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Scot hoppy and I want to talk to you today about automation in your accounting practice and most more specifically let's look at the sales new clients sales and what we can do to automate our practice there first a little bit about me I have my doctorate in accounting my masters in taxation and I started my career off at PwC before moving in house to an architecture firm and ultimately opening up my own practice since then I've been awarded at 40 under 40 by CBA practice of advisor and I've been on the cover of calcia and that was having to do with creating a virtual practice that is completely paperless all digital and we work with our clients via video and email and phone so let's take a look at the team today and the team is from the west coast to the East Coast we have bookkeeping and tax advisers I'm in San Francisco and doníts in Seattle the rest of the team is spread out so liz is in Chicago in Georgia Massachusetts and as we look at Adam a ssin having that virtual practice since everything's digital makes it really really advantageous for us to be able to start connecting dots between our tools so that way we do automate automate things and take out some of those unnecessary steps unnecessary manual steps and a reason why I care about automation well first off the more I can automate the more time I get to spend with my family and the less time I have to spend working I rather be playing with my my son than having to be at the office in front of the computer but it's also right for opportunity and like and Mackenzie they did a study that showed Oh forty-nine percent of our tasks can be automated that's not a county specific but it gives you an idea of how much can be done that's not being done right now and now what we want to do is start looking at what can we do with that in accounting in our practices I really love this quote by the 4-hour workweek guide Tim Ferriss because it captures a framework that I was applying to automation myself and he and he and he brought it together in a way that only he can see the world so when he says is is never automate something that can be eliminated and never delegate something that can be automated otherwise you waste someone else's time instead of your own which now waste your hard-earned cash so get catch out one more time never automate something I can be eliminated and never delegate something that can be automated mmm and when we start look at that I had this framework that I call Oh dad and Oh dad represents four steps are really four items that I'm looking at when we're when we're trying to automate bits and pieces of the practice and and the first one of Oh dad is Oh Oh dat Oh is optimize D is delete a is automate D delegate Oh dat Oh dad and and that orders at its chronological that's the exact order we want to go in so first when we're looking at our tasks and the steps and the flows that are in them we want to optimize it first and then after we optimize it and we've made it as efficient as we can we want to see is there is there anything we can delete that is by far the most important step because it reduces the number of steps and and primarily the necessary steps in a process and then at that point once we've deleted things off and we have our optimized flow we want to start piecing off the portion that can be automated and finally after we do that automation we get to delegation and and by ending a delegation what we're doing is just what Tim Ferriss says we're not wasting that person's time they're getting the most efficient version of a process and the nice part too is since it's being delegated we don't have to do it so we're not wasting their time and we're not wasting our money paying them for their time and we're not wasting our time making up for it with manual steps so next let's jump over and start looking at what we're going to talk about today in the accounting practice something that we're all facing and that is how can we automate the process around new sale calls and and why we're focusing on that is and not thinking about how do we automate bookkeeping well what we can do is there's lots of low-hanging fruit and the more we can focus on the easy stuff knock that off it means we were we have all the brainpower that we want to focus on the hard stuff so I want to get rid of the easy stuff automate it make it as simple as possible rinse and repeat so that way when we get to the hard tasks that's where I can focus my energy that's where I can focus my brainpower as we jump into the new sale call what that what we're going to do is look at a typical way that a client shows up for us and what they'll do is they'll email in will email reply back we'll have them fill out a Google form and then we'll trigger out that triggers a lot of automation before we meet to have our chat usually by video and then and then we'll see what our next step of automation is after that before we we seal the deal so we can we're going to go start to finish through a sales process and check out our steps here so here's our typical email in from a prospect hi got my financial advisor said I should speak to you about my business tax and accounting are you taking new clients so when we get this email in what we'll do is we're going to reply back with our first bit of automation and that's using a template email inside of Google and here's our template email that we have them that we send back hi Sam thanks for your email and I'd love to speak to schedule our first chat please answer your new client questionnaire and click the county link at the end looking forward to talking so uh so what we've done here is now we have this template that's sent over