Episode 158: How to Convert Leads Every Time: Your Lead Allocation System

In today's episode of The Wize Way Podcast for Accountants and Bookkeepers, Tim Causbrook with Jamie Johns and Ed Chan dive into the critical importance of having a Lead Allocation System in place. 

They discuss their strategy for consistently converting leads and the significance of building meaningful relationships with potential clients from all industries. With competition increasing, it's more vital than ever for bookkeeping and accounting practice owners to engage with prospects early and often, ensuring they stand out and are ready to serve when the time comes.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:56 The importance of capacity planning for client managers
• 5:29 The common challenges in lead generation
• 13:25 How true that marketing is not good for accountants?
• 18:44 How to track and measure lead conversions?
• 23:30 What is the role of niche in marketing?
• 34:39 How to train your team for effective lead conversion without micromanaging?
• 41:55 Marketing as an investment, not an expense
• 47:14 The importance of building trust with clients

Transcript

: 0:02

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Way Podcast for Accountants and Bookkeepers, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Tim Causbrook: 0:23

When you say you measure the leads, Jamie, is it just the number of leads that you're measuring, or are you measuring the quality as well? And if you are measuring the quality, do you have some kind of criteria? You know, because I could imagine I've got a couple of client managers. I could imagine one of them blaming me, I shouldn't say it's because it's getting recorded, but I can imagine one of my client managers blaming the quality of the lead if they're unable to convert it. You know and say and say, oh, that was a rubbish lead, like I don't get good ones. So, do you measure both those things? And if you do, how do you measure quality?

Jamie Johns: 0:51

Yeah. So that's a good question, because I had the same thing oh that's a crap lead, oh, that's a terrible lead. So, as I said, you've got to qualify what a good lead is. You know, and you know for us, after speaking to Ed about it and the client managers, it was someone willing to just have a phone appointment or just a Zoom call, for example.

Jamie Johns: 1:13

Yeah, but in saying that, it's very important to respond quickly. So you know, while we say, well, they're happy to book an appointment, it can't be in two days' time. You mean the client manager? That's right, yeah. So whatever your system is, you know the lead must. The quicker the lead is booked in for an appointment, the better. You know there's a lot of research around how you know how long people will wait. So if you get a lead and they say, yeah, look, I'm happy to speak to someone you know, and the further out you book them in, the less likely they are to turn up and they'll say, oh, you know, I found another bookkeeper or I found another accountant. So there's some really good advice in the Wise Vault, in the sales section, around this. Yeah, there are actually some statistics on, you know, consumers' expectations on how fast you know an inquiry should be replied to. Yeah, you know, I think it's up to like 80% within the first two hours. So it's really important that you know.

Jamie Johns: 2:23

Coming back to Ed, talking about context is making sure that your teams have capacity. So you know, at the start of each financial year, we do a lot of work with the senior client managers, making sure that they've got capacity in order to take new clients on. You know we've got one team at the moment we're still looking for another accountant and you know they've just sort of put the pause button on the leads for the moment and letting the other three teams take the leads, because you know you want to have the ability to service those new leads. So you must create capacity, and that comes back to that capacity planner and then having the right people on each team.

Jamie Johns: 3:01

So everything is interrelated, as it always is, yeah, but yeah, certainly I love the concept of um. You know, you mentioned, Tim, what do you measure? You know, so, we things that we measure and you've put me on the spot here because I've got to remember, but you know, we, we measure the number of leads per month, yeah, the number, the website traffic, also our database growth. So another one. So we measure.

Jamie Johns: 3:28

You know, we do have a newsletter that's sort of on our website, and the more people we get to subscribe to that, the better. It's quite interesting too. You see the hits to the website, and some months you see like there's a real spike. And you know, a particular topic it's interesting to see that attracts the attention of your database. Yep, um, what else is there? So, yeah, Google Analytics. You know a marketing person has a deep dive into Google Analytics. So, yeah, and then, just, you know, the other really important thing, Tim, to measure is, well, where are the leads coming from? You know, because you've got PPC or you know pay per click, you've got SEO, you've got referrals, you've got all sorts. So very important to measure, well, where are the leads coming from?

Jamie Johns: 4:19

And you know, even at Wize Mentoring, Brenton, you know, gives us a report every week on exactly where the leads are coming from, LinkedIn and Facebook. So, you've just got sort of those half a dozen things that you track, and the more sophisticated you get at it, the better. But it takes time. You've got to be patient, and just you know, once, as the firm owner, once you get more time, you can work on these things and then keep improving the business and keep growing it.

Tim Causbrook: 4:48

Yeah, I love it. I know you said recently, Ed, that the way you think about accounting firms is kind of tends to be the opposite of conventional. I don't even know if you call it wisdom, but conventional ideas about how to run them. Have you noticed any challenges? I guess in your own firm, but also in the firms you're mentoring, with thinking about marketing and thinking about leads, especially the context I've got here is from my own firm, which my parents started. They've never talked about leads before. Even the kind of marketing language in general is kind of foreign to them as accountants, and they come from a very old school model, which I'm sure a lot of people have come from, where it is the partner or the founder or the owner who is generating the clients themselves. So just on that note, are there any kind of, are there any patterns you see to challenges that accounting owners face with trying to change their mindset and shift to this other kind of building a garden, as you say, that attracts butterflies yeah, when they're so used to being the butterfly catcher themselves.

Ed Chan: 5:56

Absolutely. Generally with most accounting firms, they're very, very busy and they're struggling to get the work that they've got out in time. So they don't generally spend a lot of time in marketing because they're struggling to get the work done and out the door as it is. And often people say to me I don't want to grow anymore and what they're really saying to me is that they don't want the pain that goes with the growth.

Tim Causbrook: 6:24

Yeah.

Ed Chan: 6:24

Right. But if you get your house in order, if you get the systems right, if you do the things that we teach in Wize and you get the foundation right, then there's lots of firms that we work with now where you know when they first join up they've just snowed under and they're behind in their lodgement lists and they're letting their clients down and they're worried about asking for sending out a survey to get feedback because they're worried about the bad feedback they're going to get because they're not able to service their clients. But once they start working with us and they start getting on top of their workload, the next question then is, okay, we've got that under control now. Now we're ready to grow. So I haven't met anyone who doesn't want to grow if there's no pain. What they're really associating growth with is the pain that's associated with growth, can get the house in order, get the foundation right, get the teams right, and we're getting on top of the work. Then you know I haven't met a firm that hasn't said to me, let's grow if we can grow without any pain.

