This page should give you some insight into how you rank in each of the 7 Steps of a
High Performance Accounting Firm.
A complete copy of your answers to all of the questions has been sent to your email.
We recommend re-doing this scorecard each time you do strategic planning for your firm to help guide the focus on what you should be working on.
Without a powerful personal vision as a leader in the business, and an overall vision for your firm, your team will lack direction and often go about their day going through the motions. You may have higher team turnover because people struggle to see where they’ll be in 5 – 10 years. They create their own vision because there is none that exists to follow in the business. Be bold, make sure you connect with it personally, and people will follow.
With a well thought through product ecosystem, a High Performance Accounting Firm is able to service the needs of their target client. If they cannot perform the service or need of the client themselves, they’ve got high quality referral partners that the client can choose to work with as well. “If they can’t help, they know someone who can.”
Clients don’t just walk through the door! Your firm needs to encourage them in with good quality marketing that supports you and your firm’s authentic self. Good marketing should be informative, educational and an opportunity for your prospects to get to know you well. It builds trust with your brand and team, and then prospects will engage with you to find out if you can help.
To increase your sales, every High Performance Accounting Firm needs a rock solid Sales Process. Each step in the sales process should be informative, educational and fun for both you and the prospective client. You need to be clear with what your core offering looks like, but also what the journey will feel like over the years that the client will consider working with you. Remember that changing accountants is a pain for a business owner – so make the offer compelling and it will be easy.
If you’ve done a great job marketing, and taking a prospect through the sales process, then the delivery should be better than the ‘pitch’. Have you got your systems and processes in place to make sure what you’ve told a client can actually happen? And the big thing we need to keep in mind as leaders is to not get caught up in the delivery. Don’t be a bottle neck. If you’ve got good team, they’ll be able to sort this out while you focus on building leaders and dealing with VIP clients.
Your team should be treated like your best clients. In fact, even better. Culture doesn’t just ‘happen’ – it takes focus, time and attention to build. Your team are the front line in dealing with the clients. Train them well. Give them opportunities to grow. Show them what the path looks like in 3, 5, 10 years time. Hire slow, fire (the wrong people) fast. There’s a lot of mission critical things in a High Performance Accounting Firm, and this certainly makes the list.
Technology can make or break a firm. Bad tech looks like slow computers, decade old software, corporate security systems getting in the way of just getting the job done. A firm that leverages good technology has team that are happy with the equipment they use, the software that they rely on, and if you embrace automation and ‘best in class’ software, your firm should save thousands or more per month in administrative wages spent on doing what software can do.
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Grow a fun, super rewarding accounting firm that runs like clockwork. We help accountants go from feeling burnt out, working way too many hours, making an average profit and struggling to grow.
