Discover the benefits of customer prospecting for accounting

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hey everybody david costello here founder and ceo of jetpack workflow and host of growing firm podcasts today's guest is luke fletcher he founded raw accounting 10 months ago yes you heard that right 10 months ago and he's grown the practice to over 70 clients in the middle of the pandemic now he specializes on tax-led support for smes and they deliver what they call fuss-free friendly approach for businesses and their owners luke's an icaew chartered accountant passionate small business owner himself today we're going to really talk about what happened in these 10 months that luke was able to discover what i would call kind of service market fit for what he was offering we're going to talk about what resonated so well what those initial acquisition channels are and what he feels is the next step for him as he's grown so quickly so luke first and foremost welcome to the show hi david thanks so much for having me it's a pleasure to be here with you today yeah absolutely so i have to ask what happened ten months and one day ago that you said hey now's the time to start a firm i think for me i was um i was kind of following that that normal accountancy trajectory uh that that partnership and that being the kind of you know the thing that everyone aims to and i sat there and i i thought is this really what i want is this is this where i see myself going and um and what i want to do because as you know once you go into that partnership route it's quite difficult to unpick um and i sat down with myself honestly and over a period of a couple of weeks and months i just decided it wasn't going to be right for me so um that was when i decided actually do you know what i want i want to set up my own firm uh i want to put my own little stamp on it and run my own business which is exactly what i did yeah so day one did you start did you bring over any clients did you buy clients from a other firm or was it really zero zero zero clients it was zero zero zero clients so like like lots of people in that situation i had a non-compete and all that uh all that good stuff um so it was it was zero clients and you know inevitably there's that kind of oh i need i need to get need to get to work but also i wanted i was always right from uh right from the off really keen to make sure the right systems are in place um and that as we scaled and grew we were going to be able to continue to deliver the right service yeah and so what's current team size right now by the way and we're going to dig into actually how you acquire those clients but tell us a little bit so you have 70 clients how many employees how many team members so at the moment it is uh just myself and then i have one part-time person who is exclusively just um supports with the payroll um but other than that it's me doing uh servicing the 70 clients at this stage got it got it well i have to ask um how many hours a week are you working now now that you've grown so quickly um i think at the moment my hours are still manageable uh don't get me wrong uh during working hours i work pretty hard and i keep my keep my head down um there are times we we've just had busy season here so tax return deadlines for in the uk are the 31st of uh 31st of january so it's been a busy slog uh through uh through january but um i'm still kind of managing managing my hours reasonably well probably well below the u.s average of uh of working hours in a week anyway yeah absolutely all right great well so it's day one you need to get clients you need to fund this business you need to fund your life what do you do i mean how do you go about what was the steps you took to start landing your first you know three or five clients okay so the the very first step i took was i told everyone i knew um from kind of personal connections uh previous network connections um and it is amazing when you when you start going out and you tell you and you tell people look i'm doing this um just wanted to share it just wanted to keep you up to date with what i'm doing at the moment it's amazing the number of people who come out and say yeah actually um you know we'll i'll move my accounts over to you you can help you can help with that so that was the kind of very first first thing i did is this is this email are you calling people are you texting them and what are you saying you're saying i opened up a shop or are you saying open up a shop for this type of business or like walk us through some of the tactical elements of that i think um for me a big element of and certainly where a lot of my network has always been is um is on linkedin so i use i use linkedin to kind of publish what i'm doing um you know day one i was on linkedin i was on the various other social channels saying look uh this is what i'm doing but certainly i think for me to kind of pick up and just because that's really where my my kind of connections and followings are um is over on linkedin that got the biggest kind of attraction um that got you know i got the traction that people were kind of interested liking sharing and all that good stuff dropping me a few messages through linkedin and then it all kind of flows from there and don't get me wrong you've also got those you know just those personal connections that we all have friends and family and and all that good stuff and um and you you know you people people talk and and all of a sudden it may be a friend of a friend but they're getting in touch because actually they've got a small business and they need support with it did you when you made that linkedin post did you specify your clients or did you just say hey i'm launching this firm and you know really excited or are you were you you know kind of at the forefront of finding a niche or you kind of just open any opportunity to help fund the business okay so if i'm honest um i would say i've been fairly broad in my approach yeah i know i know there's a lot of kind of you know some very different schools before but when you have zero clients and and obviously with zero clients comes zero income uh and i've got a mortgage to pay and and and all that good stuff then you kind of sit there and say actually if someone is looking for support and i'm able to provide it then i'm going to provide it um and yes over time we'll refine that and um and we'll shape that into kind of what i see is really what's going to be our bread and butter um but at that initial stage it was uh if you need some support with some with some accounting or tax and i've got the skills to do it then i'm going to help you uh help you achieve that awesome so month one you made this linkedin post how many clients did you get uh