The Best Way to Bring on New Clients

How to Save Precious Time Onboarding New Clients

You might have routines and systems to help a new employee settle in, such as payroll forms and training manuals. You might also have some procedures set up for when you start doing business with new vendors, such as asking them for their tax ID paperwork and having them submit invoices to your standards. But what about onboarding new clients? Most entrepreneurs don’t think about systematizing that process.

You will save a ton of time if you stop and put some systems in place to help you and your new client get off to an efficient start. The payoff can be extremely high. If you save a half hour per client and you have 100 new clients a year, then you just saved 50 hours a year, or an hour a week.

Here are a few tips to get you thinking about where you might be able to streamline your new “New Client Acquisition Process.”

First the Paperwork

What forms do you need from every client? These might include:
• An engagement letter or contract that describes the scope of the work to be done.
• Billing information, which might include a credit card on file and the process they want used to submit and approve invoices.
• How the client found out about you for marketing tracking purposes.

You can further systematize this by having a standard engagement letter, a form each client fills out, and/or a standard pre-written email (forever saved in your drafts folder of your email program for easy access).

The Good Old Days

Way before computers and the internet, all types of businesses used to run credit checks on new customers before opening their accounts. That might not be a bad idea to bring back! If so, you’ll need a form for that so that your clients can provide you with the information you need to run a credit check. Either that or provide them the ability to prepay their account.

Getting Started
Make a list of items you need from your clients to get started. This will vary depending on what industry you serve. Here are some common items to get you started:

• Contact information include staff names, titles, phone numbers, and email addresses
• Account names, user IDs and passwords
• Description of their problem if it’s repair-related
• Hardware and software information if it’s a computer-related service
• Any documents you need to complete your project
• Insurance information
• Licenses
Once you have your list, you can create a form asking for all of the information you need from every client. This will save you tons of time if you are asking for these things piecemeal now.

Instructions

Do you find yourself repeating the same instructions over and over again to each new client? Write your spiel down or better yet, make a recording so your client can listen in at their convenience and play it over and over again if they need to.

Here are some common implementations of this one:
• Photography studio owners can write down how clients can prepare for their portrait and what to wear.
• Grocery stores can provide recipes for items in their deli.
• Plant nurseries can have instructions on how to re-pot plants.
• Plumbers can provide instructions for how to turn off the water.
• Restaurants can offer menus that disclose ingredients and calories for those who are sensitive or on diets.
• Office supply stores can make a chart of how different products compare.
• Web hosting companies can have screen-capture videos made on how to set up email accounts.

You’ll save tons of time with this one. What can you think of to save yourself time onboarding clients?

Systems

There’s no doubt you’ll need to enter some information into your sales, order, accounting, or project system in order to set up your new client. If there’s any way your client can do this directly, then you will have saved yourself a step. Take a look at where you have duplicate data entry and explore ways to automate it or have the client enter the information directly. We can help you with some ideas if you need help in this area.

Welcome Packet

Is your business the type that could send your client a welcome packet of goodies? If so, shower your new client with bonuses and goodies so they’ll have a positive first impression that will last a long time. These items will include anything that saves your client time and money, and will NOT be a bunch of promotional items with your logo on it. (If it has your logo on it, it’s not a gift; it’s an ad.)
These items might be checklists, reports, tips, cheat sheets, candy, flowers, liquor (if your license allows it), a thank you note, a stuffed animal, and/or anything else that is a traditional gift.

Take a look at all the steps you go through to onboard your client, and see where you can streamline your systems so that both you and the client will save time. You’ll also look amazingly organized to the client, which is a good thing!

Life is too Short; Save Time with these Ideas

The Secret Sauce to Saving Time

Is finding enough time to do everything you need to do one of your top five small business challenges? If so, you’re not alone; just about every entrepreneur lists “time” as a challenge they face today in running their businesses. It’s not uncommon to feel stressed and overwhelmed at everything you need to do.

Plenty of time management books will help you use your time more productively, but who has time to read a whole book these days? Instead, here are some quick tips to help you work smarter, ease any stress, and tame the time monster.

The 4 “D”s

You might have seen a strategy that allows you to evaluate how to handle each task or e-mail as it comes across your desk. Here’s mine: 1. Do, 2. Delegate, 3. Delete, and 4. Delay.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. For each task you have, you choose one of the four. Do means drop everything and do it now. Delegate means give it to another person to do. Delete means you didn’t really need to do that task in the first place and you can cross it off the list. And delay means you’re going to do the task later and not now.

