Grow Your Firm’s Revenue Without Adding New Clients

by

If your revenue is stagnant, your first thought might be to add more clients. Adding clients will undoubtedly add to your bottom line, but you can grow your firm without spending the time and resources to attract new clientele.

How?

Below is our blueprint for helping firms grow their revenue from within with the clients they already know and work with.

Review Your Pricing

Price increases are a part of doing business. You may feel guilty about raising rates, but you need to keep up with inflation. Ideally, you’ll raise rates once per year, or, at the very minimum, review them.

Everyone knows the pain of inflation in the past two years, but these challenges have also hit your business.

Raising rates 7% - 10% can make a huge difference in your revenue and allow you to remain financially stable. Review your rates, increase them adequately, and then in the next 12 - 18 months, you can repeat this process again.

Add Advisory Services to Your Offering

Advisory services allow you to offer a one-stop shop to your clients. For example, perhaps you work as an accountant for small business owners. You save your clients money, but what if you could offer the owner:

  • Financial planning?
  • Estate planning?
  • Tax planning?

You can offer these high-end services to your clients, better serve them and boost your revenue. When you offer this full service to your client base, you may find that they’re even more loyal to your firm because you’re assisting them in multiple areas of their lives.

Form Strategic Alliances That Are Profitable for Everyone

Strategic alliances are beneficial for you and another service provider. You have to choose these partnerships carefully by first deciding:

  • What do your clients need?
  • What do they need that you can’t or don’t want to offer?

For example, you may want to form an alliance with:

  • Law firms
  • Coaches in your niche
  • Estate planners
  • Specialty tax credit firms

You can refer your clients to these professionals and receive a cut of the profits. Partnerships allow you to align your firm to best serve its clients and increase revenue per client.

Transition Into an Industry Leader

Are you an industry leader? If not, it’s time to take control and become one. You may want your firm to attract a few dozen local clients and be fine with this level of success. However, you’re likely selling yourself short by taking this approach.

You should work your way up to becoming an industry leader by going on/to:

  • Podcasts
  • Webinars
  • Conferences
  • Industry events

Pitch articles to leading publications and as more people see your face and hear the wisdom that you offer, they’ll look at you as the go-to person in your industry. The perception of being an industry leader means that you can command higher rates, and people will be more than happy to pay these costs.

Becoming a thought leader might sound scary, but it’s all about being where your target audience is located. You should be active on social media, attend conferences and even speak at events. Every time your client sees your face or name in a new place, it acts as a touch point that keeps them engaged and they’ll know that you’re a trusted advisor.

Upsell Your Clients on Existing Services

Advisory services are one thing, but you also offer core services that may benefit your clients. You should upsell these services to your clients who are not utilizing them. What I recommend is that you:

  • Put time aside to review your clients
  • Review the service you offer to each client
  • Determine if they can benefit from other services you provide

Who is utilizing which service you offer? What gaps in the service exist that each client may benefit from?

If you believe you can better serve clients by upselling your existing services, explain how you can better help them with these offers. You might even want to bundle your services into a package that makes sense for the client and provides a surge of income for you.

Your firm may pursue these points for the sole purpose of generating more revenue, but it’s more than just about the money. You can offer your clients a better service, boost your loyalty and it’s a win-win for your firm and clients.

Building revenue from your existing client base is a fast means of generating more money with very little overhead in the process. You don’t need to spend resources to attract new leads - just sell to the people who already know and trust your service.

Joseph Graziano, CFP®

Vice President and Wealth Management Partner at FFP Wealth Management. Through FFP management, Joe and his team help manage over 2.4 billion in assets. FFP Wealth Management has served the unique needs of the accounting community for over 28 years and was formed out of dire need for accountants and financial planners to join forces in providing premium services to their clients.