This week it’s me, Linda!

Everyone I have talked to this past keeps talking about the economy and how bad it is and in the next breath they tell me how busy they are. I know what they mean – this has been a busy summer and there is only one more month before it’s back to school!

Last night we had a great call sharing our insider secrets on how to create freedom in your bookkeeping practice. Those of you on the call really kept us on our toes!

In this week’s article, Laurie talks about the importance of having the right types of insurance.

To your financial serenity,

Linda & Laurie
The 6-Figure Bookkeeping Coaches

By Linda A. Hunt

One of the things that has always been important to me, is creating long-term relationships with our clients. Whenever, I meet with a prospective client, that is exactly what I tell them. I make my intentions known upfront by saying, “My firm and I are looking to enter into a working relationship with you that benefits both of us for the long-term.” This simple statement really sets the tone for our forthcoming working relationship.

Here are the 6 secrets I use in my own firm to create great long-term client relationships.

1. Be a good listener. Taking the time to identify the needs of your client by asking them questions and concentrating on what they are really saying gives you knowledge. Knowledge is power.

Listen to their words, tone of voice, body language, and most importantly, how they feel. Be careful to not make assumptions. Thinking you intuitively know what your client wants can get you into trouble. Do you know the three outcomes/deliverables that are most important to your client?

2. Identify and anticipate needs. Your clients are not buying your services – they are buying solutions to a problem they are experiencing. When we begin working with a new client, we review all of the requirements/deadlines they may experience throughout the year. This enables us to be proactive and anticipate upcoming needs well in advance.

3. Make your clients feel important and appreciated. In my firm we have created a client appreciation system where we are in contact with our clients throughout the year, letting them know how much we appreciate their business and care about what is going on with them. So when one of our clients obtained their 20th client, which is a very big deal for them, we automatically sent them a celebration cookie bouquet to share in their triumph.

People value sincerity – it creates good will and feelings of trust. Clients are very intelligent and will know whether or not you really care about them.

4. Help your clients to understand your process. You may have the very best process for getting things done and if your clients don’t understand what that is, they will get confused, impatient and angry. Take the time to explain how your process works, not the nitty gritty details, a broad overview so that they can visualize the way the work is being completed.

5. Get regular feedback. Encourage and welcome suggestions about how you can improve your services. This does not mean that you have to incorporate into your process what they are saying but it does give you good insight into what they are thinking. Find a simple way in which your clients can give you feedback. My computer host company actually sends me a short survey to complete each time a work order is completed.

6. Treat your staff well. Employees and subcontractors are your internal clients and deserve to be treated well. Thank them and find ways to let them know that they are important. Remember without them, you would be doing all of the work yourself!

We got so many great responses to our question “What’s Keeping You from Having Freedom in Your Bookkeeping Business?” Here’s a breakdown of what you are saying keeps you from having freedom:

 
 • Not Having Standard Processes In Place - 34%
 • Not Having Enough Time - 25%
 • Not Having Enough Clients - 25%
 • Not Having Enough Money/Cash Flow – 17%

Here’s our answer to YOUR biggest freedom buster:

Not Having Standard Processes in Place

Creating and implementing standard processes in your business, whether you are a solo-preneur or have a staff people working for you, is a key ingredient to creating the freedom you desire!

By streamlining your operations you not only pave the way to more business but bigger profits and a business that virtually runs itself! Systems create consistency and consistency creates the reputation your business is built on!

To learn more about how to create systems for your business, check out our brand new coaching program, Success Secrets Master Mind.

Hi – it’s Laurie this week. It is so hard to believe we are mid-way through summer and over halfway through the year. Where is the time going?

Linda and I have received correspondence from many of you regarding the Bookkeeper’s Success Circle. You spoke and we listened! We are enhancing the Bookkeeper’s Success Circle Membership. Be on the lookout! Stay tuned later this week for enhancement details and a free teleseminar on July 29th. Be sure to save the date!

In this week’s article Linda shares 6 Secrets to Creating Long-Term Client Relationships. Here are some great tips!