Every single thing that comes into your life can be handled using this 4D filter: do, delegate, delete, and delay. It’s a great tool, and I’d definitely recommend trying it if you don’t have a system for yourself. But there’s an even better idea.

The Secret Sauce

Once you’ve applied your formula and you’ve decided on the tasks you’re going to “do” today (the first of the “D”s), there’s another step we can add that will actually start freeing up some time. With tasks you’re going to “do,” you have two more filters to try:

1. Can I automate this task?
2. Can I systematize this task?

Go ahead and “do” the task the way you’ve always done it. Then add another step that essentially asks: “Is there a better way?”

Take Your Biz Off Automatic Pilot

It’s funny how we keep doing the same things over and over again the same way, even though our business has long outgrown the way we’re doing it! Sometimes we don’t think to question whether there are new ways of doing things faster. We might not want to tackle the learning curve, even though we could save a lot of time in the long run.

A client showed me her invoices recently, and I asked her how long she had been doing invoicing that way. “About 15 years,” she said. The second she said it, it dawned on her to change. It hadn’t occurred to her to even consider changing before! Once she got the bug to change, you couldn’t stop her. She was able to both systematize and automate her invoicing, saving several hours each week. Once her mind was turned on to asking “Is there a better way?”, she found dozens of tiny procedures she could change, freeing up even more time in her daily routine.

It can happen when you add or replace an employee, too. You’ll see what systems need tightening up, and you can create procedures and implement new software and tools with the new employee to make the job even more effective. This happened recently to an associate when he hired a personal assistant.

Workflow Improvements

Frank is a do-it-now sort of guy. When he needed something, he needed it now. He was making multiple personal errand trips several times a week to purchase groceries, make dry cleaning runs, do banking business, and mail packages. His new assistant, Beth, took over all of those tasks and she also systematized everything. She created inventories and re-order points on all his supplies and even his groceries. She set up procedures for all her new tasks. What took Frank 10 hours a week now takes Beth 3 hours a week because she eliminated the redundancy and streamlined the job. Now that’s a time management tip worth implementing.

More Important Things

The 4Ds, Do, Delegate, Delete, and Delay, are a great way to organize your time. To save even more time, take a look at automating or systematizing everything you can, and let us know how we can support you.

Won’t it be nice to have time for more important things?

The Fine Art of the Upsell

Want Fries with Your Burger? The Fine Art of the Upsell

Restaurants do it beautifully. “Did you leave any room for dessert or coffee?”

At least one car rental company my client just visited did it obnoxiously. “Did you want insurance, gas, a GPS, or a toddler seat? Who will be responsible for the car if something happens to it? Oh by the way, it’s extra now for the steering wheel. And if you want it to go in reverse from 4PM to 5PM, that’s an extra charge, too.”

The All-Important Upsell

How does your company rate when it comes to the all-important upsell? Is it smooth like a restaurant waitress who smiles while she delivers her line? Or could it be improved?

While you don’t want to anger your current customer, you do want to fully serve their needs in a way that helps them and boosts your revenue. Here are five tips to perfect and track the all-important upsell.

1. Make sure you are upselling.

Once people have chosen to do business with you, you have their trust. They’ll want to know what else you have to offer. Sometimes we may feel like we’re bugging the client, but it’s really cheating your client not to let them know what else you can help them with.

Don’t be afraid to add upselling to your communications with your client in a number of places. If you don’t upsell, you’re leaving precious money on the table, and most of all, you’re under serving your clients. A small percentage of your customers will always purchase what you suggest.

2. Get the timing right.

Add an upsell option immediately after a prospect has landed in your funnel. For example, if they signed up for your free newsletter, offer them your entry product or service on the landing, on your Thank You page or in your first welcome email to them.

If your product or service is relatively small in dollars, add an upsell option immediately after any small purchases. Do this right after the shopping cart has processed their order. Some carts have an automatic feature built in to do this; all you have to do is select the product you think the buyer would like.

Don’t upsell right after you’ve agreed on a large proposal, but do upsell at the end of that engagement.

If you meet a client periodically, such as monthly or quarterly, always schedule the next appointment before you leave if possible.

3. Get the product right.

Gradually move your client up in price. If they purchase something for $100, offer them something for $500, but not for $5,000. If they buy a $5,000 contract, they might be ready for a $10,000 service next year.