Ed Chan: 7:33

So, you've got to get first things first. You've got to get your house in order. Then you can go and market, and generally, the firms that are marketing, firms that have got their house in order and they're ready to grow, because you can't put a second story on your business without a strong foundation. So you've got to get the foundation right, get that solid first. But that's a minority of the firms.

Ed Chan: 8:04

The majority of firms I've found are just trying to get their house in order. So that's the reason why there's very little accounting time spent on marketing. The other thing is it's just the accountant's mindset. They see marketing as an expense and not an investment, and obviously, they look at their P and l and then don't look at the investment they need to make into their balance sheet. So that's the other thing that holds accounting firms back, is that they won't invest in marketing, or they'll stay. They don't see the value, and they won't; they're not prepared to make that investment. So it's just those two things that generally hold accounting firms back.

Tim Causbrook: 8:45

Yeah, no, it's really helpful, Ed, I think I hear this from time to time in some of the firms, and this is probably my own experience when I first came to you was that I really wanted to skip the design and recruit stage and just go straight to the scale stage. And it just doesn't work for a whole bunch of reasons, I think you've mentioned it. You mentioned a few there. Um, one comment I got from my client managers because I've got three senior client managers and one assistant. One comment I got from them when I had a new lead was, Who wants this one? And none of them wanted it. I said we don't. We've got too much work as it is. So I can see it.

Tim Causbrook: 9:23

Scaling is really the by product of getting the first two stages of designing and recruiting right, because if you get those stages right, some of the firms I've worked with on this program they run out of work and they need more work because they become so efficient in that deep and narrow team at getting through it. I've started to see the NPS scores, which I've only recently started doing, in a different light. If a team is growing or a team is not, it's a comment on how happy the clients are. So it's not. Previously, I thought NPS scores were about getting referrals and growing, and now I'm realizing they're actually about making sure that your current clients are happy and that they're sticky to you. And you did mention in the beginning there that some firms experience that churn rate, and that was definitely my experience in my firm. We put them on as quickly as we lost them, and if you do that, it's just equal. It doesn't actually end up going up or down. So yeah, I don't know if you've got anything to say on that, but oh, absolutely.

Ed Chan: 10:27

Yeah, it's obviously cheaper and easier to keep your clients, and getting a referral from your clients, from the existing clients, is not only the cheapest way to do it and the most economical way, but it's an endorsement to you know the level of service that you're providing. So it's a win-win for everybody if you're getting really good NPS or the Net Promoter Scores, surveys from them. So that's what we should be focusing on, and I've had firms that have said to me, Oh, I don't want to send out a survey because I'm worried about what the client's going to say. But in Australia, we shy away from criticism, but in Japan, they look for that. They want that because they want to find ways of improving. And unless you have a complaint, you don't know what to improve.

Ed Chan: 11:19

And we should be in this continuous improvement mode, where we want to continuously improve what we do. And we should be in this continuous improvement mode, where we want to continuously improve what we do. And you know we should be hankering for the feedback from the clients. And when you run the team structures the way we do, the senior client manager's role is to grow their portfolio, and the first indicator of whether they're going to grow their portfolio or not is are their clients are happy with them? Are their clients happy with their service? And if not, what can we do to improve that? Because the research shows that if someone's not happy with you, if they let you know and you address it very, very quickly, not only do you win them back, but they become an advocate. They'll go out and tell their friends how good you are. And obviously that is the best way to grow. Your business is by you know referrals, because it's not only giving you new clients, but it's an endorsement that you're doing the right things and your clients are happy with you.

Tim Causbrook: 12:15

Yeah, no thanks for that, Ed. It's slightly off topic in terms of like, it's not strictly speaking a lead, but there's a lot of blurry lines between, yeah, between, you know all the different kinds of marketing that you can do, and one thing I remember you said to me initially was, Tim, you've got to market better to your existing client base as well, and that was another mindset shift that your firm, your clients, might not even know all the services that you currently offer and so, yeah, marketing's quite wide. It really is, Jamie. We'll jump on to you now.

Tim Causbrook: 12:47

I guess one of the feedback, just to provide some context for this question. One of the feedback I get from people, including in my own firm, is that accountants are not used to marketing. As Ed said, it is an investment. It is a cost, it is an investment. I'd love to hear from you on this topic, if someone's sitting on the fence about whether or not they should do it, because they might know a colleague who's wasted a lot of money and not gotten much return on it. You're really focused on ensuring that your marketing activity at Sky Accountants provides a steady and increasing source of quality leads into the practice. Can you go into some detail about some of the things that have been successful in achieving this, and what you are looking for to make sure that your investment, as Ed rightly calls it, is yielding the results that you need to make it worthwhile in the first place?

Jamie Johns: 13:35

Yeah, thanks, Tim, I'll probably wind back. So before I started working with Ed, it's probably like a lot of other firms we would start marketing, you know, do it for a couple of months, and then we'd stop, we'd do it ad hoc and stop and start, and stop and start, and it was just never consistent. And then, you know, once I started working with Ed those years ago, ed explained it to me in this way and Ed said that it's like marketing's like a big, a massive concrete ball and, it takes a fair bit of effort to get it going and you know, so you've got to push the ball and push the ball. But once the ball's rolling, um, it's easier to just tap it along and keep it going. And that's how Ed explained marketing to me in that analogy. And ever since then, so, we've kept the marketing up consistently. Since then, we haven't really dropped the ball.

Jamie Johns: 14:33

So I think one of the most important things for firms, taking it from my experience, is just to be consistent. You must be consistent with your marketing. The other part of that is to have a niche. Very important to have a niche because it doesn't matter what clients you speak to, they all think that no one else understands their industry, and they like dealing with a specialist. Yeah, so that was something that we did as well in that niche.