Wishing you financial serenity,

Linda & Laurie
The 6-Figure Bookkeeping Coaches

“I have total freedom in my business.  The only thing I would change is the speed at which I gain new clients.  I LOVE my business!”
Dawn B

Hi Dawn,
WhooHooo!  Thanks for sharing how much you love your business. 

It is important to remember that even though running your own business can be challenging there are also those moments when all of the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and it’s smooth sailing.

If you are interested in learning more about creating freedom in your bookkeeping business, be sue to join us on July 29th for our free teleseminar, Creating Freedom In Your Bookkeeping Practice.

For more details and how to sign-up, go here.

By Laurie L. O’Neil

With today’s technological push, finding great ways to utilize some of the new technology out there can be time consuming and very painful. One thing you will learn about me is that I am a great proponent of pushing time to the end of its limits. Time is the very essence of our business. One of my biggest challenges was figuring out how to maximize my time.

Going on-site to clients in not always feasible so what are some other remote methods out there?

One of my favorites is a site called Log me In. www.LogMeIn.com. This allows me to remote into my client’s desktop. It has printing capabilities. It also acts in a real-time fashion and has easy set-up. You can use LogMeIn for any training capabilities you may have with your clients. You can even switch the control of the mouse back and forth between you and your client. You can use it on a Mac computer as well and you can download it free for 30 days.

Another similar software is webex. www.webex.com. Webex works in the same fashion as LogMeIn but setting up the printing can sometimes be cumbersome. I have also found that it can be sluggish as well. Webex is constantly making improvements to their product and sending out new releases.

Another software that has been around for quite some time is Go to My PC www.gotomypc.com. GoToMyPC is efficient and user friendly. It has some of the same features offered with LogMeIn and webex but it can be more costly.

No matter what your preference is, each package can help you to achieve great results in order to get the work done for the client remotely. Each package can support whatever your needs may be but can vary based on price. Research each and try them all out.

This week it’s me, Linda and I cannot believe it is already the middle of July! 

This summer, Laurie and I are putting the final touches on some great new products and services as well as lining up some fantastic speakers for our Ask the Expert tele-series. Ask the Expert tele-series, which launches this September, is an exclusive benefit to members of The Bookkeeping Success Circle. We will be sharing more details by the end of this month, so stayed tuned!

My partner Laurie, is technology guru and this week she is sharing some creative ways in which you can work remotely with your client. Don’t forget to check out this week’s article to learn more.

Wishing you financial serenity,

Linda & Laurie
The 6-Figure Bookkeeping Coaches

“Procrastination is my biggest problem. I must be the procrastination Queen. If I could break that habit, I believe I could begin the first steps to freedom in my bookkeeping business.”

Hi Regina,

Our intuition tells us that procrastination is not your problem, being overwhelmed is! Being a bookkeeper and having a bookkeeping business means you are a detail oriented person and paying attention to so many details can make you feel like a fish swimming upstream.

The first thing to do is take a couple of hours and “clean off your desk”. This will help you to clear your mind. Taking the time to plan makes you more productive – one hour of planning results in three hours of production!

Start by getting organized and placing all of the work belonging to each client into their own pile. Create a separate pile for all of the work related to your business.

Next, go through each pile and make a list of what needs to be done. Coach’s challenge – only spend 10 minutes creating your list for each pile.

Last step, condense your lists into one and prioritize the work that has to be completed!

Here’s one last tip - either at the start of your day or the end of your day, spend 15 minutes planning what needs to be done. Do this every day for 21 days, until it becomes a habit. You’ll be glad you did!

We recently asked our readers “What’s Keeping You from Having Freedom in Your Bookkeeping Business?” and we got so many great responses! Here’s a good one from Lee S –

“My sense is that I need to implement a standardized approach to routine services. I’ve worked alone so much of my life that I “just do it.” This impedes delegation and can be prone to omission.

Hi Lee,

You have great instincts! Creating a standard approach and systemizing routine services is one of the keys to creating freedom in your bookkeeping business. Systemization helps you to deliver consistent results to your clients, increase delegation while at the same time empowering the success of the person you have delegated the task to!