month one i think that it was one client but uh but a significant size business um so that was that was quite important you know there's um kind of a complete mix of of what falls into the category of sme um and for me that's we're potentially talking right up to kind of what in this country um requires an audit which is below 10 million so nothing below 10 million regards an audit in this country and really all of those types of businesses are small and medium-sized typically family-run uh typically owned and managed and so the tax implications the accounting applications they're very very similar um i think our kind of core client size now is probably um just around kind of a million uh a million turnover that sort of size either side slightly but but that tends to be kind of where our where our core clients fit but uh month one yeah there was one client that came on board and um moving forward as the months kind of progressed i remember month two and month three it's it is a hard slog um you know you're out there you're i mean to call in the phrase you're banging the drum uh and i would say that i continue to do that uh through through linkedin okay and and that was and and that has been a really good source of business for me not just it's not just about kind of the post that you're putting out but it's about building that connection um you know those connections with people it's about just um commenting sharing engaging with the community and i guess that's an element of um kind of what really what linkedin or any of those platforms is about it's about the community if you're just doing it for your own kind of purpose um then typically it becomes people start to see for it quite quickly i think whereas actually if you're if you're kind of there and you are engaging then you know people engage with you and and you all kind of get to like and share and get to know one another really all be it for a for a virtual means got it uh so just to just on back there's a little bit more i mean your strategy on linkedin wasn't purely push push push with a post it was a lot of you you've built up this network over time they're obviously posting things about their job about their business about whatever news articles you're commenting on them you're sharing them you're saying hey good job or adding an additional tip there um on the push front of things when you're posting i mean just to help quantify the audience for a little bit how many times are you actually posting something on linkedin versus commenting sharing like in a given week or given months okay so i would never do more than one post per day uh and typically i would say that on average i was posting maybe um maybe three to four times per week i think it has to be sustainable um you know the it's all well and good and and people will always talk about you know how do i grow my business and how do i get the word out there and there's loads of different strategies there's you know you can go down the content marketing strategy you can you can use social media you you can use paid ads whatever you want to use um but i think if you're gonna do it you have to do it consistently consistently and it's that consistency that really builds the traction um so i would say that something else i was doing outside of um outside of linkedin was was some kind of content marketing purely around blogs on on the website but even now some of those blogs that i wrote in um in the early days when don't get me wrong i launched a new website a website that it takes google uh a few months to pick up so you know that you're not going to get anything any real traction coming through there so part of it is um on the linked inside you're posting and you're linking back to your website and people are then going to the website they're maybe hitting the blogs and they're reading some of the content on there but also part of it was to say actually we want to share some useful content on these blogs so that what google thinks hey look this is useful this someone might be interested in this but also so that to be really honest we start to rank um you know and and if someone types in a particular keyword or a particular phrase we're going to come up um so there's some things we did around kind of local um and then there's also some some um blogs on there which still to this day and that is the amazing thing about content and vlogs you do it once but they serve you and yes they need refreshing and uh and things like that and you should look at them and say are they still relevant can we tweak this can we update it but a blog will serve you for years and years and years to come and so even now 10 months on one of the blogs i wrote i think in maybe month 2 is consistently our highest ranking page on the website so what kind of content is this around tax filing deadlines or these tax strategies or what kind of content you're putting out there to get together so so my background is i used to work in uh in one of the large accounting firms on the tax side so with that experience and with that background a lot of my um support tends to be quite tax-led so we can do all the we can do all the accounting um you know and we can do you know the statutory stuff the filings etc but also i always felt there was a need for a small business owners to get tax led advice uh and tax led support because that that it really is where they're kind of crying out and saying look i don't know what my liabilities are going to be i don't know how to reduce them i don't know if there's any options or things that i could be doing or thinking about so the the content we were putting out on the blogs was um was primarily on on attacks and actually the one i mentioned um that ranks very highly was all around what a director can do to kind of maximize their pension contributions and do that in the most in the most tax efficient way in you know here in the uk got it so do dig back into into linkedin a little bit for for somebody you know just to unpack this a little bit more because you know be quite honest with you we don't we we all believe in linkedin but we don't hear the networking benefits as much to be honest and so i'm wondering is it the value of your network plus the way that you've communicated like what do you think is your you know magic sauce here you know you mentioned consistency which is absolutely important but where do you think most people get it wrong with linkedin are they just not investing enough time or do they not know how to network uh you know through it like what are the blockers i think it's um i think it ultimately comes down to kind of being authentic uh if you're commenting well okay there's a few things here if you're commenting on someone's on someone's post