Peter Cullen - Recipient of the 2014 Top BPO Practice Award
Biggest Challenge: Our biggest challenge in 2014 was to change the context of our
relationships with clients from reactive ( e.g. fixing their QB File, preparing a financial statement or loan application or tax return ) to proactive and collaborative (building, together, a revenue and profit forecast for the next two years based on the last two years of history and current customer trends).
Solution: We overcame it by doing it - by asking for permission to change the relationship, then by informing and educating our clients as to how and why this will be more valuable for them, and will give them time and space to build a better business
Greatest Success of 2014: Clearly, it was overcoming our fear that our clients would not want to change the relationship from reactive to proactive
Biggest Goal For 2015: My biggest goal for 2015 is to grow our online practice from 50 online recurring Accounting Clients to 100 ( 5 new online clients added per month)
I would like to work with a group of peers ( some people call it Mastermind) of people who are like minded but may have a different approach to getting to a better result - and work with them monthly to help us all achieve our goals
Paulette Dreher - Recipient of the 2014 Top Integrations Practice Award
Biggest Challenge: Recognizing and adapting to the changes in how clients/prospects
search for and purchase products & services, as well as how they communicate with providers. While the personal touch is still important, more and more transactions are happening remotely over the web.
Solution: Completely redesigned our website which we recognized needed to be mobile friendly, added a blog, added a web store, created a FaceBook page and invested in paid SEO. We also created email templates and developed standards for initial contact and follow-up to allow for increased amount of email inquiries vs. telephone calls.
Greatest Success of 2014: Increased consulting engagements due to 1) remote access and 2) specialization and 3) recognition of expertise in the products and services we offer.
Biggest goal for 2015: To continue to grow the above and increase concentration on recurring revenue products.
Do these challenges sound like your challenges? It is a rapidly changing marketplace and in order to stay competitive and effective you will need to set goals and objectives for the coming years and work strategically to accomplish them.
Are you interested in sharing you challenges, solutions, successes and goals? If so, just share them in the comment section below.