
February 28, 2023 min read
Amy McCarty
Manager of Education Services, RootworksWhat would it look like if your accounting firm had a steady stream of cash flow all year long?
It would mean that you wouldn’t have to rely on tax season revenue to fuel your firm throughout the year. And you could take on fewer tax clients, making tax season…well, less painful and more fun.
If you’re wondering how you can create highly profitable, recurring revenue for your firm, I’ll tell you: You do it through accounting advisory services. So, let’s start you on the path to year-round revenue.
First things first: Take a look at your business model. Is everyone in your firm clear on your WHO, WHAT and HOW? Let’s define them to be sure:
The intentional focus on evaluating your business model—and taking control of what you want it to be—puts you well on your way to becoming a modern firm that offers accounting advisory services.
Let’s talk about your client list. Would you consider it to be full of ideal clients or non-ideal clients? I’m going to venture a guess and say your firm probably has more of the latter. And that’s OK. We can help you build your list—full of ideal clients whom you love to serve.
Think about your favorite client, and ask yourself the following three questions:
There are certainly additional questions you can ask yourself to help you define the characteristics of your ideal client (Rootworks members: Check out our ideal client resource here). But these three questions will help you determine the clients you want to work with—and the ones that could be better served by another firm.
Next, let’s chat about using data to determine the services you want to sell. Keep in mind that the services you want to sell should have the following characteristics:
Use an application like Rootworks Insights to connect to QuickBooks® Online or Xero and view metrics that help you locate opportunities to build strategies for advisory offerings. Rootworks Insights also helps you uncover data with the same insights into your clients’ small businesses.
Consider services that will help create year-round revenue, like client accounting and tax, cash flow forecasting, payroll and retirement plans—just to name a few. And identify the services that are time-consuming and don’t provide value to your firm, so you can remove them from your service offerings.
Once you’ve determined the advisory services you want to offer, it’s time for the word most accountants hate: selling. Think of selling as an opportunity to help your clients more. Instead of looking for new opportunities and new clients, focus on upselling and cross-selling to your current ideal clients.
Upselling involves offering a more valuable version of a product to clients, like bundled services. Cross-selling means you’re offering products and services to existing clients who aren’t already using them.
It costs less to upsell and cross-sell than it does to find new clients. Your goal should be to become the one central place your clients go to for their accounting advisory services needs. Determine which products and services can be subscription-based versus value-based to establish multiple streams of recurring revenue.
It’s time to rethink your current business model and stop relying on tax season revenue to carry your firm year-round. Build your ideal client list, figure out the services you want to offer, and start upselling and cross-selling to your existing clients.
Highly profitable and recurring revenue is within your reach!
To learn more about Rootworks Insights and getting to year-round revenue, check out our website here.
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Rootworks members can now use an early access version of Insights, which delivers customer segmentation and pricing data as well as reports for your firm and clients. Connection to QuickBooks Online is required for firms and/or clients.