Jamie Johns: 15:02

Now, I get the question a lot of the time, Oh, what about other clients? Do we take clients or leads from other industries? Well, of course you, absolutely of course you do, because you'll get referrals and you'll just get people that'll find your website and find an article on, you know, a different sort of industry. So, yes, of course you take those. But what you do with your marketing is you just, instead of a shotgun approach, you want to drive um that niche, if you like, um, and some of the firms recently that we've worked with in the us, they're very successful, because they've either, you know, focused on the vets, for example, they're focused on pharmacies or whatever.

Jamie Johns: 15:40

So, in terms of your sort of slide there talking about driving quality leads, um, you know that's a big part of the process to drive quality leads, and then you know, so from that, then it's really determining well, what is a quality lead? Now, you know you'll get a lot of tie kickers. Some of my client managers will claim, well, you know, they used to complain about. Oh well, I rang that person, I didn't ring back, and so forth, and so forth.

Jamie Johns: 16:07

So you've really got to have a system in place to say, well, what is an actual lead? Because what you'll find is, once you start measuring the teams and measuring the client managers, they'll get quite competitive in terms of their percentage of leads that they're converting to clients. And so it's important that you know they don't see every as a, as a tie kicker, if I can put it like that. Yeah, and then it's a proper lead. So you know, we, after sort of talking to Ed about it over the years, see it as a proper lead or a qualified lead, as someone who's willing to have an appointment. You know, someone's willing to book an appointment and have a discussion. So you, you know that's different for every firm, but you want to drive quality leads, and there are some of the sort of tips that we use, and, you know we these days we'd get 35 to 40 leads per month, and just measure it.

Jamie Johns: 17:03

It's very important to, extremely important to measure it, to see, you know, return on investment, on your marketing, and then fine-tune it, fine-tune it, fine-tune it, measure it, and then you know, once you get the leads coming in, are you converting them? So again, measure it. You know, and no one ever has time to measure it, you know. But you've got to make time as the firm owner and as it grows, because you know you can spend. I think you know Ed always says spend around 4% to 5% of your turnover on marketing, and it definitely works. But that analogy of just being persistent with it is extremely important, because if you stop and start, stop and start. It doesn't work.

Tim Causbrook: 17:50

No, that's really helpful. I've noticed that I mean, I'm guilty of this in my own firm from time to time and I've noticed that even some decent-sized mid-tier firms their latest blog post will be from two years ago or three years ago, and yeah, post will be from two years ago or three years ago. And yeah, when you say you measure the leads, Jamie, is it just the number of leads that you're measuring, or are you measuring the quality as well? And if you are measuring the quality, do you have some kind of criteria? Because I could imagine I've got a couple of client managers. I could imagine one of them blaming I shouldn't say it's because it's getting recorded, but I can imagine one of my client managers blaming the quality of the lead if they're unable to convert it, you know and say, oh, that was a rubbish lead, like I don't get good ones. So, do you measure both those things? And if you do, how do you measure quality?

Jamie Johns: 18:32

Yeah. So that's that's a good question, because I had the same thing. Oh that, oh that's a crap. Lead, oh, that's terrible. So, as I said, you've got, you've got to qualify what a good lead is. You, you know, and you know. For us, after speaking to Ed about it and the client managers, it was someone that was willing to just have a phone appointment or just a Zoom call, for example.

Jamie Johns: 18:55

Yeah, but in saying that, it's very important to respond quickly. So, you know, why would you say, well, they're happy to book an appointment. It can't be in two days' time? You mean the client manager? That's right, yeah. So, whatever your system is, you know the lead must. The quicker the lead is booked in for an appointment, the better. You know there's a lot of research around how you know how long people will wait, know how long people will wait. So if you get, if you get a lead and they say, yeah, look, I'm happy to speak to someone, um, you know, you know, and they, and the further out you book them in the less likely they're to turn up and they'll say, oh, you know, I found another bookkeeper or found another account. So, there's some really good advice in the WizeV ault, in the sales section around this. Yeah, there are actually some statistics on, you know, consumers' expectations on how fast you know an inquiry should be replied to. Yeah, you know, I think it's up like 80 within the first two hours. So, it's really important that you know.

Jamie Johns: 20:01

Coming back to Ed, talking about context is making sure that your teams have capacity. So, you know, at the start of each financial year, we do a lot of work with the senior client managers, making sure that they've got capacity in order to take new clients on. You know, we've got one team. At the moment we just we're still looking for another accountant. One team at the moment we just we're still looking for another accountant and, um, you know, they've just sort of put the pause button on the leads for the moment and letting the other three teams take the leads, because you know you, you want to have the ability, to service those new leads.

Jamie Johns: 20:35

So you must, you must create capacity, and that comes back to that capacity planner, and then, having the right people on each team. So, yeah, everything is interrelated, as it always is, yeah, but yeah, certainly I love the concept of, and .

Jamie Johns: 20:53

So know you Google mentioned Analytics tim about what do you measure, you know. So we that Google we Analytics measure and you've me on the spot here because I've got to remember but thing, you Tim know we, we measure the number of leads, uh, per month, know, yeah,, the number, the website traffic also PPC our database growth. So another one. So we SEO. You know we have a newsletter that's sort of on their website and the more people we get to subscribe to that, the better. It's quite interesting too. You see the hits to the website and some months you see like there's a real spike and it, you know, and a particular topic it's interesting to see that attracts the attention of your database yep um, what else is there?

Jamie Johns: 21:33

You analytics. You know, Wize a Mentoring marketing Brenton dive into the google analytics. So, um, yeah, and then just from, you and Facebook other really important thing tim to measure is well, where are the leads coming from? You know yeah yeah, you know, because you've got um ppc or you know pay per click, patient, got seo, you've got referrals um, you've got all sorts of so very important measurable. Where are the leads coming from?

Jamie Johns: 22:01

and um, you know, even at wise mentoring, brenton breoring, brenton gives us a report every week on exactly where the leads are Wize from LinkedIn, facebook. So you've just got from of those half a recruitment things that you track, and the more sophisticated you get at it, the better, but it takes time. got to be patient and just once, as the firm owner, once you more time, you can work on these things and then niche, improving the business and keep growing Obviously

Tim Causbrook: 22:30

Yeah, I love it. I'm getting that time with the metaphor of the concrete ball as well. But, like we always say at Wise, be persistent and consistent. It's no different to the other design and recruit As long as you have your map and know where Manila you're headed and you're consistent, you're headed um and you're consistent, you'll get the results in the long term. Yeah, um, you mentioned, uh, niche. that It's niche and you've also mentioned that. Um, obviously, if you've got more. than Yeah one your firm and and we're on the topic of scaling, and I know a lot of firms don't right now, but we're looking at scaling as this, of the wise journey If you've got more than one team, not every team will have the same amount of capacity. Given those two things, how do you allocate leads to senior client managers into teams? Do you have a tool that you use to facilitate that, and do you have some teams that are more suited to certain niches, or is the whole firm just have that one niche?

