If you’ve been relying on word-of-mouth, newspaper advertising, and local networking to bring in new clients, it’s time to expand your thinking. The internet isn’t just for selling products; even service professionals like accountants can build their customer base online.
While you may already have a website that brings in local clients, tweaking it in a few small areas can help you reach remote clients. Before you decide that you want to expand outside your city or state, here’s what you should know.
Pros of Remote Clients
One of the biggest advantages of signing remote clients is how it expands your client base. If your firm has captured most of the available business in a small town, where do you grow? You can try to add services and raise fees, but you’ll eventually hit a barrier. Your local market only represents so much opportunity.
With an online presence and the capability to work with remote clients, your market share grows exponentially. Keeping in mind that you must always comply with the rules of your CPA license, there is a lot you can do for clients who aren’t physically close to your offices.
Consider adding helping small businesses write business plans to your services. Offer special project work, like evaluating their leases against new accounting standards. As a bonus, many of these services can generate and sustain business through the slow season.
Essentially, even if you can’t prepare their state taxes, you can help a business domiciled elsewhere with many accounting-related consulting projects. You won’t just be growing your net income; you’ll also be developing your skillset and providing more intellectually stimulating opportunities for employees.
Cons of Remote Clients
Transferring data and documents can be difficult with a remote client. Unfortunately, they can’t drop their bank statements off at your office on their lunch break. Invest in a scanner, set up a secured file transfer website, or offer to pay for insured shipping to lessen this problem. Be aware that data breaches can happen, and could cause reputational harm, so send all files securely.
It’s also harder to resolve issues with clients if you can’t communicate face-to-face. While Skype, Facetime, and other services make video conferencing easy and cheap, it still might be a struggle to solve complex issues without an in-person meeting where you can both sit down and go through documents together. Even getting on your client’s schedule could be tough.
Expect to put more work into maintaining the relationship and getting questions answered if your client isn’t nearby. Also, have a plan of how you’ll handle any miscommunications that may arise. Emails and texts can be misconstrued, and there may come a time when you have to jump in and smooth over an issue.
Finding Remote Clients
Clients in another city or state aren’t as hard to reach as you might think. Establishing a robust online presence is essential to bringing in remote customers.
Websites and SEO
First, you’ll need a professional website. On it, include your company bios, areas of expertise, and credentials. Optimize your SEO, through blog posts and other methods, to hit your target audience. Maybe you don’t want to prepare someone in another state’s taxes, but you’re great at valuing assets in a divorce. Build out a content schedule that helps you rank for that skill.
When you decide to go online to find new customers, you’ll need to enlist the help of someone experienced in both web design and SEO. They can help you refine your buyer persona, or the type of client you want to appeal to, and craft a site that will draw them in.
Online Help Forums
Another great way to find remote customers is to frequent online help forums. Dedicate a portion of each day to answering questions posed by small business owners or your target audience, which relate to your business.
If someone asks on Quora what they should include in a business plan, jump in with an answer! It’s a chance to start building your online reputation and could turn into a potential new client.
Network
You should already be asking existing clients for referrals, but have you thought about asking them to refer you outside your state? Companies deal with vendors, suppliers, and customers that aren’t located geographically close to you all the time. But if you’re a local accounting firm, it might not have occurred to them that you offer your services to non-local clients.
Ask for referrals that extend beyond your local community. Once you have your first remote client, and after you’ve done a great job for them, ask them to refer you to companies in their network. This way, you can grow your reach.
What Kinds of Clients Should you Take On?
Any client that you add to your roster should support your overall business goals, but they can do so in several ways. If they’re both increasing your bottom line, but their project also deepens your expertise in some way, that one client may support multiple goals. When considering bringing on remote clients, however, you might want to start small.
If you’ve never worked with clients remotely, and if you’ve never used some of the technology tools necessary to manage the relationship, pick a smaller project. You want it to be a success, so don’t sign on for something that will tax your resources and skillset. Give yourself time to learn some of the differences between remote clients and those that can come into your office.
To increase your odds of success, you might want to start with clients whose projects are familiar and easy, something you’ve done a lot before. This will boost your confidence and ensure that you fulfill your commitments to them.
Tools Needed to Manage Remote Customers
To successfully manage remote customers, you’ll need access to a robust set of technology tools. Whether you decide to use Uber conference or Zoominfo for video conferences, you must learn and master these tools to succeed.
Before your first conference call, test the software you’re using. Do your microphones work, and can you hear clearly? Practice sending files to internal emails through the file transfer service you use before opening the portal to customers.
Before you roll out any technology to a client, be sure that it works properly, and you’re comfortable using it in-house. It’s embarrassing to have something go wrong during a sales meeting. Any time you plan on expansion, you’ll need to have the right resources and staff in place to support new clients.
If your growth has stalled, thinking outside your geographic area could kick it into gear again. Think outside the box, and outside your town, to expand your accounting business.