you know, operate under a separate name for a couple years. And I think that just. Adds client adds, adds confusion in the marketplace and confuses the clients and just creates unnecessary confusion and, and costs honestly. Um, I'm sure there's other ones that come that I could think of if I had some more time. But yeah, you know, it's important to involve marketing and not make marketing and branding decisions in a vacuum without consulting those teams.

Austin McNair:

you mentioned that marketing could have a role on like the due diligence side even before a merger or an acquisition happens. Could you, could we click on that a little bit and and, and hear a little bit more on what you, you know, what your experience has been in that, or what you think marketing's capabilities are there to add to that conversation?

Becca Johns:

Yeah. you know, at Ray, the due diligence process was really like, at the end of it is, okay, are we comfortable moving forward With this firm and from a marketing standpoint, there's really not gonna be a lot that would say, well, you would say, no, I don't think this is gonna be a good fit. You know, the firm leadership did their work to make sure that they have good clients and, you know, all of that. but I think it's good to notice what you're walking into. So you look at, um, anything from, okay, what kind of marketing materials do you have now that we're gonna need to create for you? Do you have a strong website and social media presence that we need to transition over time or can we just flip the switch? CRM, of course, does that need integrated? we always had a due diligence checklist that was

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Becca Johns:

the incoming firm, but there was one item that we'd never put on the checklist and, that was firm, like their firm leadership and their presence on social media. You know, if. I just had my team doing some searches just to make sure that no one was putting anything crazy out there online that could come back to hurt us. so again, we don't wanna, we didn't wanna tell those firms that we were looking at their social media and, you know, online presence, but I think that is important to look at just to make sure you know what you're buying, um, because if that could hurt your firm's reputation in the future, you wanna know about that upfront?

Austin McNair:

Absolutely. Yeah. No, I, I, I don't think I could agree more. And I, I think that, um, everything you walked through there is, is I think it can be a missed opportunity, at least. Again, I'm just thinking about some of our experience and Joe, maybe some of the horror stories we've seen, um, not necessarily in the accounting space, but in professional services more broadly. Those things get neglected and ignored and, you know, deals are done. And then. Oh man, the, the skeletons in the closet start to pour out. It's like, oh boy, I wish we had had, you know, maybe marketing or PR or some other, you know, specialists like maybe dig into some of this, uh, ahead of time. Maybe could have saved some headaches or things could have been prepared more ahead of time. So this great perspective, Becca.

Becca Johns:

yeah. It's important to understand like what marketing activities were important to the incoming firm. Um, like if they do an annual event or something, for example, for clients, you wanna make sure you know that upfront so you can plan for it, budget it, and also just meet, meet their expectations. you know, because it's, it's a big change for the firm that's, that's being merged in and you just wanna make sure that you're giving them good service. You know, considering like that they're my client, wanna give them good service and make sure that you're meeting their expectations and making it a smooth transition.

Mary Blanche:

all right, let's do this one. Uh, buy or sell accounting marketers are underappreciated in their firms.

Becca Johns:

I'm gonna buy that one too. Um, and again, with everything I, I may have some caveats. I think sometimes firm leaders don't necessarily understand what marketing is or what they should be expecting from them, what they do every day. So it's, it's then hard to appreciate that. Um. You know, when you think about like the personality spectrum, you can't get too different than accounting and marketing, like just

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Becca Johns:

types, the way the brain works. Um, so I think it's up to marketers to make sure that they're communicating their value and, you know, they're sharing what they're doing and, and what that's doing to, for the firm. Um, you know, you can't, you can't blame it all on the firm leaders. I think us marketers have to take some responsibility for

Joe Pope:

Sure.

Becca Johns:

but, you know, build those relationships, sign those wins and make sure you're sharing them.

Mary Blanche:

If, if there was a, you know, if there was, um, leadership on the more accounting side, listening to this right now, what would be like one piece of advice that you might give to them to help make the, you know, the marketing side really feel that they, that they're appreciated?

Becca Johns:

I think it's really important to just really understand what The function

Mary Blanche:

mm-hmm.

Becca Johns:

sure that you're communicating clear expectations to your marketing team. I think that's where there can be a disconnect sometimes. And, again, you know, we, we would have partners sometimes that would say like, oh, I don't really understand that service offering. I don't know how to sell that to my clients. To me that's unacceptable. And I feel like it's the same for, you know, firm leaders not understanding one of their internal operations. Like, sure, you don't have to understand like how it does all their stuff, but you need to understand how they support the firm and how you can be using them. And you know, the same goes for human resources, finance, marketing, all of it. You know, firm leaders really have to understand what they're managing and what they're leading. and you know, I, I feel like we're so lucky to have a community like AIM where we can meet other people like us. And I think firm leaders need to be intentional about building a community of other firm leaders for themselves so that they can have conversations too about like, what is, what is your marketing doing? Or What are you seeing in this area? So they can, you know, it's sometimes better when you, when they hear it from someone on the outside versus, um, on the inside of the firm.

Mary Blanche:

Preach. That's, that's great advice. Yeah.

Joe Pope:

I'd, I'd like to, I'd like to kind of take MBS question and go to the opposite end. So we've got, and you referenced AIM and, and, and I've definitely met some awesome people at Summit specifically. I know we've got that coming up very shortly. Uh, but you've got some of our more junior marketers folks who maybe this is their second, third job and they're looking to kind of find that pathway to become the next Becca Johns. What are some of the ways that you would recommend that they can advocate for themselves in addition to potentially joining, uh, a group like aim?