Jamie Johns: 23:29

Absolutely, it's a good question. So, for example, I'll start with referrals. They're really easy. So what you've got to do is train your them, managers or the frontline people with the phone calls and the emails, um, you know, we have a marketing assistant, um in manila as well, and So, your know, that that take the first inquiry, Chan and Naylor you must educate them that referrals go, you know, referrals go back to the accountant. Um, that that got the referral. So you know, that's sort of rule number one, yeah, um, so yeah, you must build a system around this team. So that's sort of rule number one. So, yeah, you must build a system around this Tim. So that's sort of rule number one.

Jamie Johns: 24:06

And you document this, of course, and then just educate people at a follow that. They might drop the ball have a occasionally, but you just keep educating them Ballarat and they'll get eventually. Then the next sort of rule, say, if you like, them, you know, like you can get a lot of random leads. So you know and Ed would have ? So, at Chantanela thousands of them. But you'll get random leads from SEO, so your In optimisation, your newsletters, and they'll just purely be random so you must have a system once you get more than you know, once you get more than one team, for example, is how you allocate. You know those leads across each team, and so we sort of have what we call a rolling allocation, but with some exceptions. So once a lead comes in, you know it might go to Paul and then it might doctors, to Ash, and so we just roll it. But then again we train the frontliners to realise the exceptions to that rule.

Jamie Johns: 25:02

And the exception to that rule might be that that person is a particular location. In our case, we case sort of got two different offices, ballarat and Gisborne, and and sometimes there's a preference. People will say and we ask them you know, do you have a preference? Do you want to come into the office, sort of thing. So we have, we have that rule, area . as Yeah just an inquiry, as an exception. Um, in saying that what we've noticed with COVID and and, uh, you know, location doesn't really matter anymore with Zoom and so that these sort of geographical or physical boundaries are less relevant these days, yeah, but the other part of that too is, if you're not, you know, if that leads not up the niche of the firm, then yes, you know a couple of our senior client managers. They love dealing with allied health and doctors and the health industry. Yeah, so those ones will certainly get that lead, because that's their.

Jamie Johns: 25:51

They may have an area of specialty in that particular area, yeah, whereas a couple of the other client managers that we've got, we've just recently reviewed all this is, you know, tradies in the construction industry, yeah. So again, you want to sort of give the clients to the people that have the specialized knowledge, and so they're just exceptions, um, exceptions to the rule team yeah, no, I love it.

Tim Causbrook: 26:14

I love it. w a

Ed Chan: 26:14

That makes a lot of sense just adding to what james is saying, that that it's certainly a channel and, ala, we get a lot of leads that come through. But there's that there are some tie kickers, if you like, and we do have someone that takes the initial call and and she screens those. So sometimes they just want to ring up and they want a copy of the book or they want an article that we wrote or they want something that she addresses that, but then she puts, puts that person onto our database and and then, who Jamie said, you've got to. them, know, there's allocates just various different things you do, but one of the things is you've case, got to build this database of prospects and often firms make the areas, of getting to talk to a prospect and then they let that prospect go. They don't capture that prospect in the future as a new client, because it's when the client's ready to deal with you that, when they choose to change accountants, that you need to be at the forefront of their mind, and they may not change today, but they may change in a year's time or two years' time.

Ed Chan: 27:22

Or I've had new clients come after 10 years of having met us or read something that we've written. So you've got to build this database and not let those go, and that's a big mistake that a lot of accounting firms make. The other one is to allocate the ones that just want some admin stuff to an accountant and you're wasting a senior client manager's time when they ring them and they say I just want you know a copy of that, you know that article or something, and then you're just wasting their time. So you need to have someone that screens these leads and then rank them and then allocate them to the best person to deal with them. And in our case we've got three client managers. They've all got expertise in different areas and Tracy identifies which ones should be speaking to which client manager to give the most appropriate advice to the prospect.

Ed Chan: 28:26

So there's a bit work to do before they actually get to the senior client manager, because the senior client manager's time is the most expensive time and you don't want them to be to take their time up.

Ed Chan: 28:38

You know, with um, you know tie kickers if you like, but I don't consider any any person that calls our firm a tie you,, to be honest, because it's it's if they're not ready to business, come on board today, you know it doesn't mean that they're a tie kicker and they may not come on board sometime in the

Ed Chan: 28:57

And you know, if you look at the value of your business, it's not only made up of paying clients, clients that are paying you but it's made up of you know, your assets in the business and your assets could be your. It's made up of you know your assets in the in the business, and the assets could be your debtors, your. You know your, your fixtures and fittings or your computers and and also your prospective database. That is an asset, that uh, that is of value to the business. So, um, if you're not familiar with uh, with um, the marketing side of things, you could be giving those away and not capturing. And you know, imagine like we've got something like 15,000 prospects in our database and that's of a particular value. Yeah, you know, because if you were to buy Chan and Nala, you get these 15,000 prospective clients that may one day start to become paying clients.

Tim Causbrook: 29:48

Yeah.

Ed Chan: 29:49

As long as we continue to engage Ed them and continue WizeH ub keep them warm, then, they're ready to change accountants hopefully we've done the work to be at the top of their . mind Sorry as to sales, accounting firm to swap to. and

Tim Causbrook: 30:05

Yeah, that's a really great point, ed, and the WISE hub can facilitate that. If, if you are, you know, faithfully tracking there are the leads in the um sales column or marketing sorry, not sales marketing division, two tab, um, all the ones that are are not one, you can database those. You have their email address, the industry, the referral source all there. And, as ed says, you can database those. You have their email address, the industry, the referral source all there and, as Ed says, you can So, tripping on them and keep them on the newsletter.