4. Create the right language.

Never put your customer in a position where they feel forced to make a decision or feel wrong for not taking the service, like my client did with the rent car. (Try your upsell line on your spouse or friend before you try it on a prospect to be sure of this.) Use language that is benefit-focused when you explain the options, and always let them know that you appreciate their business and the decision is theirs to make.

5. Package your offerings right in the first place.

Services that should be included in the base price, well, should be included in your base price. Don’t confuse upselling with what should have been in your package in the first place. That’s how most customers feel cheated during upsells.

Tracking the Upsell

There are a couple of ways you can track your upsell results. If you offer every client who bought “x” the “y” product, you can compute a conversion ratio based on your sales of x and y, assuming you keep them in separate buckets in your accounting system. You can do that for every upsell you have at the service line or product line level.

Another more general way to track upsells is to compute revenue per client on a monthly basis and see if it’s on the upswing. If you need help calculating either of these methods or setting up your services and products correctly to create the upsell tracking you want, please let us know how we can help.

Upselling is a vital part of every business. Fine-tune your processes with these tips and watch your sales increase and your clients become better served and more loyal.

Is Your Business Out of Balance?

You wouldn’t be in business if it weren’t for your clients. Yet, sometimes we almost forget that we are ultimately in business to receive a salary and to make a profit. In large companies, a balance must be maintained between serving clients and serving the shareholders. In your small business, the shareholder is YOU, so the pull is between you and your clients.

The question is, are you winning? Are your clients winning? Or is there a balance? Here are some tips to see if your business is out of balance, and if it is, how to get back in balance.

1. Pay yourself first.

This might sound very basic, but it’s surprising how many small business owners will pay everyone else first and then have nothing left over for themselves.  A recent client of mine realized how much her employees and assistants were cutting into her business margins on one particular service line. She cut back on her assistants’ time and employee hours, stopped doing some tasks that weren’t generating a return, and had more profit left over for her own paycheck.

The solution is to remember to always pay yourself first, literally, by cutting your payroll check or taking a regular draw from your business before you pay anyone else.

2. Price your services carefully.

Be sure that not only your costs and overhead are covered when you price, but that also a fair profit margin is left over for all your time and trouble. Too many people are pricing for the short term in this economy. Price for the long term, and emphasize the value you bring to your clients.

One example is to ask yourself whether you’ve made an adjustment for the higher gasoline rates. If not, you’ve just given yourself a pay cut. You probably wouldn’t work as an employee for someone else who gives you a pay cut; why tolerate it in your own business?

3. Maintain excellent time boundaries with clients.

If you charge by the hour, be sure you charge what you are worth. It’s typical not to charge for learning curve time, and writing off some of that time is fair. However, if you are constantly writing off time that you work on a client’s account, something is wrong.

Whenever you write off time that truly deserves to be billed, you are cheating your family out of your hard-earned money, taking time away from them, and spending your money and time on a customer instead. You are also misleading the client, who will be expecting you to be cheap in the future. I think we do this because we love pleasing our clients, but I think everyone would agree that family is where all of our true priorities lie.

This includes answering emails and phone calls for free and not writing down that time, giving bonus products, and other freebies. It’s one thing to make a conscious decision to be competitive and consistent across all clients and another to be sloppy in our recordkeeping or to say yes when we really meant to say no but didn’t have the courage. If you need help with setting up better time tracking or billing systems, give your us a call.

4. Don’t try to do it all yourself.

There’s power in numbers. There are a couple of options when hiring a team to help you get everything done:

1. Delegate the tasks that you do that are worth the lowest hourly rate on the market. For example, what are you doing that someone earning minimum wage could learn to do? This will free up your time for more strategic tasks or billable time.
2. Hire someone that you can receive at least a 4 to 1 return on salary. Your employee then becomes a profit center for you that is billable.

In either case, you are maintaining the balance by freeing up time and/or generating additional revenue as you incur additional costs.

5. Get a life outside work.

Unfortunately, our society is perfectly designed to promote workaholism. With devices we can access 24 /7, some of us can’t resist peeking to see what emails and text messages have come in even though it’s off hours.

Leave work behind during the evenings and weekends (or take time off regularly). Everyone needs to re-charge with social events, hobbies, and interests outside of work. You’ll be refreshed, well-rounded, and more creatively able to do your best work when you are serving clients.

