Sing Your Praises To Your Clients
What do you call a computer that sings with powerful emotion?
~ A-Dell
You don’t need to be all gloaty, but for crying out loud, let your clients know the weight you are taking off them with the services you provide.
Many folks disassociate pain relief from the price they pay for ongoing services.
We bought a 100-year-old cabin five and a half years ago. Until we moved in, it had been a seasonal cottage. The previous owners were snowbirds and never stayed there from mid-October to early May.
But you know who did live there full time? Creatures. Of all manner. They had the run of the place for almost seven months every year and were barely kept at bay even when people occupied the place.
Mice, moles, rats, spiders, red squirrels, ants - the usual cottage-pest suspects. When we bought it and started renovating, a few others reared their dormant heads.
We have a small crawlspace area where we put in a furnace and water system. We had to have a remediation team come in and clear out the mud from a concrete section of the floors. The rest of the house is only 6 - 12 inches above the ground, and that area is only mud, so it was remediated with what seemed to be bleach of some sort. We had insulation blown in all around the house at ground level.
Once the cabin underside was disturbed by the renovation there was this weird awakening of the slowest, dumbest flies and mosquitoes we have ever seen.
We renovated a cabin that most folks would have taken down and rebuilt. And that cabin was overrun with critters. I know, you are insanely jealous… 🤣🤣🤣
At any rate, we did what we could to co-exist with our cabinmates - until we couldn’t take it anymore. We got a critter-ridder service. Not a service that comes in once, one that comes on a schedule under a contract.
We engaged a professional; just like the business owners who engage us to take pesky accounting off their hands and bring it under control.
But here is where the lesson on tooting your horn comes in.
We have a monthly automatic withdrawal for our service. We have pretty much everything in our life (and businesses) on auto-pay or auto-receive, so this was perfect. Except I could see the money going out but had lost sight of what we were paying them for.
The pain they had taken away from us had become our everyday expectation.
We forgot how rotten the cabin creature situation was before they came along - because it was so great now!
➡️➡️➡️We were beginning to resent the fee because we had no connection to its value any longer.
Luckily for them and us, about the time we were going to cancel the contract, the pest control feller (Keith) came out. We got chatting about what he did and what their services entailed, and I watched him as he went through his routine. I was amazed at what they were doing for us.
The defining moment was as Keith was swabbing the eves with spider repellant. I recalled back to how I had to sweep the entire place at least weekly for spiders and their webs. I realized I had not done this since they had started with us! That recollection led me to the ones of ants crawling all over our counters, the drawers having mouse droppings and relocated chewings in them, the rats eating our candles, the squirrel noises in our attic… again, not to make you jealous 🤣
He was a really patient guy. He took the time to give me more info about their services and promised to have the office send us a field report after each visit.
This is where they had fallen down. Maybe I had not paid enough attention when we signed up, but they did not make it obvious that we could get this report. The report that tells us what they had done during each visit, outlines observations of what activity had increased or decreased and, more importantly, lets us know of additional services we could benefit from.
We love this report.
We now know that if they see increased rodent activity, they top up the bait boxes
The bait doesn’t trickle-down-poison our pets
It tells us they swab along floor level if they noticed seasonal ant activity rising
It lets us know that in the summer, they increase the spider swabs
It tells us so many good things they are doing that take our pain (and pests) away!
And they suggest additional services in the report
We were paying another provider for mosquito and tick control; we didn’t even know they offered this
Here’s their process:
An email and a text are deployed a day ahead of their visit, letting us know when they are coming within a 2-hour window
The bug guy comes, and if you are home, he treats the inside as well
They leave a door knocker with the services provided, the date & time of the service, and the name of the bug guy (ours is always Keith, who is super nice and informative)
An inspection report with photos is emailed the next day
On one visit, Keith noticed a spot outside by our air conditioner pipe where mice could possibly get in the cabin, and he filled it - we would never have known this without the report
They give us the option to rate their service and provide a review (they give us a link that directs us to Google, so we don’t have to “Google their Google review location)
How can you emulate this level of client service and inform them of your value in a systematized manner (without hanging a door knocker…)?
There are many ways to make your clients understand the value of your services. Here are a few starter ideas:
Craft a client guide setting the client expectations and collaboration methods (or buy my template)
Template communications that go out on a schedule, letting them know when you are starting work in their files and what you need from them to do your good work
I use Financial Cents automated client reminders for this
Create a re-engagement process to gather client feedback on how they feel about your services (or buy my template)
Ask for reviews and give them a link to where you want the reviews to land
Template communications that let them know when the books are closed
Craft (or buy my template) a collaboration document that goes out to them monthly, quarterly or annually that lets them know the highlights of your collaboration, along with key information about their business, so all collaboration partners have a key document covering all the specifics of their business
This is a huge value-add document!
Make it simple for them to access their reports, either through an app or by creating custom reports in the accounting platform
I have a templated client Chrome Browser with a series of folders and bookmarks that I implement for them when onboarding clients or consulting with SMBs
The reports folder has bookmarks of all the reports key to their business - they can open them all at once in a single right-click (here’s a video of the Chrome Browser I have tricked out for myself that shows how the folder works)
It is important to let clients know why they are collaborating with you; the weight you are taking off their shoulders, and the great work you are doing with them! Ensure you are using systems to help them associate your charges with your value.
Don’t let them sit like we did with the bug service; seeing the money go out and losing sight of the greatness attached to those charges!
Featured Template
~~~
Featured Template ~~~
15% off discount code: BLOG
Let your clients know all the good work you have done with them and summarize company details into a single collaborative document. This slide deck is customizable, and then you can share it with your clients and any other professionals they may have as part of their business team.
Join Your Peers Here
Realize Meetup - Client Re-Engagement
1:00 PM 2:00 PM
How to re-engage clients for harmonious, higher engagements.
Join me for a monthly masterclass on the lifecycle of a client engagement. From discovery & booking, clear through to re-engagement (and dis-engagement), learn what dating a client looks like in 2023 in a series I’ve developed just for Realize.
In this masterclass, we will cover crafting a process for retaining your ideal client through surveying satisfaction & quoting, and engagement.
This is a Realize Community event series. You must be a member to participate.
I highly recommend you join Jason Staats's amazing group - you will love it there!
Sociable
- said in your head in a loud sing-songy voice
I have been to a few events recently, and it has been an absolute ball being with my friends, peers and colleagues IRL!
To check out the goings on for Scaling New Heights, search out the hashtag #SNH23 on Facebook and Twitter.
Intuit Canada hosted a series of regional events and I was on a panel with a couple of people who are doing amazing things with AI and robotic process automation. When he wasn’t talking about his RPA, Andrew Wall was mooning the crowd. #GetConnectedCan.
My News
I am excited to share that alongside Financial Cents CEO Shahram Zarshenas, I will be leading the Financial Cents Ambassador Program.
The FC Ambassador Program is a group of FC power users devoted to helping Financial Cents become the premier accounting practice management application. Collaborating directly with the Financial Cents team, we will be helping them build and improve application features desired by accounting professionals. Your voice will be heard through our voices!
This is a part-time gig. I will still be running my bookkeeping business, doing my app partner & accounting professionals’ tech consulting and hustling the cloud accounting templates.
I wanted to call it Am-bad-ass-adors but Shahram decided to keep things clean 😎😎😎
Simply yours, Kellie :-}
::Shameless Call To Action::
I sell bookkeeping templates, standard operating process handbooks and client guides.
15% off discount code: BLOG