Tim Causbrook: 30:33

We've had a couple this year that took a year for the client to feel like they were ready to come on board. I guess there's two timing things I there are just want to clarify there. Jamie and Ed have been saying that you've got to act quickly, but they also taught me that there are, just as there are early, middle and late adopters with your staff with change, there are also early, middle and late adopters when it comes to marketing, and I think the brunt of those are actually in the middle to later category. So I guess one of the messages I'd say is don't be discouraged if you don't manage to get someone on straight aboard straight away. Like I said, make sure you capture them and that you continue to market them and that maybe, if the problems that they still have today they still have in a year's time, you know, you might be able to convince them to come on board the next year, the following year. It's a long game, isn't it, ed? With that database that wasn't built overnight.

Ed Chan: 31:23

It's not when you're ready to do business with your prospects. It's when your prospects are ready to do business with you that you've got to be ready, and there's all sorts of reasons why they may not be ready today. Circumstances could change. They could be happy with their accountant today. In two years' time, they may not be happy with them anymore.

Tim Causbrook: 31:44

Yeah.

Ed Chan: 31:44

So you've just got to be, you know, you've just got to do the what I call the balance sheet investment stuff that keeps you at the forefront finances, adding value, building trust. See, there's a journey that they go through right before they become a client. The first one is to be aware of who you are. So it's building your brand. Awareness is the first thing. The second thing is credibility. So you've got to build credibility with them and then, from credibility, you build trust. And then, once you've built trust, then when they're ready to change accountants, then they'll come across generally, because they now trust you.

Ed Chan: 32:23

Because we're in an industry that deals with trust, and more so than probably a lot of other industries, because what we do for clients is around their finances and trust is a big component of that. And in order to build trust, you've got to build these relationships and you've got to build familiarity with those people about who you are. So it is a long runway and those accounting firms who just do sposmatic advertising spots, advertising expenditure put an ad in a local paper every now and then. That doesn't do anything. It might capture a client who happened to want to change accountants, but generally they won't pick you up from an ad, they will ask for a referral, they'll ask their friends who their accountant is, because of this trust component. So you've got to spend the money and the time to build this trust.

Tim Causbrook: 33:27

Yeah, that's really helpful. and . w

Tim Causbrook: 34:21

When do love the idea of? that awareness, credibility, trust. You can kind of see the journey there, the trajectory that the client goes on. Yes, we had a comment from Jennifer Hickey that she's just had two clients this week that she's won over after 12 months since they've made contact. So that's awesome to hear that that's happening. I've got a really good question from Charlie. I just want to quickly ask it now. He asks and Nick's pointed him to some stuff in the person, which is helpful as well he asks is it too risky to be passing leads directly onto the assistant client manager training, or should I have him sit in on my sales calls for a while? When is a good Chan and Naylor point to turn it over completely? He currently handles the leads that seem great and passes on the lesser ones, and I've got the same question for my assistant client manager I'm currently training. When?

Ed Chan: 34:21

do you know they're ready. Well, for most firms, depending on your size, how big you are, for the majority of firms, I believe that by the time they've handed over all the other divisions you know Division 4 years, 5, 6, 7, they'll end up just talking to new clients coming through the door. And if you've got the time to do exercise, that, then that's what you should be doing. Yeah, because on marketing, representative? So the best person, you're the most senior person and you marketing, be doing that to convert, so you'll get the highest client, conversion rate. So you should stay at ? it for as long as you choose to do it, until perhaps you might get so big, like it's Shana Nola. I don't go there at all, it's just done by the teams that are there.

Ed Chan: 35:16

But you want the best person doing marketing like Chan and Naylor, in front of you is quite expensive. So you could be investing, you know, 4%, 5% of your turnover for years and years and years and you put that lead in front of the wrong person, you lose that lead, you don't convert. Then that's a very costly and what I find is that the more money you spend in marketing right, so the more dollar value, the already, more effort you put into marketing the less quality salesperson you put in front of the client you can get away with that, right. But if you don't spend much money on marketing, then the higher quality salesperson you need to put in front of that lead to convert that lead if I can use an example, if you're the principal of your firm, if you don't do any marketing at all in order to convert a referral, you've got to do the conversion.

Ed Chan: 36:14

So if you do a lot of marketing like Shannon Nailer does a lot of marketing you know by the time a lead comes to us and they've made up their mind they're going to use us. Then you know it's like they've come to us and they talk to us like they've known us for years and we've never met them before. In that case, then one of our senior client managers could see them and they'll convert them because we've done all the hard work already and they feel like they've. Our senior client managers say to me oh, I had that lead and talked to me like he's known me for 10 years and we're best friends and it's because of all the marketing that we've been doing that they've felt so you know, so, um, so in tune with us that you know they felt like we're. They've known us for many, many years.

Ed Chan: 37:00

so that's the Ed trade-off great, you've got to accept yeah no, that's great.

Tim Causbrook: 37:04

Great answer, Ed. Great question. Thanks for asking that one, Jamie, on what Ed's just said, as part of your lead generation and allocation system, how do you ensure a lead is followed up, and what are some of your tips for increasing the conversion rate of leads to paying clients? As I just said, it is really costly, it is an investment, but it is. You know you do. It is a cost to get those leads in the door, and I mean Ed's already answered in part by having really, really good marketing. That means you don't need as good sales people to do the conversion in your own, in your own business. What have you done to ensure that a lead is followed up on? How do you systematize that, and how, yeah, what are your tips for increasing the conversion rates to paying clients?

Jamie Johns: 37:50

Yeah, no good question. The answer is micro-train, so you don't have to micro-manage. So what we do is, particularly, you know, the senior client managers obviously need to be trained in, you know, number one, they need to realise they've got capacity. Number two, they need to realise that it's part of their KPIs is winning new work. You know, you've got to be able to measure that, Tim. And you know, every week we show in the Fab Five what the percentage of conversion from a lead to a paying client is.