Do any of these five tips speak to you about getting your business back in balance? If so, take the step toward making some changes. When you do, you’ll start to feel more in control, less burned out, and back in balance.

Seven Summer Projects That Can Heat Up Your Business

Summer is a great time for new projects that revitalize our lives.  If your spouse or family is creative, you may have a lot of those summer projects that require your time and attention at your home this season.  But what about a summer project for your business?  It could be just the thing to spice up your business and help you rejuvenate your staff and your energy at work. 

Here are seven ideas to help you heat things up at work and reap the rewards that result:

1. Move from reactive to proactive. Work on fine-tuning one small area of your business where you’re constantly experiencing fires. How can you anticipate and prevent these fires?  It might be putting some procedures in place, training staff, getting help from a vendor, or perhaps even firing a client that is too demanding.  When you take the first step toward prevention, even if it's a baby one, you've made a tremendous amount of progress toward controlling the situation rather than if you just remained in reactive mode. 
2. Look at one part of your processes and make a small improvement. I’ve just recently implemented these new articles in my newsletter (let us know how you like them).  That's one example of a really small change that I made in my processes that will improve my service to my customers.
3. Systematize something that's worked in the past and repeat it. No need to reinvent the wheel if you've found the magic formula. Do the magic formula over and over again, perhaps more often, and you'll increase your results. For example, if you're good at working with people on the phone, then write down the process you’re using so that you’re discovering what you say that customers like.  Then do it intentionally 100% of the time as part of your newly systematized process. 
4. Listen to your clients and roll out a new service offering that they are asking for. A huge part of the battle for getting new clients is getting people to trust you. Why not leverage the people who already trust you - your current clients - and serve them in a new way. Increasing your revenue per client is a great way to help your clients even more and to boost you bottom line at the same time.
5. Hone your skill. We spend a lot of time working on our core competency - the service we deliver to clients - and getting better at it. Why not get better at an accounting skill? This could include understanding reports better, learning how to job cost or product cost so that you understand your margins better, learning how to review accounts, and a host of other skills that will help you become more effective at analyzing your business’s financial data. Sometimes we forget accounting is a skill we can learn just like we know our core business - especially those of us who are reluctant about numbers. 

6. Measure. How do you know something is working unless you measure it? Add procedures to measure the results that are important to you; then you can begin to see where you need improvements. These include numbers such as revenue, expenses, cash flow, and profits down to the unit you want to measure them. When you do this you'll naturally be able to improve your financial results in your business.
7. Celebrate. Stop for a second when you reach a goal and celebrate all the hard work you did that paid off and got you there. Give yourself a reward, practice gratitude for what you received, and then set your next goal.

Which one of these projects speaks to you the most? Mark your summer calendar right now to take one step toward working this project into your summer plans so you can heat up your business.

Carve out a unique space for your business

In the Niche of Time

You’ve probably heard advice about how it helps to carve out a niche for your business. But did you know it will also save you a tremendous amount of time? Here’s why.

When a small business first opens, the entrepreneur is thankful to take anyone who breathes and pays their bill. Once the business fills with customers, the owner can afford to get more particular. They can take a look at what type of clients they like to serve best, as well as the type of clients they best serve.

Through targeted marketing, small business owners can begin to attract the type of clients they prefer. That’s when defining your niche comes in handy. But it also saves time in your business.

“Same Old, Same Old” Equals Time Savings

When you serve a niche, you will see the same client challenges over and over again. You can create a systematic process that can be followed for your clients when your clients are more homogeneous.

As you become good at identifying the challenges of your niche clients, you can anticipate the needs of your clients much better and more accurately. There is less breadth to learn. You can take the time you save to learn about solutions for your homogeneous clients that are far deeper and far more effective.

Depth, not Breadth

As an example, a small business that serves hospitals, physician practices, and drug stores with their pharmaceutical products will have three learning curves instead of one. They’ll grow faster if they discover which client type is more profitable for them, let’s say, hospitals, and target more hospitals in the marketplace. If they can generate the same amount of revenue with 20 hospitals as they could the mix of three types of clients, their production and marketing costs will be much lower.

There are even more benefits to developing your niche. When you implement this deeper knowledge that you’ve learned from serving multiple clients that are alike, your client testimonials will be glowing. You will develop a reputation faster within the niche than you would in the general world. Your referrals will speed up.

Developing a niche not only saves you marketing and sales dollars, it also creates economies of scale within your staff. They have less to learn and will surpass their learning curves faster, which enables them to serve your clients sooner and better.

