To achieve sustainable long-term growth for your firm, put the product before the marketing.

Recently, I attended a tech talk by Kim Kaplan, vice president of Revenue Optimization & Strategic Growth for Plenty of Fish (POF), where she reflected on how, through sustainable long-term growth, POF was transformed from a one-person startup into an international, publicly traded company.

Kaplan’s role with POF is unique in that she manages marketing and product development. In most tech companies—actually in most companies, period—these roles are separate. So why did POF choose to combine them?

According to Kaplan, the biggest increases in user engagement and paid user subscription are driven by product innovations. Marketing helps in the short term, but delivering a better product has a far greater impact on sustainable long-term growth.

What does this mean for you? How might this message apply to accounting firms, bookkeeping practices, and fractional CFO practices?

Don’t overlook the relationship

The only way to achieve sustainable long-term growth is to ensure you have a top-notch product. POF’s products are their apps, website, and matching tools, which provide a matchmaking service. Bookkeeping, for example, starts with a service that results in a product: completed financial records.

So first and foremost, improve the quality of the client files and accounts you handle. Be accurate. Be precise. Eliminate mistakes. But don’t overlook the relationship you have with your clients.

Accountants, CFOs and advisors can add more value by deepening their relationships. Sometimes, client service is THE differentiator; after all, people do business with those they like. In turn, good work encourages referrals from existing clients and their accountants.

If you work independently, your work reflects directly on yourself. If you run a firm with a team of people, your business is more challenging because now it’s not just you and your work, but also your team and your team’s work that reflects on you and on the business.

There’s no one way to manage this, but I can tell you that from experience, I learned the truth of quality over quantity. My bookkeeping firm grew from one to 15 people in just two years. During that time, we were taking on more and more clients, and the pace of our client growth began to outstrip our ability to train our staff or review their work. This posed some quality control challenges, and even though 90 percent of the time there were no problems, the remaining 10 percent resulted in some client turnover.

Recognizing this, we righted the ship. We made changes to our leadership team, doubled down on file reviews (don’t underestimate these—they are an important part of the process!), increased employee training, and tied a portion of our associate’s income to the quality of the work they produced. These measures prevented a further loss of clients, and, in fact, even brought in new clients who were confident in our quality management process.

Create a WOW moment for your clients

Bookkeeping is a back-office service, almost like a utility, and the better your service, the more invisible you are. Therefore, it’s up to you—the service provider—to ensure your clients have an amazing experience each time they interact with your business. Relationships matter.

For example, a friend of mine runs an auto body chain. After my stolen car was recovered, I took it in for service and picked it up a week later. So far so good … but it was an overall bland experience. A week later, I got a call from an employee asking me how things were going and how the car was doing. I was ecstatic! No auto body shop had ever called me to check in. It was a very memorable experience—a real  WOW moment.

Ask yourself, is your firm delivering any WOW moments? Are you even thinking about it?

To be honest, Tee Up Advisors, is just beginning on this journey. We’ve mapped out our “Customer Experience Journey” and identified “Customer Interaction Points” where we can do better or show more care. Here are some areas we’re working on:

• Onboarding. Whether switching providers or simply unsure of the new processes, this is a very emotional time for clients. We provide an onboarding process checklist, and offer weekly updates by phone or email. We also send them a gift basket and card thanking them for their business.
• Major fiscal year events. From fundraising to annual taxes, audits, and year-end fiscal reviews, there are plenty of financial milestones that cause anxiety for our clients. On these occasions, we send them a gift basket, treat, or other indulgence, and offer some words of encouragement.
• Client anniversaries. It sounds simple, but it’s important to recognize and thank your clients for their ongoing support. We send a card, email, or even pick up the phone to acknowledge their anniversary with something like “Thanks for being our client for 1 year! We appreciate your business and please don’t hesitate to let us know how we can improve.”

Add fuel to the fire with marketing

One of my mentors told me, “A good product makes marketing super easy. A bad product makes marketing almost impossible.”

So to be clear, product = fire and marketing = fuel; not the other way around. For firms, this doesn’t mean your files must be 100% correct and your clients 100% satisfied before you engage in marketing. Let’s be honest; that’s never going to happen. But as you make progress in these two areas, you can increase your marketing spend and start building momentum.

Good luck!