Jamie Johns: 38:25

So over the last 20 years, sometimes I could rant and rave black and blue and will not ever change a person's behavior, but as soon as I showed them the results and the outcomes, it was like a competitiveness, a healthy competitive, to say, hang on, you know why aren't my leads converting? You know, why is everyone else doing better than me? So it's just, it's a non-blame culture, Tim. It's just like you know, how can we do better? And so you know it comes back to just measuring, measuring, and then showing people the scoreboard, even like I do, on a weekly basis, of what leads we convert to clients. And it's like Ed says, you can be in control without being controlling. It's just psychology really, you know, and another part of that time, too, is when you've got an assistant client manager, now you might get iReturns that call the office. You might have someone like a startup that's a small business. They are really good leads for your assistant client manager to cut their teeth on. And so what we'll do is you'll have the senior client manager and the assistant client manager, and it's an investment, it's a balance sheet play, but the assistant client manager must learn how to approach a new client. You know how. How do you approach your client, and how do you do the proposal? You know, do you just send the proposal out or do you call them, you know? So you've got a micro train so that you don't want to micromanage, and then you must measure the results and show them the results, even on a weekly basis, and we do that on a weekly basis. This is where the scoreboard, you know.

Jamie Johns: 40:01

And then if someone's really low, then you know my role is to get in the trenches. Get in the trenches and help them in, you know, a capacity of teamwork or interdependence, you know, and always be non-threatening. Don't sort of go in there and say, oh, you know we need to fix this up and blah, blah blah, just say, look, well, how can we work together to make these uh figures? Look, you know, and be supportive as the firm owner or the CEO. Be supportive, be helpful.

Jamie Johns: 40:31

Always do it in a team, non-blame environment to help them improve their KPIs. Because, look, let's face it, some people are really people, persons, and they should be in that seat in the first place. But they might just need a bit of fine-tuning on how to do the proposal. And you know, over the years, with the mentoring, I've seen some people just send out the proposal via email because it's so easy to do with Practice Ignition, for example. We never, you know, we never do that. Like, we always want to present the proposal wherever humanly possible in person, you know, because it's that rapport and trust and that top process when you have a new leader, a new client.

Tim Causbrook: 41:10

So hopefully that answers the question. Yeah, that's really great. Yeah, thanks for that. Any thoughts on paying a commission to outside referral sources?

Ed Chan: 41:19

That's an interesting question, oh yeah, we could do all sorts of creative things like that. There's no right or wrong way of doing things. It resonates with some, and it doesn't resonate with others. If you've got a lawyer, a law firm that refers clients to you, you can build something in there for them. We used to offer a $150 rebate that we would, you know, send to a charity of their choice, and so you can do little creative things like that.

Tim Causbrook: 41:57

Absolutely. That's a great question, Ed. One of the major challenges that really any practice faces, whether they're, you know, 500k or 3 million, is freeing up the time to have the sales conversations with the leads generated. Do you have any advice for practices that are spending money now on marketing? They've already gone on that journey, and they're already spending money on marketing that is burning the leads they generate because they're just too busy to follow them up.

Ed Chan: 42:24

Yeah, there are two issues obviously. One is being too busy, and when you don't get to that lead really quickly, the body language that you're, the message that you're sending them is that they're not important. You've got other, more important things to do, and I'll get to you when I'm good and ready. That's the message you're giving someone, and ready, that's the message you're giving someone. Versus you know you're straight on to them, uh, and you're responding to them very quickly and you know you're the message you're giving them is that they're really important, okay, so, obviously, putting yourself in the other person's shoes, you'd like to be made to be, to feel important, not to be made to feel unimportant. So that's, that's the first thing, and often we don't see it from the other person's point of view. We only see things from our own point of view. You know, because we're busy.

Ed Chan: 43:12

Now, in order to achieve that, then, for most firms here, the owner of the practice should be doing the seeing the clients After it's been screened, and they're not, you know, they're not someone that just wants a bit of administration done for them and they're not someone that just wants a bit of administration done for them. And they identified the lead. The owner of the business should be the person who's doing the conversion, and speed is absolutely right up there, and the highest quality person should be talking to that particular lead, because you need to impress them and you need to be able to convert them. And once you've converted them, you can hand them to the team, and you can then introduce them to a team, the senior client manager in the team. For a business of our size, it's a little bit different because you know we've got the marketing that we do, we generate a lot of leads, and you know a lot of them just go straight to the senior client manager, and they have to have capacity.

Ed Chan: 44:09

And, as Jamie said, the senior client manager's KPIs, their key performance indicators, are not the same as the senior production manager's or the accountants', the people who are doing the work, the people who are doing the work, who are the grinders doing the work. Their KPI are 90%, 85%, and 90% productivity. On their timesheets, the KPIs for the senior client managers are how many surveys they've had that show 9 out of 10. How many meetings have they had? How many client conversions have they had? What's the client conversion rate? How many new clients did you see?

Ed Chan: 44:54

And their KPIs are different because their KPIs are more about growing their portfolio and not doing the work. And that's all in the Wize Hub, by the way, in the Fab Five. So we measure those five things, and that encourages the senior client managers to focus their attention on the right areas and not on the wrong areas. Because often you know, if you don't focus their attention through good leadership, you know they focus their attention on grinding, they'll start doing grinding work, and that's not their role. Their role is to grow their portfolio, and you can't grow your portfolio if you start doing grinding work, and that's not their role. Their role is to grow their portfolio and you can't grow your portfolio if you sit there doing grinding work and then they won't delegate that work to someone on the lower cost person to do it and they're a very high-cost resource and you're mismanaging the business then because you're using a very high-cost person to do very low-level production work and not growing the business.

Tim Causbrook: 45:49

Yeah, it's a big mindset change for someone who comes out of maybe a long period spent in production to then move into that or even managing. It's a big mindset shift.

Ed Chan: 45:58

It's a huge shift and not many of them can make that shift.

Tim Causbrook: 46:01

Yeah.

Ed Chan: 46:02

It does require good leadership on the owner's side, yes, but sometimes it's very difficult to change the leopard spots.

Tim Causbrook: 46:10

Yeah.

Ed Chan: 46:11

And you know you can over-promote someone beyond their level of ability and you've got to be careful there, otherwise you set them up for a fall.

Tim Causbrook: 46:24

Yeah, no, it's really really helpful. Thanks, Ed. Again, if anyone's got any questions, feel free to shoot them through. Jamie, have you got?

