I was in one of my forum meetings yesterday and Simon Bowen said he was re-focussing his target market.
Then he said….“I need to work out who deserves what I do”
Boom.
Love it.
I just love the confidence it exudes. We all do great work for so many people. But, as we know some people do not respect the work that we do. Some people do not implement what we recommend and of course some people are not pleasant to deal with.
I do get it (don’t agree with it), that you have always been a community service and said YES to anyone that breathes and pays. Like it was your duty of care to accept a referral from a long standing client – even if the referral was a $500 tax return. I was like that once.
I had a really dumb strategy about 10 years ago which was ‘something for all’. I didn’t care what size, attitude or ambition level I wanted to serve them all. There was product in a box, on-site training, books, conferences, online courses, consulting, seminar tours, licensing, software, paid content, webinars, phone support and coaching. Just typing all of that makes me exhausted.
I had a wild plan once to sign up 100 licensees around the world (mini me’s) they would sign up 100 Accounting firms each and then the 100 firms would each sign up 100 business clients (that makes 1M – 100 x 100 x 100) who would get our coaching content, data feeds and software.
A wild plan that cost me $1.5M. Didn’t work out so well. I was trying to change the world – one Accounting firm at a time. There was even a cool slide for that one with mushy / inspirational music.
When I got exited from the company (which I still own majority share) I was left with a blank sheet of paper and could plan properly. All of my business assets where tied up in the old company. As Nat (my wife) said “all of your sh## got unravelled in one go”.
As part of the reboot, I realised I shouldn’t try and change the world. I just needed to change my and my families world. And I realised I could change my world with a small group of awesome clients (that would be you) rather than hundreds of not so awesome ones. So I did the 5 questions exercise on myself (search slack for ‘5 questions’) and part of that was designing my absolute ideal client. Once you do that for yourself, then you market for that ideal client.
As long as the list is not too tight there are lots of them out there. The key here is you MUST say no to the ones who are not. I say no to so many more than yes. I say no each week without fail to someone who does not fit. I have systems in place so they do not get on my calendar for an initial meeting UNLESS they are qualified.
So what does your ideal client look like? Maybe…
- Size – revenue / people
- Ambition level
- They want help
- You can help them
- Industry type
- Ability to pay
- Like ability
- They buy everything
Maybe it’s time for you to create your list / avatar / profile of those that DO deserve you and your team. And then say NO to the rest.
Rob Nixon
I help Accountants around the world do 3 things:
- Earn >$1M profit per partner whilst working less than 500 client hours
- Build amazing Accounting businesses
- Change the lives of themselves and their clients
The average in year one of the firms I coach is:
- A profit increase of 98.4%
- A revenue increase of 20.8%
- An owners time decrease of 20.1%
In the past 27 years I have…
- Coached >600 Accounting firms helping them make >$1BN in new profit
- Authored 4 best selling books “The Perfect Firm”, “Remaining Relevant” & “Accounting Practices Don’t Add Up”, “The Wealthy Accountant”
- Spoken in front of over 185,000 Accountants in 18 countries
