Tag: business advice

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How can I find clients?

Many a business starts up with a great idea believing that, as in the Field of Dreams film, if they build it, he will come. Then the harsh reality comes that the founder is also responsible for sales and marketing (as well as finance!)

Here are my thoughts on sources of leads in order of the quality of clients the seem to generate

  1. Referrals – looks at your existing clients and have a process for requesting referrals. A referral usually means that you are pre-qualified with a personal recommendation. Obviously a startup doesn’t have any existing clients so this isn’t usually possible.
  2. Networking – building personal relationships with referrers, or ensuring that your existing networks (friends, family, school gates, gym, etc) all know what you do means that introductions will come with a personal approval even if they don’t quite understand your business. Networking takes 6-12 months to become fruitful but you might get lucky as I’ve been approached by a new client the first time I went to one group.
  3. Social media – this is getting harder since covid when everybody took to the airwaves but we used to generate 1/3 of our business this way. Don’t just post good quality content but turn up and interact with people. Treat it as online networking and take time to build relationships rather than advertise.
  4. Mailshots – With paper post becoming rarer it is easier to stand out this way. If you are selling to other businesses then you can obtain a list from Companies House. Make sure that you send something that makes you stand out.
  5. E-mailshots – generate your own lists rather than buying them in as there are some really poor quality lists for sale. It’s a crowded space and harder to stand out.
  6. Facebook and google ads – these are better for those selling to consumers rather than businesses but worth a try. They generate rather a lot of spam but it’s worth doing through a social media business that understands the systems.

How else have you had success generating business clients?

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The importance of delegation 

Some people find it easier to delegate than others. I’m one of the former, perhaps because I find it easier to find people who are better than me? 😉 But it is also important to be able to stand back and let them get on with things while ignoring the temptation to micromanage.

I’ve written and spoken elsewhere about HOW to delegate so I’ll address WHY it is important for you to delegate.

  • Moving away from hands on work allows you to remove yourself from the business in order to focus on strategy and business improvements. You can’t see the view from the bridge if you’re busy shovelling coal in the engine room.
  • It empowers your employees and enables them to step up (using you’re your training, procedures, and checklists) and maybe even step beyond your current standards
  • It allows your team to develop more skills themselves and even to add new skills to the team
  • It improves team productivity and efficiency. Get the right pegs in the right holes instead of trying to do everything yourself, irrespective of whether it’s in your area of expertise or not
  • Spreading the workload allows you to reduce your personal stress and avoid burnout

So, sit back, relax, and delegate.

A couple of extra bits that caught my eye:

New supercomputer in Bristol UK’s most powerful supercomputer Isambard-AI comes online – BBC News

ICAEW Q2 Business Confidence Monitor (regional updates will follow) UK Business Confidence Monitor: National | ICAEW

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How to automate your business processes 

Start by identifying the most repetitive tasks, or the repetitive steps of larger tasks.  For us that is the accounts production, bookkeeping, onboarding new clients, and chasing client records. 

Choose the best tools for you. This may not be the same as for another business. For instance, we wouldn’t use the same tools as a large accountancy practice as we have fewer clients, a smaller team, and our clients’ needs are much simpler. 

We use (mainly) Xero for our client bookkeeping which means that we can use Hubdoc, Apron, or Dext for our clients to upload their invoices digitally. XeroTax fits smoothly onto our Xero clients or we use Xero Ledger for those clients not already on Xero. We have two different working papers for limited or unincorporated clients. The danger with small clients is that the checking can often take longer than the actual accounts production so we try to simplify this as much as possible. Onboarding, and the interminable task of chasing clients for records, is done through Bright Manager. 

Train your team to use the software. Xero provides free training and certification for accountants which enables us to get the most out of the software. We create our own training videos for clients. Bright Manager has some training but we rely more on our own internal videos. 

In line with our continuous improvement mindset we keep trying to get more out of our existing automation and to keep an eye out for other automation that can help us. 

Automation is great but never forget to have a human being available when necessary. 

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Your business isn’t your family

Okay, some of us run a family business, but it should still be run along professional lines.

