Accounting firms must think beyond the basics of compliance services and begin offering value-added services to their clients. When you transform into a one-stop shop that fulfills more of your clients’ needs, you strengthen your firm by:
- Generating more revenue
- Building client loyalty and trust
- Ensuring steady work through the year
You can offer any additional services that you want. However, depending on your clients, they may or may not be as receptive to certain services. The key is to start identifying what your existing client base can benefit from the most.
Strategies for Identifying Which Value-added Services to Offer
Some services will be a hit with your existing clients, and others may not be as well received. You want to do your best to single out the offers that your current client base will want because:
- You have a 60%-70% chance of selling to an existing client versus a 5% to 20% for a new prospect.
- Acquiring new customers costs six to seven more than retaining current clients.
If you can narrow down the value-added services you offer to those that solve your clients' pain points, you will generate more revenue and build client loyalty.
A few of the go-to, proven methods to identify the right options for your firm include:
Client Surveys
Who knows your clients' needs best? Your clients. You can send your clients surveys asking them:
- Which services would they like you to offer? (Be sure to provide a list of options.)
- What pain points do they have that you’re not meeting?
There are a variety of online survey tools that can help you create your survey and tally the responses, such as Typeform, Google Forms, SurveyMonkey and Jotform - among many others.
Identify Challenges Your Clients Face
While you’re waiting for clients to respond to your surveys, you can look through your existing data and client notes to:
- Identify challenges your clients have
- Pinpoint key issues where you could offer more
For example, maybe you recognize your clients don’t have plans in place to reach their long-term financial goals or strategically exit their business one day. This would be your queue to start thinking about offering services such as financial planning, wealth management, and succession planning.
You also can ask others in your firm about the most common issues clients have that your firm can’t solve. If you brainstorm solutions to these problems, you’ll be well on your way to offering the services your clients desire.
Market Research
Conducting market research is another great way to pinpoint the services that you want to offer. A few things you’ll want to research are:
- Demand for the services
- Service growth figures
- Revenue potential
If a service is beginning to become less popular, it may not make sense to invest in offering it.
Once you’ve gone through the points above, you can then work on developing solutions to address client needs. You want to focus on your client base on a “whole.” For example, if only 5% of clients need an outsourced CFO but 70% need financial planning, you likely would want to focus on the latter first.
Of course, proper implementation of these new services is a must for them to be a success.
Implementation Strategies for Your Value-Added Services
You have a list of value-added services you want to offer, but you need to ensure they’re as streamlined as your current offerings. Implementation can make or break these services, so it’s imperative that you:
- Identify skill sets: Your team members have skill sets that may be useful for your new offerings. Identify these skills and how the individual can best assist with the services you plan to offer.
- Identify skill gaps: You may have skill gaps in your team that require you to either train your existing employees or partner with other professionals. Partnering often allows you to offer a much broader range of services to your clients without the need for intense, costly training.
- Consider marketing: Work with your marketing team to find the best avenue to market your new services. Beyond offering these services to existing clients, consider how you can reach new prospects. Networking events, social media, and other channels can help you get started with reaching the right demographic.
- Quality assurance: Your existing clients help you keep your firm running. You must spend time creating processes and procedures for each new service you offer. The quality of your service delivery will improve client satisfaction and improve your odds of your solutions being a success.
You don’t need to do everything on your own, either. As mentioned above, partnering with a provider of these services helps alleviate training and the need to fill skill gaps, empowering your firm to implement your new solutions faster and for less than building an in-house team.
Value-added services will help your firm generate more revenue, but they go well beyond just monetary gains. These additional offerings will build client loyalty, boost satisfaction, and give you peace of mind that you’re doing everything possible to better assist your clients.
Joseph Graziano, CFP® is VP and Wealth Management Partner at FFP Wealth Management. He and the team at FFP help manage more than $2.4 billion in assets. For the past 28-plus years, FFP Wealth Management has partnered with accountants and financial planners to provide premium services to clients. If you have questions about adding financial planning services to your firm or the challenges above, you can contact Joe here.
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