because it's a template and it's all the thoughts already done and there's a link in there what I can do is I've um eyes that I automated as much as possible I've delegated that step so if I'm not around my assistant can easily get into my email they can have send this what we call canned response or a template response and reply to the new prospect now we're speeding up the sales cycle so the person can email in and we can be pretty quick to our response and know we're getting everything we need and moving things along for them it's the experience I want a new client to have all right so what we're going to do next is look at that Google Form on the left side of the screen is the landing page for the client when they click that link and what we're going to be asking in there is just minimal amount of questions it's it's primarily just the baseline things that I noticed I want to ask every single time I'm in a sales call so what I did was have them answer these questions before we're in the sales call that way I'm more prepared for the call alright so we'll ask for their email that's only to identify that response their responses so we can tie the tie them together and it'll also we use that email to name the file so it's easier for us to be of the response on July 20th that was to X at gmail.com we want to know if the inquiries for business taxes accounting or individual tax and and then we include another just in case we're not capturing their need in those top three I want to know who referred them that way I can start watching my lead generation and then the couple questions we can't see on here is is there a time constraint and have you had a CPA before the most important ones to me are what's your acquire about I I care more about the business tax side and I really care about the referral source but if they don't answer it here I'll get it later and and then the the next the next one that really changes how this conversation is going to go and gives me a better idea of what we're going to be talking about have you had a CPA before if they had a CPA before we go into a couple more questions so it's the second page and we just asked what when they do well what they do bad why are you leaving if they don't hit they haven't had a CPA then we go right to the end and on the right hand side is the end and what after they click Submit what they land on is hey thanks for your response here's the link to schedule your call and that link takes you to County so the trigger after that submit it there's five of theirs five triggers the first one has been query is logged and that's into Google sheets the second one is a counter invite sent and that's through County the scheduling app that they link through at the end there a task is created in our CRM and we use asana which is a project management tool to monitor our our CRM or our really our new sales calls it's our lead generation or opportunities tracker and then a folder structures created for the potential new client inside a Google Drive and that folder structure will have everything that we would normally have for a brand new client that's moving forward and then the fifth thing is that we'll have a 1-day reminder sent before the scheduled appointment just a say hey looking forward to talking is there anything else you want to share with us so let's look at each one here's our login of all the sales calls the nice part is ever since I've been doing this form which has been almost three or four years now I've logged every single inquiry and with that I have all the dates at someone's enquired I have all their emails so if I ever want to reach out again I know what they want it there are pirates for individual business and then I start getting into those where you see those orange cells and those are columns I add it and that is information I'm manipulating there's several more off to the right that you can't see what I really want to know what I'm watching is what and I adjust for how did you hear about us answer I have made adjustments that I call referral source what I want to know is it word-of-mouth is it Yelp is it Google is it from some type of Scott activity is it from another accountant and then after that off to the right I'm I'm kind of just tracked did we close them or they high quality wasn't a good lead and and then I also track was at a junkie lead what I've been able to do with that information is create a pivot table and I can start watching well what what type of quantity of leads am I getting from each source and what's the quality of the lead from each source and that helps me know where should I spend my time and my money to generate leads and how can I be more purposeful about that to get better quality clients prospective clients so let's look at that email this is the confirmation after a client's scheduled in County you may get this kick out saying hey you know I'm really happy that you scheduled a call for your Google counter this is the invite this shows up on my Google Calendar automatically and for the client if they use Outlook Apple Google it all it all works so it's very slick in that way and here's a sauna we have a project for sales this is where we track opportunities and we have sections for the sales calls and really what we have is at the very top line is someone that hasn't scheduled to call yet but they have inquired that's where as soon as someone fills out the format's where they end up once a scheduled call I move them down into that their new client but no calls completed and then once we've completed a sales call I'm moving down to the follow-up section and that's to either say like we had to follow up on maybe a couple items or I'm waiting for them to complete