Have I piqued your interest about niches? Are you convinced there are riches in niches?

Riches in Niches

Let’s list some of the ways a niche can be defined.

• Industry: Your niche might be by industry, as in construction, health care, or technology. The more recession-proof your industry is, the better.
• Service/Product: A niche could be by service or product, as in tax planning, women’s shoes, or dog grooming.
• Geography: You can also narrow your offerings by geography.
• Customer Type: Another way to niche is by customer, such as hospitals, psychiatric practices, or retirement homes.
• Combination: You can mix and match for power niche-ing, as in nurses’ shoes, hotels that cater to traveling rock bands, or nonprofit teen programs.

Is Your Business Already Niched?

To get a hint of how your business might already be developing a niche, review your customer list and look for commonalities among your current client base. Look for type of customer, industry, geography, product/service, and even gender to see if you spot a trend. Group similar clients together to see how much revenue as a percentage of total sales each type is bringing in.

Once you identify that you have several of the same type of clients, you can benefit from productivity gains by standardizing the way those accounts are served.

Finding a niche allows you to work smarter, not harder, and keep more of what you make in your business.

Time is money. Let us do your bookkeeping!

Did you know that A Step Up does more than onsite bookkeeping? 

We also offer offsite and remote bookkeeping solutions.  We have a variety of methods available to us to help you with your bookkeeping tasks as much or as little as you like.  Stop spending your nights and weekends catching up with your business record-keeping, and have more time available for money-earning activities!   

For offsite bookkeeping there are 3 criteria we address to determine the best solution for you:

1)   How much of the bookkeeping do you want to do yourself?  Will you be running your own payroll, or perhaps entering invoices and deposits, but would like us to enter checks and debits and reconcile the bank statement?  Or is there another combination that makes sense to you, based on your available staff and time?

2)   How much access do you need to your QuickBooks data file?  Do you need daily up-to-date information at all times, a weekly backup to run whatever reports you like, or do you just need monthly reports to assess how your business is doing?

3)   What is your flow of paperwork and source documents?  Are most statements available online, or is there a significant amount of paper that needs to move back and forth?

We offer a variety of flexible solutions based on your needs to access your data and the flow of your office.  Which one is right for you?

1)    Remote Login to your computer.  We use logmein to directly access your computer and the QuickBooks data file that always resides at your site.  We can also set you up with your own free logmein account, so YOU can access your own computer when you are traveling.  In this scenario, you do some of the bookkeeping yourself, and we take over your computer when you are not using it to do the rest.  Your file is always up-to-the minute when you need it.

2)    QuickBooks Online or a Hosted (cloud) datafile.  Your QuickBooks data actually resides on a third-party server, and both you and A Step Up can access it whenever we need to.  The benefit of this is that you don’t need to dedicate a computer to QuickBooks, and we don’t need to coordinate a time to take over the resources at your office.  We can also both be in the file at the same time in some cases.  This is a great solution for a busy office and monthly access fees start at just $20 a month for QuickBooks online and $50 a month for a hosted solution.

3)    We keep your QuickBooks datafile on our server.  We have a secure environment and a multiple backup procedure.  You don’t even need to have a computer or purchase QuickBooks for this option!  We handle all of your bookkeeping and send you reports, typically once a month if we are only reconciling your bank accounts, and weekly if we are also handling invoicing and bill payment tasks.

Lastly, we set a plan of attack for the source documents we need to complete your bookkeeping.  These generally include: bank statements, credit card statements, check registers, and copies of invoices and bills.  We offer free pickup and delivery and can set a fixed schedule (typically the same day each week) to exchange a “folder” of what has accumulated during the week.  You can also scan and email us, or fax.  Online banking is also an option, and for several clients we download the bank statements directly when the bank completes them.

We have fixed monthly rates available, starting at just $125 per month for data entry of all checks, debits and deposits for two accounts (typically a checking account and a credit card).  This also includes reconciling and monthly reports. 

Your bookkeeping no longer needs to be a chore.  Let the QuickBooks experts at A Step Up Bookkeeping assist you with keeping your financial records up-to-date, timely and accurate.  Up-to-date records give you the valuable information you NEED to make informed financial decisions about your company’s growth.  We also keep an eye on cash flow and expense trends, to keep you on sound financial footing.  Call A Step Up at 679-2022 for a free consultation.