Jamie Johns: 46:40

Any kind of summary comments in case there are no more questions. No, I just think the biggest thing is just, you know, a modern, progressive firm is just continually training, continually educating your leaders, your senior client managers. You know, it just reinforces really just what Ed said. Yeah, I just think the meeting rhythm and routine of your firm is really the lifeblood of your business. And you know, particularly, you know, I catch up with my senior client managers once a week, same time every week, just religiously and go through the Fab Five. Even if it's just for a few seconds, it still just brings the most important KPIs and priorities of the firm top of mind. Because you know they get so busy down just doing the work every day, and so occasionally you've got to sort of.

Jamie Johns: 47:33

You know, I think that Dr Stephen Covey said you know, climb up the ladder and have a look at what forest we're cutting the trees in. So I think, just that continual reminder of KPIs, educating a non-blame culture, how can we do this better? You know, and I always ask about culture, how can we do this better? And I always ask that question. How can we do this better together? And I always find the best results that we ever get is in dialogue and discussion and healthy debate and just a focus on outcomes, and if your teams can do that with a positive attitude, whether that's leads or anything, else um your firm will continually improve and and grow yeah, no, really great, great, great thing there on there.

Tim Causbrook: 48:17

Jamie, thanks for that. Ed, have you got any um any summary comments you'd like to add?

Ed Chan: 48:24

Yeah, just adding on to what Jamie has said. But when you're doing this, what's important is just not. You know, like often uh, staff will say to me, oh, you know, that's just a tie kicker, right, and that's just wasted my time, but it's t

Ed Chan: 48:44

It's really important Wize you understand that marketing is a know, runway but it is about the amount of traffic that you teams' to the website. You've clients, got to measure that to make sure that traffic is going there. You've got team, to measure the open rates. You know people are opening the articles that you're writing. You've got to capture their names, build that database, that prospective database. Then, of course, well, your leads. You've got to measure your leads and the conversion rates of. If you're letting somebody else see the clients to measure their conversion rates and you obviously don't let someone go and see leads without often, any training so you take them with you into a room and then they watch the way you do it it. And then eventually you step back and let them lead and you watch them do it and order, help them fine tune their body language, their body positioning, their conversations they're having. And then you measure how successful they are with converting, measure how successful they are with converting and then, once they're getting up to 70%, 80% conversion, then you can step away from that role. And that goes towards what Jamie was saying earlier about micro-training them upfront so you don't have to micro-manage them later on. You need to do the hard work upfront and and then you know obviously the last KPI leads converted and you need to measure the dollar values of those leads.

Ed Chan: 50:22

And in the Wise Hub, Ed Fab Five, you know the last column there is a measurement of each of the teams growing portfolio of new clients less the clients they've lost. So we're measuring the net growth of each team and if the teams are growing, then you know they're doing the sales side really well. If the teams are not growing on a net percentage basis, then they're not doing well and if they're obviously losing more clients than they're picking up or price-, then there's a problem. But you need to about, into that detail if you want to manage and grow the business. Now, often most firms conscious, drowning in production. They don't have time to manage their firms, they're just drowning in, just getting the work out to the door. And you know you've got to get your house in order and following the 18 steps on the wise journey is part of that. You know that getting a house in order.

Tim Causbrook: 51:30

Yeah, no, that's great, ed. Jamie, you said you like to present the proposal to the client. Do you have a meeting with a client to scope the work before you present the proposal, and does know, this mean you end up having two meetings instead of know, just one? And is there a price point at which you just send out out the quote? I mean, these are great questions, like a lot of people will have, especially around price. Everyone's very price conscious these days. I think people are quite nervous about like I don't want to call them tie kickers, but people who are very, very price conscious and scaring them away with an upfront quote. Can you give us a bit of yeah? What are your answers on those ones?

Jamie Johns: 52:06

Yeah, look, from my point of view, I think in this particular instance you, I think in this particular instance you've got to look at the lifetime value of the client. So, yes, we, you know we like to price up front and give you know prospects, a price for whatever we do. So it's important for us to scope the work out. So initially there might be a meet and greet, but you know, as Ed says, you've got to be fast from the point where you meet the new lead and move them to taking an order as fast as you can. You can't just sort of sit there on the phone like for hours on end. The best senior client managers will be fast from the introduction to taking an order and taking orders. Well, what do you need? And, yes, you need to scope it out.

Jamie Johns: 52:50

Of course that's important, but it's a bit like process, analogy I think Ed, charged you about the car salesman. t

Jamie Johns: 52:56

You know, like a car salesman goes through the process and you don't get charges sent for that. That's built in for your pricing and Ed can explore that a bit more. So the other thing is, I think you know Ed's told me over the years think like a business person, go through the sales process and, yes, if you do have to deliver the second proposal, which really has a rapid increase in percentage of winning the work, the sales but then focus on the lifetime value of the client. You know we do stacks of bookkeeping as well. It's annuity income and even if you Google what the lifetime value of a client means, it's actually massive. So, yes, max, you know we would spend the time in that that, process, but move as fast as you can from. You know, in looking at the menu of services you have to take in the order, deliver it where them, face-to-face, because if you do win that client, whether it's bookkeeping or anything else it, the lifetime value of the client is, um, it's very large. t

Ed Chan: 53:54

Yeah, yeah, thanks for that whom, the biggest, the biggest once, I think people make is that they there are do a adopters, proposal and they just send it out by email and um, you know there are up to the point of that, the marketing to get that prospect in front of you could be $1,000 for that one client. And, as I say, 20% of what you do produces 80% of the outcome. And in this instance, here it's that sales process to convert that client over is 20% of the effort because 80% of it was already done through marketing. But if you stuff email, that up, you've just lost a lot of, you know, money that you've invested. So you, you know you need spend the time to do that and what I found was that you can't just send it out on an email. You have to get in front of the client. You've got to zoom them and you need to do it several times, and the more often you do it the better it is, because a part of that journey is the trust component, and trust gets built from familiarity and frequency of dealing with someone you know. So the more they trust you, the more they'll come over and the more they'll open up and talk to you about you know, know little concerns. Maybe you need to adjust your pricing a little bit, or maybe you need to, you know, um change the, the way that you deliver it, or uh. So the more you talk to, the more you times you get in front of the person. Uh, the more off the the the off, the more often they'll open up to you because they'll you're building trust with them.

