1. The all-important first client meeting

It’s a complimentary 60-minute discovery meeting with a prospective client to establish fit and begin the relationship on the best possible footing.

The Prospective Client Meeting is essentially a goal-setting session that determines how you can serve a potential client to help them achieve more mind, time, and financial freedom. It’s a key step in effective onboarding as it enables you to attract quality clients and alert you to potential tyre-kickers. This meeting will also increase the average fee per client without product pushing.

The Prospective Client Meeting is structured to:

• Establish personal goals, and what the business needs to deliver in terms of roles, income, hours worked and holidays.
• Uncover the business goals that will deliver those personal goals.
• Understand current problems and challenges.
• Agree on the best way to work together to overcome those challenges and achieve goals.

2. The proposal

Before you send any proposal, it’s vital you gain conceptual agreement with your client as to the services you’ll deliver and the price for those services. Gaining conceptual agreement is best done at the Prospective Client Meeting (PCM). That way, you can overcome any natural objections your client might have.

We’re about to mention the ‘S’ word - Sales! We get that accountants don’t love that word, yet the reality is that today’s accountant needs to know how to position their help through a service. Having a consistent definition for each of your services, agreeing your base price for each of those services, and your preferred payment options will also help to minimise Scope Stretch.

Using proposal software to generate a beautiful ‘on brand’ document that your client can accept electronically, positions you as professional and organised and removes friction from what can be an awkward process.

3. The Administrivia

There are a lot of moving parts...

Developing a comprehensive Client Onboarding Checklist is key. Here’s where your administration team sweeps up the AML/CFT checks, obtains authorities to act and completes CRM set up.

Consider using Trello or other software to track your onboarding process, giving your team visibility as to what stage each client is at. Some firms also use Zapier to trigger automations such as workflow and billing.

4. Welcoming your client onboard

Start as you mean to go on.

Send a welcome email, perhaps even a gift or kit with information of value and vouchers for upcoming client events or webinars.

You get one chance to create a first impression. Remember that this is also a marketing opportunity and that most of your referrals probably come from existing clients.

5. Introduce key team members

Book a 15-minute Zoom meeting and put some names to faces.

In advance, send a brief summary of who and what, and add some human touches. Business is personal!

6. Billing and payments

This can be a pain point for you and your clients.

We recommend sending an email three days after proposal acceptance, using ‘set and forget’ recurring payment software, such as GoCardless.

7. Thank the referrer

This needs to happen every time. Reward referrers with a gift - even if you don’t think that they expect it.

8. Set jobs up in workflow

This is a critical step in onboarding and a key reason why having visibility over all moving parts (e.g. using Trello boards) is important.

9. Deliver any ‘time critical’ jobs

Agree timeframes and deliver these jobs on time.

10. The one-month follow up call

This should be done by the person who manages the client relationship.

This is an opportunity to check in on the client experience so far. It also builds trust and rapport (and may unlock further opportunities to work together). Very few firms do this! Consider it your secret marketing weapon.