'I was recently approached to work with an accountant who had been offered a buyout, but he felt that there was a better way. We discussed how the business could be modernised to give him a better work-life balance and to increase the ultimate sale value when he’s finally ready to sell. We were then able to take the increased value (based on the rate I got for selling my own business) plus the future profit he would get to keep, and then compare the total with my fee to see whether it was a logical decision. Without that comparison, my fee would have looked like a very high cost.'

Whilst my fee was calculated based on time spent, my service was sold based on the value to the client.

There are several models that you can use

Compliance plus

You can provide content passively in the form of helpful webinar and e-newsletter. You can answer reactively using pre-written helpsheets and simple frequently-asked-question (FAQ) videos. This allows you to help people via a one-to-many model with minimum cost to the adviser, so it can be quite profitable just by wrapping it up in a higher basic fee. 

Selling this model relies on having some good case studies on how it has helped other clients.

A one-to many programme

You can build your own of buy one in from, amongst others, Entrepreneurs’ Circle, The Gap or our Growing by Numbers Online. These each come with all the videos and discussion material you need to help each of your clients grow their business and deal with common areas of concern.

This can be sold under a separate fee to the compliance work.

Proactive retainer

You can explicitly agree on a business-advice package to include certain reports, meetings, etc., but please include a commitment from the client to implement the actions agreed. We insist that the business owner sets aside half a day a week to work on the actions generated throughout the programme. You should do the same.

This is usually sold for an inclusive fee, depending on the frequency of reporting, meetings and the underlying compliance work. This is a premium product as the advice is offered on a one-to-one basis. This can be the retainer, and if additional support is needed to move a project along faster, it can be charged as extra.

Ad hoc

You can offer support for individual projects. These are the easiest to sell, as there’s usually a very clear pain point and a solution, so everybody can agree the value (financial and non-financial) fairly easily.

Client case studies on wins and losses

It’s important to generate client case studies for your marketing. They’ll also make your website stand out.

Having case studies provides third-party evidence that your advice works, but it also gives examples of how you can help.

One of the first exercises we do is to look at customer/segment/product profitability. We can easily demonstrate that getting rid of clients worth £X to you will only impact your profit by £Y. This can mean either turning a loss into a profit or freeing up time to make further improvements in the business. 

'We worked with one client to get rid of £22% of their clients whilst reducing profit by only 6%. In theory, they could have saved a whole salary, but the idea was to churn unprofitable clients and replace them with more profitable ones. We also advised them to introduce a minimum fee.

The first time they did this, they were very reluctant, and we had to put together scripts to help them. Once they had finished the exercise, they were keen to repeat it in six months’ time (I had suggested annually), as they had started to notice how poor the next level of clients were compared to the higher-quality ones they were bringing in. They also increased their minimum fee further.'

Rolling this out across the firm

First, start with your own firm. Everything that you advise your clients can be tried and tested in your own business initially.

Subsequently, roll it out with your best client, and then the next few. That way you can start to build your checklists/audits, scripts and templates. Once you have these, you can write the full procedure and deploy it out further through other members of your team.

Every member of your team should be familiar with your compliance-plus resources so that they can identify opportunities to help clients. The standard information can be emailed out with a message to client stating that they should get in touch if they still have further queries. These further queries then become chargeable work.

About the author

Della Hudson FCA is author of ‘Changing the Numbers: How to deliver advisory services for maximum success’