some action items like there give me the tax return so I can review it and get a quote together after all that's done well we have a another item to kind of see the clients close we sealed the deal and we'll have some steps that that go along with that and here's our Google Drive similar to asana it was called the Google Drive folders called stubby be sales and in asana we call the section WB sales in slack we have a channel called WB sales so that way there is continuity between all these different areas and what we what we see here is a few folders this is the folder structure that automatically gets created every time someone completes that form and what the naming convention is is new client underscore their email and having it set up that way means we can see all the new clients listed off because they're going to be grouped alphabetically and then we'll have their email so we can tie the folder structure that has the email to the Google Form responses that will also have their email and it makes it easier to bring all the information together and finally we have all that that one day invite and what could send us and hey you know I looking forward to talking let us know if there's any burning questions and if you need to share any files before the meeting all most of the time there's no files that people want to beforehand but sometimes people beyond getting a reminder hey we're talking there you go oh there is something specific I want to talk about they give me a little bit of an idea and then I can go in a bit more prepared when they fill out that County link we ask if they want to have the video of the meeting by video or phone and regardless of whether they wanted my video or phone we ask for their phone number that's just in case ap video they don't show up for the video I can still call them that information gets put inside of a Google Calendar which also gets emailed to each one of us alright so the sales meeting we went through all that automation now we're showing up at the meeting the meetings either by video or phone it's 30 minutes long and my goal is to know if and how we want to move forward what's actually interesting about this video or foam piece we've been the firm's been going for just over four years now and so we're going on our fifth year and in the very beginning phone was like 90% of it and then it slowly slowly has been drifting more towards video last year it was about 40 almost 50/50 but about 40 60 video to phone and then all sudden this year 2018 big shift over and I've seen 80 percent of the new sales calls have been video I personally love it because I can build a deeper connection and it's easier it's easier just to talk to people and see their faces and I'm not sure if it's just the time they're changing and people are more comfortable on video or maybe their jobs they do more video chatting there so they're they're opting in for video with me or maybe the types of clients are interested in working with me are self selecting and they happen to be people that want to be on video the people that don't tend to want to be on video for me and and being in the San Francisco area usually someone that's a a partner or c-level executive usually something in financials at that point they tend to they tend to be more by phone everyone else especially the tech people there they're ready to go video and and the business owners kind of if they're kind of split most most most business owners want to do video but I'd say that there's still a small hand I have a small handful that they want to just video everything by phone but that the phone the phone and video by the time they come in that's not as often of an occurrence most of the time people are just emailing in and we can we can work with them that way all right so we finish up our 30-minute meeting and what happens then well we send them an email it's another template there's more there's more Google Forms so we have them do some intake forms the responses are logged again we love bat and we're across some prior your tax documents this is to help us do the quotes so here's the email template we start off with saying okay you know great talking we're gonna be a great fit then we have the notes from the call which I put in bold that is really good for reminding me and reminding the team and reminding the client what we talked about and also shows that we're listening and gives them an opportunity to clarify any items and then we have action items at the bottom those action items are fill out your google forms upload your tax returns or other documents and finally just let us know if you want to clarify any notes or add to them something that we didn't get to talk about you want us to know about what happens with this email is it becomes the beginning piece to our work papers we'll print this into PDF and we'll we'll make sure that it's in to our PDF work papers we'll put all of our email communications at the top then we have source documents like bank statements interest statements brokerage statements below that so that way we when we have all the information together that supports our Google Sheetz which is our Excel work papers and and those two items together are what will make up and ultimately is what it's reported on the tax return so I like this because it gets all of us on the same page client me team we're all together we're all seeing the same information let's look at that intake form from action item and in the intake form this is kind of like the organizer that you would normally send and it's more information gathering so on the first page we're gonna be asking like a first name last name address last for birthdays occupation the things we need to just report