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welcome to UK matters in accounting with me Rob Brown I have guest host Lucy coin with me we'll introduce Lucy in a moment this is one of five shows going out every day of the week the only daily podcast in the world for accounting professionals and this show comes out on Friday focuses on UK matters for accounting professionals Lucy kind from Mazuma welcome thanks Rob thanks for having me again Lucy it's great to have you back we love having you on as a guest host on here because you're far better looking than Martin you're a lot wiser and you actually run an accounting practice whereas Martin just talks about running an accounting practice and uh with this UK show we've identified an issue that perhaps might affect accountants everywhere but it might be a little bit more prevalent for UK accountants enlarge on that a little bit for us it's the dreaded s word it sails we don't like the word sales in the UK we're very polite British people we're almost apologetic when we make a sale and we need to be much less so because if you've got not just aspirations of growth aspirations of staying the same you run a firm for long enough you're going to churn clients some of them will leave for other providers some of them will outgrow you some of them will go out of business client churn is part of life so if you want to stay the same size you have to either have to keep putting your fees up to cover it or you have to replace those clients and doing so requires sales and if you want to grow your practice and grow head count or grow client numbers you need to be able to do sales and accountants have had a long time of uh being able to only take sales through referral or not have to think too hard about their pipelines and channels and the world is a different place now we're much more commoditized people swap providers more readily more often they're happier to do so they're happier to shop around loyalty is potentially a little bit less than say it was 20 years ago just look at banking you know you've got the incumbent banks that have been massively challenged by the Neo banks that have come into the space and even now the Neo banks are becoming incumbents and there's new challenges on the market in terms of Revenue funding is challenging traditional funding models and borrowing for businesses so you can't rest on your laurels and sales is a very awkward British thing that we don't like and we should be better at it and it's not a dirty word and let's look at pipelines let's actually talk about our sales pipelines there's so many aspects to this sales is not a reason accountants came into the profession they're very good at what they do they're technically super smart we know they've got application to learn take on your knowledge but if we look at accountants in practice particularly and look at the tree we'll see that 90 of people at the top table Lucy are the work Getters they create Revenue opportunities for the firm they bring in the business they grow the profits and accountants listen if you have a client book a client portfolio then it's likely that 80 of it repeats year on year which is good news annual recurring Revenue but if you just on a simple level add one decent conversation a month to your regular activities with those clients you can grow your portfolio and thus the business can you of course you can it's about making sure that you treat it as a pipeline and this is the long-term planning aspect which I think a lot of accountants talk about and know what they want to achieve for their firm in the future but I actually don't really know how to get there and they obsess over the website or they obsess over the details or what should my marketing be and all this stuff and they they dance around it and they never go we need to do some sales sales and it can be revolutionary understanding your sales pipeline is understanding what's going to make your business tick in terms of that growth aspect so this is an opportunity for you to reverse engineer the efforts you have to make to reach that Top Line now anybody listening to this who has come from a sales background this is all money for all rope for you you've heard this a million times before but let's say for example you uh two out of every um I'll make sums easy for me two out of every 10 meetings you convert they tend to clients 20 so if you want to bring on four new clients you need to do 20 meetings and in order to get 20 meetings you have to do X number of phone calls in order to do X number phone calls you have to send X number of mail shots or marketing shots or whatever that's it that sales pipeline understanding that about your business understanding your data like that then you just have to keep doing it and it's an activity and numbers game and so many accountants or even so few accountants understand that even when they're 20 years in it's very sporadic and a little bit scattergun approach oh this month I got five referrals well what led to that I don't know just did like well let's look at it and can we do it again what did you do um it's very unlikely it's chance there's probably something you did so let's let's figure it out a sales coach once taught me Lucid that you're what you do in the next 90 days Will dictate what your business looks like in three to four months yeah I mean so it's the activities you do now ahead of time because you need to start conversations and do your Outreach and get on the red eyes of certain people because these sales these deals will take a time to drop there is a season for you to reap the Harvest but you've got to put in the groundwork and sow the seeds haven't you yes and understand what seeds you have to sow every firm is different every set of clients is different some people will respond to face-to-face meetings some people just need a quick phone call you have to understand what that pipeline looks like for you and it's not good enough to say well I grow my business through referrals that's fantastic how often do you ask referrals how many times you ask referrals do you have one or two clients that referring 10 new clients a year or does every single one of your clients refer somebody they are two very different strategies I always joke with my team it's like well our business we could double it if every single client we've had one