.jpg)
The Wize Way
Feeling stuck in your firm or on the edge of rapid growth but don't know how to build the business so that it’s not reliant on you?
Join Bren Ward as he shares the insights, stories, strategies and tools that have helped transform the businesses and lives of our Wize Guys and hundreds of Accounting, CPA and bookkeeping firm owners around the world.
In each episode, Bren dives into the leadership, marketing, sales, systems and mindset tactics that'll get you to your goals without burning out.
His interviews with his Wize co-founders and community of Wize firm owners are inspiring and transformational.
Subscribe to transform your challenges into opportunities and build a business that can run without you.
The Wize Way
Episode 165: Top 4 Marketing Strategies for Accounting Firms
Most firm owners think growth means more ads, more hires, or more hustle. But what if you could grow without any of that?
In this episode of The Wize Way Podcast for Accountants and Bookkeepers, Ed Chan breaks down the 4 smartest (and often overlooked) levers you can pull to grow your firm, starting with what you already have. From turning happy clients into referral machines, to selling more services to your current base, to marketing that actually works, and the real ROI behind acquisitions... Ed lays out a clear path for firm owners who want growth without chaos.
If you want a business that attracts clients like a garden attracts butterflies, this is your blueprint.
________________
PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm:
1. Take the Wize Accountants Scale Scorecard – Find out your potential to scale and the next steps you should follow – Start Your Scorecard
2. Download our famous Wize Freedom Strategy Map for FREE - Find out the 96 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here
2. Need to Hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here
4. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here
Welcome to the Wize Way, the show for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners who want more time, profit, and freedom, and a business that can run without them. I'm Bren Ward, your host, and each week, we deep dive into the real stories, proven strategies, and battle-tested tools from successful firm owners. Just like you, our Wize Mentors want to share their journey of how they've scaled and systemised their way to freedom. So you can, too. If you're stuck in the grind or you're ready to scale smarter, this is your blueprint. Let's get into the episode.
Ed Chan:There's different ways that you can do it. Obviously, the first one is your website. You've got to invest into that and make sure that it's current and it's right up there with what's happening. I guess the garden itself is made up of not just the website but a whole lot of things, and I break it into low-hanging fruit and the rest. The low-hanging fruit are things like.
Ed Chan:The first thing is referrals. You should be getting your clients referring you more clients or referring you their friends, because that's the greatest accolade, if you like, for doing a great job and that doesn't cost anything. So if you do a great job and you get a happy client, the happy client goes out and refers a friend to you. Not only are you going to keep that happy client and he's going to pay you really quickly and not argue about the fee, but he's going to refer you to a friend. That costs you nothing.
Ed Chan:It's in everyone's interest to make sure that, given a really good service, so that you're getting lots of referrals. And I've talked about this many, many times. But the biggest mistake that people make in terms of running their practice or their business is to finish the work and just send it off to the client without any discussion. They just get it in an email, they sign the tax return, and they send it back, and that's being efficient. But it's not being effective. And being effective is the people who contact the client, taking them through a journey of what you did.
Ed Chan:And if it's a large client, always have this client approval meeting, and we do tax planning in that meeting, despite the fact that most of us will really know how to finish it off. And if you're efficient you'll go and finish it off and send it out, but if you're being effective, spend 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes talking to your client, taking them through the journey of what you're going to do and that's a larger client and often I'd bring them into a meeting and.
Ed Chan:I'd take them through this journey of what I was going to do to finish it off, or I'd ask them questions around tax planning and then if it's a small client, like an individual client, I'd just ring them up and explain to them the results and explain to them what was done and so forth, and that used to really get me a lot of referrals. But the effort to do that was 20%, because 80% of the effort was actually getting the work done. But the last 20% of that effort, which often might take 10 minutes or 15 minutes if it's a meeting, could take up to an hour for the larger clients, but that last 20% effort gave me all the referrals. So that produced all the outcomes for me. And the outcome for me is not finishing the work.