When you begin to create standard processes it can be a bit overwhelming. Here are a few tips:

Ø  Create an outline of one functional area at a time. For example, accounts payable or accounts receivable.

Ø  As you are performing the accounts payable function, compare the actual tasks you are performing to your list and make the necessary modifications.

Ø  Follow your modified list as you complete accounts payable for a couple of different clients to ensure you have captured all of the steps applicable to your process.

Linda and Laurie

By Linda A. Hunt

About two months ago on a Monday morning I received a fax from one of our clients disengaging our services. As you can imagine, this is not the type of fax that anyone wants to receive, especially on a Monday morning! The reason stated for letting us go was due to “poor economic conditions” and had “absolutely nothing to do with the services they received”.

This particular client’s business is a privately held equity fund and is heavily involved with the stock market. Even though I had knowledge that overall the market has been in a bit of a downturn, this fax surprised me for several reasons:

1)    Even with the great working relationship we have with this client, there was no discussion with us before executing his decision and my staff assigned to the account had no idea this was coming.

2)    He felt the finance function was expendable! Leading me to question – had failed in demonstrating the value we provide to our client?

Immediately upon receipt of the fax, I called my client to uncover the underlying motivation for their decision to disengage us.  I knew there were alternative ways in which we could continue to work together while they rode out this rough patch and wanted to communicate that. When I reached my client, I heard the distress in his voice. He was being pressured by the investors in the equity fund to lower costs and he felt that we were one cost that they could do without because he has a financial background. (I won’t go into what a big mistake I believe this is.) He was already under stress and now he was increasing that stress by adding the work we performed to his already over burdened work load. He had made his decision and at that time could not see any other alternative. All I could do was respect where he was in the process and check in on him periodically.

Here’s the thing I have learned over the years - people will react to situations in ways that may or may not make sense to you and there is nothing you can do about it – it is out of your control. My client’s reaction makes no sense to me and is out of my control. All I can do is talk to my client, satisfy my curiosity to determine if there is something that we could have done differently or better and know when it is time to move on from trying to “fix it.”

Experiencing any loss of revenue is not fun and while this loss has impacted my firm it has not crippled us because of measures I have taken over the years that have helped to cushion and even out the sources of our cash flow. Here are a few of the things we have done:

Ø  Diversified our client base and making sure one industry NEVER represents more than 30% of our total revenue base. While the majority of our clients are service based businesses they are NOT all in the same industry. This is very important. When I first started my business we were working with a lot of interior designers/decorators. Then the about 10 years ago the northeast, where we are located, experienced a major hiccup in the real estate and home improvement industry. My interior decorating clients were not getting business or paid and that rippled into my firm not getting paid, causing a major problem to my cash flow.

Ø  Added recession proof businesses to our client portfolio. There are businesses out there that are ALWAYS busy, like lawyers and funeral homes. After experiencing “not getting paid because my clients were not getting paid”, I started thinking about businesses that are always busy and added a few of them to our client portfolio. Think of these businesses like an insurance policy.

Ø  We limited businesses in complimentary specialties within an industry to less than 40% of our total revenue base. For example: general contractors, electricians, plumbers, interior designers, etc. At the time our interior decorating clients were not getting paid, guess what? Our general contractor clients were not getting paid. It is important to remember that a downturn in an industry such as home improvement affects a good number of complimentary specialties. Having almost you entire client portfolio in complimentary specialties within one industry can be the end of your business.

Ø  We NEVER allow one client to make up more than 25 % of our total revenue base. Having one client that constitutes more than 25% of your total revenue base is very risky and you have placed the control of your business in your client’s hands, unbeknownst to them.

By implementing these guidelines over the years, we have been able to “recession proof” our business and keep at bay any major cash flow losses from losing a client. The percentages above are the ones that work best for my firm and it took us a couple of years to incorporate all of them. If you have been in business for a while, this is not something that you can do overnight and that is okay. As long as you are aware of this and incorporate measures into your future marketing efforts to diversify your client portfolio you will be just fine.

Remember, in life there will always be situations that are completely beyond your control and that is okay. Protecting your business involves making sure that you and your business, are not reliant upon any one customer, industry or employee for that matter.