Employees may underperform and you will need to follow your disciplinary procedures to bring them back in line. You may even need to sack them if they are more of a liability than an asset so make sure that you do everything legally. Employees may leave you for better pay, conditions, or opportunities. Or you may need to make their positions redundant if you need to reorganise the business or make cutbacks if the business is underperforming.

While many clients will become friends yours is primarily a business relationship. Why would you offer ‘mates rates’ when your mates should be supporting you to set up your new business? Would they give up part of their salary as willingly as you drop your prices? You may need to be disciplined about only answering business queries during working hours and not in the middle of your sister’s wedding. Real friends wouldn’t want to spoil your free time.

Clients may leave if they feel the grass is greener on the other side in terms of price or services. Similarly we need to charge commercial prices to everybody and to increase those in line with inflation each year.

If you treat your business as a business and your friends as good employees or good clients then you will be able to offer a much better service overall. If you have to sell yourself cheap or accept poor standards to keep their friendship then are they really friends?

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Time Management Tips for Entrepreneurs 

If you’re managing a business then you probably have 101 tasks requiring your attention even if you have delegated as much as you can. 

  1. Schedule tasks in your calendar. Knowing how long each task will take will help you to understand what is realistically achievable 
  1. Prioritise tasks based on importance and urgency. We use internal deadlines to ensure that we’re not running up against important external deadlines but also to keep internal projects on track 
  1. The way to eat an elephant is one mouthful at a time. Break larger tasks into smaller, bite-sized steps. This seems less daunting but it may also be possible to fit a smaller task in around larger ones so that you make forward progress. 
  1. Avoid multitasking to maintain focus. Easier said than done! I often flit around when I have ‘too many’ tasks on my list and end up achieving nothing as I stop-start each task multiple times. 
  1. Set aside specific times for checking emails and messages. I do a quick triage each morning and then answer emails and call backs from 4pm (unless I’m doing the flitting around in 4 above!) and all of Monday is to clear leftover bits. 

I’d love to hear what works for you. Any habits or apps to recommend? 

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How to achieve work-life balance as a business owner 

You may have started your business with the intentions of having a better work-life balance or for some other reason and the work is now taking over your life. If so here are a few tips. 

  1. Set clear boundaries between work and personal time (and place). I find it helpful to clear my desk each evening and to ensure that I actually log off my computer (it’s also better for keeping your software updated) 
  1. Prioritise tasks – you’ve probably already seen the matrix of urgent vs important where you start with the tasks that are urgent AND important 
  1. Delegate where possible – be aware of how much you could earn in an hour and delegate everything possible to somebody with a lower hourly rate. This might be a virtual assistant, a junior member of the team, or even buying in help at home. 
  1. Schedule regular breaks – I always block out an hour for lunch and an alarm to finish working at the end of the day. My need for tea ensures that I take regular breaks to make another drink (or go to the loo after drinking so much!) 
  1. Schedule holidays – I start each year by blocking off the last week of March, June, September, and December as well as a week around my birthday. I sometimes need to change these dates nearer the time but it means that I don’t book meetings in when I expect to be away. 
  1. Practice mindfulness or other stress management techniques – I don’t meditate but I do enjoy running and letting my brain unwind. It’s how I originally got into triathlons 
  1. Create a flexible work schedule that works for you and your life – this isn’t just for the business owner as all our team have this option 
  1. Monitor KPIs around this – I track my weekly working hours and also my profit per hour. 

What are your top tips for work-life balance 

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When can you afford to retire? 

At some point we all want to retire from our business so it’s important to understand how that will impact on our future income. For me, this starts with a personal balance sheet.  

Whilst there’s no financial reporting standard for this here are the sort of things that I include: 

  • Sale value of your business less any costs of sale and capital gains tax 
  • Property less outstanding mortgages, costs of sale and capital gains tax 
  • Pension funds 
  • Other investments 
  • Long term savings 
  • I exclude short terms savings and current accounts as these are usually less substantial and they probably need to be maintained into retirement. 

I then look at a forecast of personal income and outgoings.  

