The Wize Way

Episode 167: Monetise Before You Market: The Growth Stategy Most Firm Owners Miss

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers

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Most firms think growth means chasing new clients. But your next big revenue leap is already sitting in your existing client base.

In this episode of The Wize Way Podcast, Ed Chan unpacks how to:


✅ Monetise existing clients without feeling “salesy”
✅ Use a Monetisation Sheet to uncover hidden revenue
✅ Build a referral system that brings in A-class clients
✅ Avoid scaling chaos by fixing your foundation first

If you’re spending on ads while ignoring your current clients, this episode will shift your mindset and show you a smarter way to grow.

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Speaker 1:

The best way and the most cost-effective way is just to love your clients and to just over-service them.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Wise 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 wise mentors want to share their journey of how they've scaled and systemized 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.

Speaker 3:

So, ed, some of their clients are looking for growth and other avenues to find more clients, or those who are in the middle of that threshold where they want to find more clients or grow their existing clients, and some of the topic that they're touching on is monetization. One of the questions specifically was what do you think is more effective monetizing an existing client or going and doing marketing and sales for new clients?

Speaker 1:

Yes, that's a great question and that sort of comes under the topic of growth. How do I grow my business? And there's several ways to do it and of course you you know you don't want to grow your business until you've got the foundation right. So you're getting the production right and because if I double your turnover, you've got to be able to service your clients, otherwise your clients get really upset, um, and then they leave you. So there's no point in bringing more in and you just churn them and then you lose them and you'll lose a bad reputation. So you've got to get your housekeeping in place, you've got to get your team structures right, and that's another topic for another day.

Speaker 1:

But in terms of growth, there's obviously several ways to do it and I think that most firms go out fishing in the blue ocean and they spend money on advertising and marketing and so forth. But there's a goldmine within your own firm and I call that monetization of what's already there and the best clients to get from referrals. Because birds of a feather flock together. So you know, a-class clients refer A-class friends. So it's better to get referrals from your existing clients, but also, in terms of your own clients, that you're working with now you can sell more services to them.

Speaker 1:

And we call that monetization, because often when someone comes to you they might want a particular service, like preparing their tax return or preparing their BAS or something, but then you might provide 20 different services and that particular client is only aware of one service that you're providing. So the monetization process involves having a spreadsheet and on the left-hand side you have all the names of all your clients and then, across from left to right, all your different services, and you just tick those boxes off as they take up you know other services that you provide, whether that's bookkeeping, whether that's, you know, asset protection or structure setting up or self-managed super funds or financial planning or finance, and you tick those boxes as they take up those services and you could easily, you know, double your turnover by just increasing the amount of services that you give to your existing clients. And a lot of the times you know you've already got these services that you provide, just as the client doesn't know about them and no one's made an effort to go talk to them about it. So we run, you know, a monetization sheet in our practice, in our business, to help A that clients are aware and taking up the extra services that we provide. So obviously it's got to benefit the client.

Speaker 1:

And then you know you've got to make the client aware that you've got those services. And the more you connect with your clients, the more they'll refer their friends to you. And that's the best way of growing your business. You know from referrals, because it doesn't cost anything and it's an endorsement of you know the service that you're providing to your client. If someone refers you, you know their friend, because people don't refer that often because there's just no win. If you let them down and and they refer a friend to you and you let the friend down, then it just there's no pluses for them, they just get bad feedback. So you've got to really make sure that you know you deliver services. But that's the highest way of getting.

Speaker 1:

Increasing a business is through recommendations and that's an endorsement of what you're doing and what you've done for them. So so that's a great way to do it. But you know you can add to that through the monetization process and I call that shooting fish in a barrel as opposed. You know fishing out in the big, big blue ocean and of course you can um fish out in the big blue ocean and you can do that through digital marketing. You know there's all sorts of ways to do it with seo and and podcasts and and all that and uh and that's helpful as well, but I I found that to increase your business via your own clients is the best way to do it, because they trust you, you know them, they're good clients, whereas if you fish out in the big ocean, I find that 50% of the time that the clients that come across, they're generally not happy with their accountants, of course, but that unhappiness can be both ways.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it can be the accountants letting him or her down and they're not providing a very good service. Yes, that's absolutely possible. But also I found that sometimes they're a bit of a sensitive type of a client and can be difficult and generally, you know, it's around 50-50. 50% of the clients that come from you know Big Blue Ocean are good clients and the other 50% are trouble clients and generally it takes you around two years to find out and either they leave you or you ask them to leave, but in the meantime that caused a whole lot of problems within your firm and disruption. So obviously the best way is referrals from your existing clients and the monetization sheet is a very good way of doing it. The other really good way of doing it is I find that a lot of firms who are under the pump they prepare the work and they send it out for signature and that's it. And if you do that, then you're not going to grow, you're not going to get referrals. So what we do is we need to spend time with the clients and explain the results to them, either in a meeting or via a Zoom meeting, and we're not allowed to just finish the work and send it out to them.

Speaker 1:

Because Pareto's it's an Italian gentleman who came up with the Pareto's principle, the 80-20 rule. He said that 20% of what you do produces 80% of the outcome and 80% of what you do only produce 20% of the outcome. So in this instance, if you just prepared a word and send it out, that falls into the 80% category. 80% of what you do only produces 20% of the outcome. But if you call them up and talk to them about the result, then the effort to do that is only 20%, but it gives you 80% of the outcome. In other words, they'll refer friends to you. Doing that 20% is so, so important, but a lot of firms don't do that. They just send the work out, and that's a big, big mistake, I think. But then they go off and they spend thousands of dollars on marketing, and all that when they can just pick the phone up and talk to the clients and make sure their team, their client managers, are doing that instead of just sending the work out for signature.

Speaker 3:

I actually wanted to touch on this topic because I find it very interesting and a great growth strategy, as you mentioned that, but I think that there's a way to set up a efficient and good working referral system. Is there a best practice or a wise way to set up a referral system for accounting and bookkeeping firms?

Speaker 1:

Yes, there's different ways to do it, but the best way, obviously, is to give really good service and to do the things that I talked about. Yeah, then when someone's really, really happy with you and your service, they want to go out there and tell their friends. But of course, the opposite happens If you give bad service, they'll go out and tell lots of people. They'll do that. But you don't want that to happen, so, um, but then there are other ways to to get referrals. You can provide an incentive. So, for example, we used to excuse me, provide an incentive and for every referrals we would give a donation to a charity of their choice. Or, you know, if they wanted a, a, you know some money would give them a tip of the ticket. You can build all sorts of different uh incentives into it.

Speaker 1:

I think at one stage we tried, like, um, a coupon that they can, they can claim when they came for services.

Speaker 1:

Um, you know, the marketing team can come up with all sorts of different uh of doing it, but the best way and the most cost-effective way is just to love your clients and to just over-service them and to give them, you know, lots of communication meetings and not just to do the work, not just to be transactional. It's more of a relationship situation than a transactional situation and we tend to be more transactional because's more of a relationship situation than the transactional situation. And we tend to be more transactional because you know we might be under the pump. There's lots of work. The turnaround time you want to make sure turnaround time is is is quick, um, but then that goes to what I started off by saying is getting your team structures right, your production right, people in the right seat in the right bus, making sure that they're getting work out, you get your house, your daughter. Then you can't take on more clients and generally you'll find that if you're giving good service, you're growing anyway. You won't have to go out there and market and spend money on marketing.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. Thank you so much for that answer. I think it's going to give everyone a better picture of how monetization could save you lots of time and money fishing in that big blue ocean.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Wise 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 wise way. We'll see you in the next episode.