client a year we double year on year that seems like a really easy strategy but the effort to make that happen is almost impossible and actually that's it pretty much is impossible because some people will just never refer you work it's just the way they are so understanding that and we have a problem specifically in Britain with this because we're very we're very British and polite about this and we're not brilliant I think accountants we're up against it because maybe by Nature we're kind of numbers focused we're process Focus where outcome focused in terms of that kind of numbers element compliance element even advice element we like to present a thing closing a cell I've listened in on so many calls with accountants where they've done all the hard work they've overcome every objection they've given added value and at the end of it they go thanks very much bye instead of going that's fantastic can I give you a contract now let's sign you up on the spot then you don't have to think about this anymore you're you're letting them walk out of the door with all of the control keep that control close that deal but we're not brilliant closers and I think we can do a lot of work uh on that as a profession another country's nations may claim this but I I'd like to think we're uniquely British in not being comfortable not just selling products and services but selling ourselves oh eating our own trumpet or our own horn if you like we're not good at bigging ourselves up we're not good at admitting how great we are there's a term called proximity bias we've mentioned on this show where you get so close to what you do you don't see it as remarkable in any way so that ethical bragging that talking yourself up that's perhaps a uniquely British phenomenon which hurts us in sales it absolutely does because all sales is about the classic phrase tell not sell you don't have to persuade somebody to buy your services they're in front of you they're talking to you they're already engaged you just have to tell them how brilliant you are and why they're a good fit for your business and the rest then you ask for clothes ask for the business can we proceed now are you ready to sign up today shall we get a contract over the line now we can do this straight away if you like then you can enjoy your weekend and never have to think about this again we don't we watch the buying signals we go there's a lovely buying signal then we let it leave and we don't kind of make that close and I think it is quite a uniquely British thing yeah well let's finish with a couple of takeaways here Lucy I'll throw in a couple because Business Development has been my game for many many years and then you can add a couple just to finish this off I would say to accountants that want to be more intentional with bringing in business opportunities for their firm to first pick a lane or a strategy we've mentioned referrals and there are many different ways to start conversations so pick one that plays to your strengths and your style you don't have to be a great networker if you love networking then you can do it online with an internet connection in a dark room there are many different ways to network there are many different ways to ask for referrals there are many different people to ask referrals of there are many different ways to put thought leadership out there so the first tip I would give is to pick a lane that plays to your strengths in your style that you feel that you're comfortable with that you can try and then secondly create some kind of a plant some metrics and daily activities something you could do and measure once a week it's a discretionary activity is bringing in business you don't get paid to do it but you get paid on the results of it so some kind of strategy you plan to build it into your work week is going to bring some results a couple of tips from you Lucid to finish practice closing it's the most uncomfortable bit is actually asking for that business be old school do some role play with it friend um look in the mirror practice saying those words it's going to feel really uncomfortable to begin with have you got a good phrase Lucia a couple of sentences or questions you might recommend for us in closing so one of my favorites especially when you've got all the strong buying signals so they're nodding along they're you know mirroring you they're they're saying well this sounds great I like this sounds brilliant that's wonderful this is you've overcome all the rejections one is do you have any further questions about our service that I've not answered yet and quite often they'll either come up with something which case you can answer it or they'll say no I think you've actually answered everything we'll go fantastic I'd love to get you started today shall we and now I'm going to say yes or no and they'll probably say yes especially if you've got all those great buying signals um or another one if you've got on really well which is literally say I feel like this meeting has gone really well I hope you feel the same way because I feel like we can do really good business together do you want to get started now and hopefully they'll just go they probably will go yeah I also feel the same way you know who you get on with somebody and you want to work with them so just give them the easy make it easy for them one of my biggest bug Bears is when I speak to a company I'm trying to buy something I'm the worst person to sell so I put the phone down I don't listen to people because I know this world so I haven't got time for it I'm the worst if anyone ever wants to practice trying to do a hard sell try it on me I'll put myself out there as like as photo as a role play yeah but when I'm giving the strong buying signals I'm saying well how much is it when can I start how do I sign up and they're still not giving me the stuff I'm like come on I'm literally telling you all to start tune into it understand when they're saying yes without saying yes and close that down ABC always be closing that's a strong sales message I always think of a way you can bring people to the end of the funnel you've worked hard to work them through it now pushing them out the end of the sausage machine to make a deal uh you've got it in you've under right Lucy code thanks so much for joining us today on UK matters in accounting thank you foreign [Music]