Becca Johns:

again, I feel like the, I feel like the best way is, to kind of build your army slowly, and of course that includes outside of the firm, but inside the firm too. it, it can be intimidating. It can, it can be hard for a new marketer if you're going to talk to all these different partners and try to prove your worth. But if you have some small wins with a couple partners, you know, you can get them on board with you and work with the people that wanna work with you and that believe in what you're doing and are excited to work with you, and that can kind of just snowball. And those partners can advocate for you too. and I think it's also really important to have individual conversations with partners. Again, not only that are leaders in the firm, but just the partners that you feel like you click with. about what issues they're seeing in the firm and how they think you can help. Um, you know, how can I help you build your practice? you know, make sure that you have a good understanding of this firm's strategic plan. And if the firm doesn't have a strategic plan, like make noise about that until they have one. Because you can't be successful if there's no clear direction for you to go in.

Joe Pope:

I hear, I hear you Becca. And it's interesting, I, as you were talking, I'm thinking to myself across professional services, I think that advice rings true in pretty much every industry. Uh, you know, I'm thinking okay with, uh, as somebody who's coming up in the architectural community or working on a construction organization, junior level or hearing those pieces is. I, it, I, that resonates. That's the type of advice which can lead to somebody really creating good advocacy behind their own career. And I mean, one of the, our goals when we launched this podcast was to speak to different folks at different stages. So I I, I appreciate you providing that insight.

Austin McNair:

this has been such a great conversation. I'm wondering if we, if Becca, you'd be up for a little bit of a lightning round to kind of round out our, our conversation. Would you be up for, for a lightning round?

Becca Johns:

Yep. So I need to cut the commentary is what you're saying?

Austin McNair:

No, no. Give us, you know, still give us a little something. Give us, we don't want you to say Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe, maybe some shorter takes. We'll get producer John here to throw some lightning sounds in here, some music and make Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got a big special effects budget for this podcast. Um, it's great. Um, so yeah, why don't we do it lightning round, mb.

Mary Blanche:

All right, let's do it. So Becca, accounting firms should organize their marketing functions to focus on account expansion rather than new client acquisition.

Becca Johns:

Oh, that. I feel like it has to be a balance. I don't know. I don't know what the option is for like both,

Mary Blanche:

What is the, what is the word for not, not buy or sell?

Becca Johns:

Yeah. Hold

Joe Pope:

Loan?

Becca Johns:

Yeah,

Mary Blanche:

Hundred percent. All right. Then moving to the next one, since this is a lightning round, accounting firms should avoid developing personal brands they could eventually leave the firm.

Becca Johns:

So,

Mary Blanche:

All right. Social media is the most important channel for accounting marketers,

Becca Johns:

So,

Joe Pope:

you, what would your, what would your thought be if you had to name one right off the top?

Becca Johns:

Oh gosh. I don't know if I could name just one off the top, but social media wouldn't be, you know, if, if I had to cut something social media, it's, you know, it's good brand awareness. Um, it's good for employer branding especially, but, um, you know, that's not where the magic's happening,

Mary Blanche:

Cool. All right. I'm gonna keep it moving. Uh, getting your team members to support marketing efforts is easy peasy.

Becca Johns:

so.

Austin McNair:

Surprise. I'm shocked that you said that.

Becca Johns:

yeah,

Austin McNair:

tell. Can you tell us a little bit like, okay, uh, why is it so challenging?

Becca Johns:

it's, you know, for some people they've just never done it. Um, they think of marketing as sales and, you know, for some people that's scary. you know, it's hard to get'em from out, from behind their desks Sometimes. They really are working with some charge hour goals that they need to hit. Um, there's a, there's a million different reasons, but there will be people that, you know. That really shine at it and love it. And again, those are the people that you should take from good to Great. Instead of trying to get people on the bus all the time,

Joe Pope:

good.

Mary Blanche:

That's a good one. Liner. I like that.

Austin McNair:

Yeah, mic drop.

Mary Blanche:

Yeah.

Joe Pope:

John Clip.

Mary Blanche:

Yeah. Okay, last one. Digital marketing can never replace the lead potential of word of mouth referrals by or sell.

Becca Johns:

that. I mean, you know, you, you wanna, you know, if, if there's someone that's already vetted a firm or an offering for you, um, you know, that takes a lot of the guesswork out. so I think those referrals are important. I do think as younger generations take power in, in companies, we're gonna see that shifting. Um, you know, they are buying more online, but, um. At least, at least for now. Um, and I know it also kind of takes a while to hit the Midwest where I am. So at least for now, word of mouth is still really important.

Austin McNair:

All right. Well, congratulations. You made it through the lightning round and all the buy, buy and sell questions. That was great. Um, well, Becca, I mean, we can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast again. Um, I. You've got so many great insights to share with us and so much experience. Where can people learn more about, um, what you're doing now and, and, and if they wanted to get in touch with you, how would they do that?

Becca Johns:

I, I think LinkedIn's the best

Austin McNair:

I.

Becca Johns:

now. I'm still kind of building up my website, but you can find me on LinkedIn at Becca Johns. Um, my email is becca@beccajohns.com. Um, I'm staying on top of my inbox a lot better these days. So, um, I'd love, I'd love to connect with anybody, um, and just hear what's going on in your firm and if even if there's nothing I can help with, I still just love connecting with people and, um, learning what's going on.

Austin McNair:

Great. Well, we will encourage all of our listeners to go do that. Go connect with Becca on LinkedIn, connect with, uh, Joe, myself, and Mary Blanche as well. And if anyone has questions about our podcast, you can always email us feedback, questions, concerns, comments, all, all of the above. At podcast, at hinge marketing.com. Like the videos. Subscribe, leave us a review. All your feedback is really appreciated. All of your support's really appreciated. This has been another episode of Spiraling Up again for Becca, Joe, myself, Mary Blanche. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next one. Take care everybody. Thank you.