Income might include 

  • Salary and dividends from your own business 
  • Pension income 
  • Rental income 
  • Other investment income 
  • Sale of assets (which might reduce income that those assets generate) 
  • Gifts and inheritances 

And outgoings would be your household bills, hobbies, holidays, etc 

When doing a long terms forecast these will change over time as you plan in major life events such as buying property, weddings, children, school fees, sale of property, cashing in some of the investments above, retirement homes, crises and even nursing homes.  

As with any long range forecast there are huge assumptions to be made, your date of death being one of them, but it is a good start on when you can afford to retire and what sort of lifestyle you will be able to achieve. 

Also worth mentioning that you should ensure that you have a valid will, and power of attorney for your finances, health and business. 

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Plan your business like a marathon 

Building your business isn’t a sprint but a marathon. It takes a bit of planning. 

  • Plan – find a plan that is right for you. Right for where you are now, where you want to be, and how much time you have available 
  • Track performance – what KPIs will show that you are on track? These should be things that you can control such as how often you train each week, rather than how fast you will be by a certain date. How many times do you need to show up on line each week? How many networking events? How long do you need to write for each day (and do you take weekends off?) to complete that book? 
  • Track your progress – each time you run a longer distance or a faster time record this PB (personal best). In business this might be tracking your GRI (gross recurring income), your record month of sales, number of clients, average fee etc. 
  • Invest in the right equipment – a good pair of trainers (and the right sports bra) can make your training so much more comfortable. Have the right people and technology to maximise your chances of success. 
  • Running partner/group – these will provide moral support, accountability, and they will run alongside you as you each focus on your personal goals 
  • Coach – as an athletics coach as well as a business coach I can’t recommend this highly enough. Somebody with technical expertise, moral support, and accountability will help you get to your destination faster. 
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Does 2% feel like nothing? 

It’s a pretty small increase but increasing your prices by 2% will increase you turnover, your profits, and your cash.  

Reducing your costs by 2% will increase your profits and your cash. 

Increasing your clients by 2% will increase your turnover, profits, and cash. 

This is the sort of thing that we identify when we carry our Clarity reviews for clients. We hook Clarity HQ software up to Xero etc to see where they are today and then play with scenarios to improve the business’s profitability, cash, valuation, and efficiency. But we’re not the sort of accountants who just tell you what you need to do, our business advice goes much further. 

We advise on how to do it and help clients by agreeing an action plan, any additional support they need (from us or our network of associates), and accountability to make sure that it gets done. 

Tech does so much of the day to day work which means that accountancy has moved on and isn’t just about measuring last year’s numbers. Instead of number crunching we like to CHANGE THE NUMBERS. 

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Limitations of AI 

At risk of sounding like a luddite: AI is not the answer to everything. 

AI has the potential for so much good but people really don’t understand the limitations.  

  • The main one for accountants is that information put into the free version of ChatGPT is not confidential. For this reason we use Copilot as our default sand other Ais as needed so that client information is never accidentally compromised. 
  • The free version of ChatGPT is only based on information available up to a certain point in time so it excludes more recent updates and data.  
  • AI is the answer to all the problems that you never knew you had! Originally AI was developed as a solution to certain problems but now developers are busy creating solutions to problems that don’t really exist … until their product team tell you that they do. 
  • AI is only as good as the user. As with all technology, garbage in = garbage out. You need to train your AI in exactly the same way that you would train a new apprentice in your organisation. 

The biggest problem is that LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT are prone to ‘hallucination’. They extrapolate the known data in order to fill in any gaps. Like the accountant’s nightmare ‘Dave at the pub’, who tries to help everybody with doubtful tax advice, hallucinating AI is about as reliable as a toddler with a face full of chocolate denying that they’ve been stealing Easter eggs. 

One AI quoted from my talk at an accounting conference earlier this year. It was probably a great talk but … I didn’t speak at that event! If a journalist was to report this badly they would be out of a job and probably laughed out of their industry.  

I love AI and use it regularly in my businesses but please remember to approach with caution. 

PS If the conference in question would like me to do a talk on this topic I’d be happy to oblige 😉 

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