Ed Chan:The outcome for me, my definition of outcome, is that the client refers me to a friend. That's the outcome, that's the end result. So if you're looking at what the end result is, the end result is the client's really happy, so happy that they'll refer you to friends. But if you don't do that last 20%, you won't get that referral. And often I did that instinctively for some reason. But you need to encourage the staff to do that. I see client managers not doing that. They're just finishing the work and sending it out, and they don't go that extra 20%, and they won't get any referrals. So that's the very first one.
Speaker 1:Just a quick one. Do you need to hire right now? Don't waste weeks searching for your next best team member. At Wize Talent, we have a dedicated team that only helps accounting and bookkeeping firm owners fill roles fast, whether it's with a bookkeeper, an accountant, a client manager, a practice manager, or admin support. We can help you find the best talent locally or through an offshore option as well. You tell us what you need, and we'll bring you qualified candidates ready to go. In the show notes, you'll find a link through to the Wize Talent team. Get in touch with Dani. Tell her what you're looking for, and we'll get to work. Take the pain out of hiring. Get in touch with the Wise Talent team today.
Ed Chan:The second one is that you need to sell more services to your existing clients. You've got a goldmine in your database, the research shows that the clients are crying out for more services. There are surveys, and surveys have been done over and over. The clients are always saying that they wish their accountants would provide them with more services, and we're not doing it, including ourselves. I call that a monetization sheet, so you should get a big spreadsheet, put your client's name on the left-hand side, and going from left to right, put down all your services, and then tick them off as your clients are taking up those services. You could easily double your turnover if you provided more services to existing clients. They're the two lowest- hanging fruit. So they're the two things that you should be doing, because it doesn't cost anything to do that. In fact, it's a detriment to your business if you're not selling more services because the clients currently are asking for it.
Ed Chan:And then the last two are what will cost money, or I call it an investment is the marketing, the digital marketing. You need your website, seo, search engine optimization, your newsletters, your webinars, your blogs, those kinds of things, and that requires an investment. We'll talk more about that today. And then the last one is acquisitions. It's very profitable to acquire a firm, and if you look at the typical key performance indicators generally, if your cost of goods sold runs at about 40%, your overheads at 35%, then your EBITDA will be a minimum of 25%, and that includes the owner's salary. So I'm talking about an EBITDA after the owner's salaries. So, as a pure return on your capital, you should be doing around 25% or more. So that's a typical firm. But when you do an acquisition, your cost of goods sold isn't at 40%, it's maybe 20% or 30%.
Ed Chan:It could be zero if you've got excess capacity in your own firm because you're using your staff to do the work that you really have, and you're not having to go out and hire any new staff. But let's just be conservative. Instead of being, say, 40%, it's 30%. Your fixed overheads are much, much lower. Instead of being 35%, it could be at 5% or 10%. So your profit, your EBITDA, is not at 25% on a tuck-in or an acquisition. It's around 60% to 65%. And if you're borrowing money at around 4% or 5%, and I know the interest rates are going up, but even if it's at 5% and you're netting around 65%, you can see it's a very lucrative activity to pursue. That's probably why the demand is so much greater than the supply.
Ed Chan:Certainly, in Australia, there are very few. Well, when the firms come up for sale, they get bought very, very quickly, and the prices have gone up because of that. Just a quick summary, there are four things that you should be doing to build a garden that attracts butterflies, and it requires an investment. It requires a team of people to run that, and that requires an investment. And I often use this statistic that you should be spending around investing around 5% of your turnover in marketing activities, and you've got to see it as an investment. That's a really great point. You're honing in on there, Ed was. It's really important for us to be able to at least take advantage of our low- hanging fruit first before going out there into the wide ocean.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Wize Way. If today's episode sparked an idea or helped you see things differently, please don't forget to leave us a review. And if you haven't subscribed to the podcast on your favorite platform yet, please go ahead and do that as well. Let's continue the conversation here through YouTube or any other social platforms that you can find us on. And just remember, if you're not a subscriber, our weekly Friday tip newsletter. You can get that to your inbox every week. Going forward, whether you're starting out or scaling up, you don't have to do it alone. Let's build a business that works for you the Wize Way. We'll see you in the next episode.