and you're genuinely interested you may be engaging you're asking a question uh they're maybe responding the first thing i would say is linkedin will quite often uh post the top comment the kind of top-rated comment that it thinks or his algorithm thinks is a good comment that means that if you're posting on someone who's got 20 000 followers uh and you've engaged in that and that means everyone who's then seen that post is potentially also seeing your comment right below it well i think we're all silly if we think that no one sits there and click doesn't click on on the person who's commented thinking who's this guy um so there's that and as i said it needs to be authentic it needs to be kind of a real conversation but certainly kind of algorithms look at that and say okay well this might be interesting um and also i think that it just helps generally with your own posts if you're just kind of churning out your own stuff it's maybe getting a bit of engagement um it's maybe getting a couple of likes but you're not really doing a huge amount else i i think i mean i don't know no one knows the algorithm i'm not an expert at all but i think that for me there seems to be some logic in commenting and liking and sharing on other people's stuff in turn kind of supports your own posts and and maybe means you you appear in someone's feed when you might not otherwise so i think that's something that um something that certainly i've seen and tends to work quite well got it um i want to switch gears into pricing here in a little bit but just confirm so 0 to 70 10 months you announced it early on you know you had some early hand raisers got your first couple clients through that and then you've consistently been engaged on linkedin as well as pairing that with uh your content marketing strategy yeah were those the two main drivers of your client acquisition in 10 months yes i would say so um i did some kind of direct uh marketing as well so that might that was more kind of direct outreach and again um linkedin can be a good source of that so it's not just necessary you know don't just necessarily kind of passively do it think actually there are people out there who right now they're thinking i'm not really sure i'm getting the right service from from my accountant we've all been there in you know we've all seen how recruiters used to use linkedin uh and lo and behold a recruiter would send a post you know and they're doing that to maybe hundreds of people uh on a on a daily basis most of them aren't landing most people are happy they're happy they're happy then one um it lands it comes in their inbox and actually they think do you know what actually i will have a conversation with this recruiter uh the same is true and don't get me wrong i'm not sending hundreds of linkedin uh requests every day but i think that where you're targeted and actually for me i was looking at kind of local businesses maybe businesses where we had um i had we had lots of shared connections or i knew you know i'd met them kind of face-to-face in a networking event but we're not connected yet on linkedin you think let's connect let's start to have a little conversation um next thing maybe we're having a you know a teams called or a zoom call and and all of a sudden a they now know who you are and b they might actually be interested in in changing their accountant or as soon as as soon as they they have a problem and they think actually now's the time to switch they're interested in um you know and and you're the one they contact yeah great well and it may not be overly scientific at this point but for your 70 clients i mean how many prospects how many call it sales calls did you have to get those 70 clients uh actually picking up the phone and making sales calls no not not picking up them and making sales calls but people that say they reached out they say hey i'd like to learn more and you know you got on the teams you got on the zoom and they ended up converting and becoming the client because you know paying you what you know okay right so i think that there's um i can i couldn't tell you the number of uh you know messages and kind of email conversations but what i would say is when you get someone face to face um and you get well face to face i mean we live in a virtual world but when you get someone on teams or on zoom and you have a conversation and you have a genuine interest in their business probably more of an interest and and kind of kind of i would say that we ask quite broad reaching kind of questions about their business and what their intentions are and where they want to go that is usually certainly in in this country a lot more than what their current accountant is asking uh typically they're getting he this is what you need to do you know these are your compliance maybe uh some filing of accounts shortly before the deadline that still tends to be the norm so actually when you sit there and you say look i just wanna have a chat with you about your business um i found i have found that conversions tend to be pretty high because it's all um a lot of what we do you know certainly from the compliance angle is is kind of bread and butter you know we're certainly if you're if you're regulated and you're a chartered accountant like i am then you should be able to do the work um so then it comes down to kind of that interpersonal side building that relationship um and really being able to talk to your clients and what i would say is that i um i pick up the phone to my clients when i have no reason to you know i'll call them uh and they might be on quarterly about filings over here but i'll call them on a monthly basis and say look how are things going um what are your pain points are you do you have any concerns and number time you ring a client and they say oh actually i was thinking about doing this and you and what was if i hadn't made that call they probably wouldn't have reached out they might have they might have but on the whole they probably would have just thought oh i'm not really sure i don't know if i can do that or what the rules are or whether there's anything i need to think about and just by that 10-minute conversation you start to build that relationship so from the so let's say you got on a zoom you got on a team is that like 30 percent or 70 or like 90 of people end up becoming clients once you have that genuine kind of authentic conversation i would say that i would probably say that um once on zoom we've had that real conversation i would say more than 80 percent okay okay the and the ones that didn't i if i'm honest with myself looking back they were probably never going to become a client because we you know we've i mean we're quite kind of transparent with fees and things like