Ed Chan: 55:30

And now there from early adopters who you know you just meet once and they come across. And then there's for middle adopters where you need to meet them three or four times high- And then there's late adopters who may take a year or two years before they come over, or they need to meet you five or six times. But you know you've got to work with that particular client as to So, their needs. But certainly you know what you shouldn't do is to just send it out in an email, and I see that so often that people just send it out in an email and that's different from taking an order. So we talked earlier about when an existing client asks you to do something, that you go through the three stages. You do a discovery, identify their needs, you then come and you send that proposal out and then, once they accept the proposal, then it goes into production and the very good client managers go from discovery to proposal very, very quickly and, of course, you get an admin staff to follow up the proposal and then it comes through.

Ed Chan: 56:35

Now that's different to a new client. With a new client, you need to do a lot more love to them and lot more attention to at a high quality level, because, as Jamie said, the lifetime value of a client is about five years or more actually. So if it's a $2,000 client, you've got the lifetime value that's $10,000, plus you've got a goodwill value. So at a dollar per dollar, it's another $2,000 on top of it. So there's a balance sheet value and a lifetime value. So that client is $12, not two thousand dollars, yeah, so you've got to appreciate that to get the lead in front of you has been a very, very expensive exercise and to just flippantly you know, ignore it or or not, pay attention or not, be not, not, not be spontaneous or quick in your responses to them is just crazy stuff, because there's no understanding of how hard it's been to get that lead in front of an accountant.

Tim Causbrook: 57:49

Yeah, great stuff, Ed. That's really, really helpful. I hope everyone's got a lot out of that. I definitely have. Amy, I know that you do do scoping fixed cost, fixed price billing. Can you give us a bit of context around how know, tackle this problem? t

Jamie Johns: 58:04

Yeah, I think the most important Tim you know if you're doing fixed quickly, pricing, is just make sure your scoping's done well. You know, for example, any new scoping's done well, you know what. For example, any new, because we do ero know quite a lot of bookkeeping and payroll. Any new client or lead that we have tim, uh, we always ask for read-only access of their files. So that's my zero. So we always ask for read-only access. Um, you know, if you can get into the file and have a look, I'll tell you what. You can get a pretty good idea of how long it's going to take. Yeah, so what to do? So we use a little bookkeeping and payroll calculator to help us quote, I think it's actually in the Wise Vault and it ago, also has know, you know, volume of transactions, how long it's going to take, and then it also allows you to look at what sort of gross profit that you want to make in each job. So you know whether of you've got offshore staff or onshore staff. You can put the hourly cost in there, and so we've really used that for years. And, yeah, you know, and every year we just monitor, you know. Again, coming back to timesheets, some of the firms that occasionally meet don't do timesheets. So whether you're fixed price or you don't, still do timesheets because you know half of our turnover is fixed pricing but we still want to know how we're going from an efficiency point of view on the job. So you know all our fixed price bookkeeping has budgeted hours on it and you know we can certainly look at the hours budgeted versus what actually happened and you know you can adjust the price accordingly. You know minimum do it once a year. So I just think you know, and after a while you get quite good at it because just experience. But you know, don't sort of go on gut feel, use those tools and that sort of those methods that I just mentioned and you know you can go pretty well in terms of your pricing.

Jamie Johns: 1:00:00

But just saying that as well, tim, just something to add really quickly Ed is a concept that Ed sort of taught me years ago was almost make your. You know, if they want like an upfront proposal, whether it's to set up X, zero or might be a new entities or something like that we tend to do, we try and do those at cost price, you know, just depending on the size of the client, and I think Ed called it like a loss leader. So a lot of the time, see, what you're after is the reoccurring income. You know you're after the ongoing bookkeeping, the ongoing tax, the ongoing payroll. So you know the message there is don't put a big barrier in terms of that lifetime value of the client, of that annuity income. And I remember years ago you know I made a mistake of that because you know that annuity income, like bookkeeping, that, like I think it's in the monetization, it's just so scalable, so, so scalable. So don't put barriers in front with proposals with big upfront prices. That was just something else to add because you're after that annuity income.

Tim Causbrook: 1:01:03

Yeah, it's a long-term vision instead said, of a short-term. On that one, Ahmed, please anything to add? see

Ed Chan: 1:01:08

Yeah, creep, just echo what Jamie said the secret of the quoting up front is always in the scoping. So the more scoping you do and the more clear, the clearer it is as to what you're quoting for the easier it is then to when what Jackie is talking about is scope creep. So they start to ask for more more and things.

Ed Chan: 1:01:31

Yeah creep so they start to ask for more and more and more things. Yeah, so if you get the process right, the first one is the scoping of it, so that you're very clear or clear to the client in your first proposal what that covers. And then, when they do request other things, then you send them out a separate proposed proposal. So, um, and until they accept the second proposal you don't go ahead and do it. So you simply say, dear client, your request, we can do it, is, you know, it is an extra service and the proposal for service is X dollars. And you send out that second proposal then, until they that second proposal, you don't do it. So we don't do anything until the proposal is accepted and that proposal is sent back to us.

Ed Chan: 1:02:22

So that's how you manage the client's expectations. But it's got to be right up front as to what is expected of what you're delivering has to be very, very clear. And the problems occur when that clarity is not there. You know it's just. You know it's no detail about what is offered or what's being done, and then there's confusion and then confusion leads to anger and then, before you know it, you know the whole thing blows up in your face and it's because you haven't managed that, that haven't managed that process, or what I call managing the client's expectations yeah and uh, and just reacting, or letting the client manage you, uh, which, generally, uh, they'll drag you into their nightmare, but you've got to manage them, and that this is the process to manage them thanks for that, ed.

Tim Causbrook: 1:03:13

That's great. So I just had a giggle there when you said confusion leads to anger, because it like a yoda line, which is kind of appropriate. You're definitely the yoda of the of the tribe here, so yes, it's a serious topic.

Ed Chan: 1:03:24

I just yeah, as long as I don't look like yoda, I'm okay, yeah, awesome. So . uh, you,, thanks, thanks everybody you, yep, thanks guys.

Tim Causbrook: 1:03:31

See you next next time. No, no, yeah, awesome. So yeah, thanks everybody, yep, thanks guys See you next time, See you everyone.

Ed Chan: 1:03:39

Yep. wizementoring..

: 1:03:42

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