the 1040 and then later on we ask questions around and this one's this is when it becomes a little bit more like an organizer except a lot nice hearth to interact with of do you have foreign accounts did you sell Bitcoin should we expect w-2s 1099s and and it's the beginning stages of for us of well what are we going to get from this client to actually work on the return here is a response from a client that filled out the form and this is actually a piece of automation here so normally the response the responses from the Google Form go into this it's a Google sheet where all the responses are from left to right and each column is going to be a question and then each response is a row well that's not too friendly when you're trying to read and look for information so what I did is I created a template of what I want how I want all the responses to get laid out so instead of having the questions in a call each column going left to right I've set it up so the questions are going down the rows and then the responses are next to it I've added some conditional formatting in there so if it's green it's green and it's green it's filled out I mean so that way it's really easy with your eyes to see where should I focus and on the far right as I brought something gold standout and what I was doing there is for some sort of questions it's just so you don't miss it I haven't I haven't pointed out so for instance like foreign accounts do you have them and if they do it'll say foreign accounts on the stand out and I'm and then we can make sure that they filled out that section that way we don't miss anything with F bars so it really helps it helps us increase our quality every time without having to think about it because we just did this once and we used a an add-on called form publisher that accomplishes this this output for a new client all right so after they completed all those steps I have their information now I can start saying okay well let's look at let's looking at the information on God let's look at what you answered on those forms during this whole process besides getting the information besides hearing what's going on this is also an opportunity then for for the client to test us out and see are they are they able to use our systems are they are the tool are simple however are they naturally inclined and can they can they figure it out basically can they upload to Google Drive are there any technical issues if they can't get through these steps it's a good flag for us they probably not a good client for us if they're really slow in some areas it helps gives us give us a chance to go maybe they're not going to be as responsive as we need and it helps us keep filter out clients that may or may not be the right fit ultimately that's that's huge for us because it's it's an enormous time suck when you're when you're chasing down clients for information and you're and you're getting you have to remember to keep following up every few weeks for documents that are readily available so to remove that huge resource set to just stop it at the front that's the idea so we close with the quote maybe that's by phone maybe that's by email we would an engagement letter and we would send in voice out as soon as that either as soon as we send the doctor sign or as soon as they sign the engagement letter kind of depends on the time of year if we're talking January February as soon as they we're sending them voice if it's if it's about mid-year and we're maybe six months away from actually doing any work on the client I may I may just ask for a retainer and in Boise um couple thousand bucks to hold their spot so let's look at the tools that we've we used during this sales process lots of Google I love Google because they have an API that is very robust and and can communicate with a lot of other tools so for Google we use drive with gmail calendar forms sheets Google Voice for the call hangouts for video and then scripts and add-ons specifically in this one we had foreign publisher outside of Google we use County for scheduling and asana for project management we saw CRM Jamelia s-- is a gmail productivity tool it has some really sophisticated ways to do templates and also send emails later snooze emails it's it's uh it's nice for if you're all on your own and you maybe you don't have an assistant or maybe you're processing your own emails it's it's really good for the solo person or the person managing their own inbox and a tool that we didn't highlight in here but we use throughout this whole process is slack and that that integrates really well Google in a song as well as many other apps as we shift over to our last page let's look at this this quote that I really like and just give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend four hours sharpening the axe that's what it's like to automate you're gonna spend a lot of time up front to get it together to get the process down to drill it out but as soon as you do it you're not going to waste your time eating the dole acts on the tree you're gonna be fast they're gonna be sophisticated and you're gonna have replicate really good process and procedures that quote was attributed to Abraham Lincoln but I doubt he said it it just it seems like it seems like something that sounded good we go must have been Abe anyways if there's anything at all that interested you in this video or you'd like to chat I'm always free and open to talk about it my email is Scott at Y blue calm and you can catch me on other videos about asana and our our tools online youtube or through our blog at y blue com alright thank you for listening and thanks for your time I hope this was really helpful for you and have a nice day bye bye now