that and we put some indicative pricing on the website um because for me there is a complete range of what people you know what support people are looking looking for um and i have had approaches where they want they want the service you know the kind of full service the tax led advice all of that stuff but actually they sit there and and they're only willing to pay for the compliance really uh ultimately that's that's their their kind of market in terms of what they want to spend hasn't changed so if i'm honest the ones that didn't come on board i think that i probably should have identified them earlier uh you know on that kind of just initial telephone call before we'd gotten to a zoom and we'd have a half hour conversation but um you know we live and learn and and now i have made lots of mistakes as you go through this process so um you know like like every small business owner so what's the average client paying you today so you're pretty transparent with the fees um so what's the average you know monthly or yearly and i know there's a broad range here so if you want to give the range that's fine or the average whatever is most uh applicable to you i would say um pretty much all our fees are uh 250 plus uh per month so 250 pounds plus per month um our largest clients go up to about 1 500 on a monthly basis so there is a complete range um the it's purely based on kind of the you know the nature of the support they need and uh and the role we're playing you know for for a couple of our largest clients essentially i'm um you know i'm uh an out of office fd uh you know i'm not physically sitting there with them every day but we're providing management reporting um we're providing we're doing all the compliance as a matter of course um but we're running reporting i'm having those conversations um and we're kind of really focused on kind of budgets and strategy and where their business is heading as well great so we say fd that's financial director just on yeah awesome well you've grown quite quickly it's been 10 months uh i'm assuming this has been a bit faster than you had anticipated although i don't i don't know what your goals were for month 10. what's what's next for you what's the next frontier what's the next challenge what are you thinking about next i think um the challenge i'm experiencing at the moment is whereas in those early days i could spend all the time on i'm kind of growing the business and marketing and i can service the clients quite happily and still have lots of time left to do that the challenge for me now is increasingly my time is is fully occupied uh servicing the clients um which is fine and i'm happy with but i for me i don't think for me i think the intention is to continue to grow this business um and i know that at the moment the only way that i'm going to do that without making a change is to significantly kind of effectively to work well over uh the hours which i would ideally like to work um so it it kind of comes down to getting some support and you know and hiring and and and that opens some big questions because actually we're you know i provide my services essentially virtually um as as we've touched on lots here you know there's lots of kind of zoom and teams conversations yes i go and see uh clients from time to time and most of my clients at the moment are a couple of but most of my clients at the moment tend to be fairly local you know um that people have also just found us through local seo and google and stuff like that so it's uh it's a challenge is to say well do we do we stay virtual and do do we recruit and and do that thing and make that work and work out what that looks like in the kind of virtual world or do we go for the kind of more traditional fixed office space um get people in you know go through the kind of training and support and and i think for me i mean it's exactly the same with with the business i'm it's a very kind of personal approachable service if you look at our if you look at our reviews on google the one word you'll see pretty much on all of them is approachable and friendly um and and i don't see why as kind of business owners and providing services to clients we shouldn't all be approachable and friendly so i mean sometimes i think with with finance it's all kind of hidden behind um hidden behind jargon and and language your clients don't really understand and i make it as clear as i possibly can and i do try to be as approachable to my clients as i possibly can be so i would want exactly the same for recruiting and hiring and people coming in and that kind of that kind of um i guess culture really within the within the business and that to me that's a challenge to do it remotely um to build that team and to build that those relationships but also um i think that you know we are in a world where increasingly that's something that people expect so it's it's not something i find out at the moment and we'll see where we kind of end up with it but um certainly that's in the next kind of work quarter that's going to be a start a real sticking point yeah i love it and look if somebody's listening right now and you feel like you've learned something about what luke's about to go through you know please reach out to him please connect with them share some lessons or even better if you really feel like you've cracked the code come on the podcast we could talk about it as well but luke this has been a real treat if somebody wants to reach out learn more about your business say thank you for coming on or share you know tips around whether it's the uh hybrid or virtual half you go down what is the best way for people to connect with you i think um best way probably we've talked about is for people to connect with me on linkedin so uh if you search luke j fletcher i i should come up on uh on google and you can find me that way but uh yeah it's luke j fletcher on linkedin um and otherwise you can go go over to the website which is raw accounting dot co dot uk raw spell r a w not like a lion and uh yeah and we can connect that way and uh you can contact us through there wonderful sounds great if you enjoyed this interview you want to help us get the word out please leave a review if you missed anything that luke talked about today it's all going to be at jetpackworkflow.com blog that's jetpackworkflow.com blog we'll do a full write-up we're going to link it up we're going to link up his linkedin everything else he mentioned here today if you really enjoyed this interview if you know a fellow firm owner that is maybe struggling to get traction to get client growth is struggling to figure out linkedin share this with a fellow firm owner who needed to hear it luke thanks so much for coming on perfect many thanks david