From time to time, there will be a somewhat unpleasant experience, where things don’t run as smoothly as you would like. Difficult clients tend to have a remarkable talent for slowing down the process, and cause quite the mental exhaustion in complicated situations.

When the time comes to handle an encounter such as this, here are a few simple ways you can come out on top with a satisfied customer in any accounting practice.

Choose Your Words Carefully

Each term of phrasing and language is imperative when dealing with a difficult situation. You have to be aware of what your client considered offensive or confusing.

This is because in most cases of a difficult client, the primary instigator of such trouble develops from either miscommunication or lack of knowledge on the subject you are discussing.

By maintaining a straightforward and carefully composed approach to your points of discussion, your message will appear clearer and more direct in its purpose. You may understand ‘Tax Audit’, where they may understand ‘Full Business Check Over’.

First listen to what they want to know and how they want to be told, then follow up with care.

Acknowledge Your Client, But Don’t Agree With Them

While it seems easier at first, agreeing with everything your client says can eventuate into a tough situation in the long run. Granted, it’s crucial to focus and understand everything your client is saying, but there will be moments of conflict where it is your responsibility to take control and handle it appropriately.

The successful pathway to accomplish this is to place the focus of the conversation on the resolution. Don’t make it about who is right and wrong or yourself versus your client: it’s about getting the best results, and if they understand that they will understand when you disagree with them, it is not at a personal vendetta. It’s because you know that it will not contribute to getting the desired outcome.

Be Very Specific

Difficult clients tend to be the ones that have legitimate concerns. These concerns can be troubling, frustrating, or confusing. This is why it’s important for both you and them to be very specific on what each of you mean. For example, if your client says “there’s nothing working”, you need to go into more detail to find out what areas of the business are not working. When helping to resolve their problem, you need to also be specific. As an example to the above suggestion: “If we place this strategy in place, it can help to get these areas of your business working again.”. If you need to, use measurable data along with graphs to show your client exactly what you mean.

Conclusion

When dealing with difficult clients in your accounting practice, it’s important to understand that they’re people too, and they may be going through different stages of conflict in their lives or business.

When dealing with difficult clients in your accounting practice, it is important to understand that they are people too. It is possible they may be in a stage of conflict in their personal life, or in another aspect of their business.

So, while there are times you are ready to fire up at your clients, it’s worthwhile to take a beat and invest in a calm, collected, and professional approach. Not only will this help you resolve the matter at hand, but lead the relationship you have with your client to brighter days.

Have you dealt with a difficult client lately?

4 Steps For Accountants To Handle Difficult Clients was originally published in Practice Ignition on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To harness business intelligence, metrics are important. Metrics give you insight into your firm’s performance and make the difference between you reaching your long term business goals and missing them.

What makes a good business metric?

Your business metrics need to be measurable. Metrics are all about tracking progress. You need to know what you are trying to track . A good financial metric must be:

• Comparable: Being able to compare a metric over time will provide you an indication of the direction which your business is headed. For example, understanding that your average client revenue increased 60% compared to last year, is more meaningful than stating that the average client revenue increased $1000. You need to benchmark your firm’s performance.
• Understandable: Business metrics need to be clear. You need to understand the numbers you are measuring and why you are measuring them. Internally, this is even more important as people in the business need to know the metrics which your business is focused on and be able to discuss them effectively.

Key Metrics for a Service Business

There are a number of crucial metrics which every service firm should focus on. Here are some of the most important ones:

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): This is the most important metric to consider in your service business. Given that service businesses have fixed costs to acquire clients, you can achieve profitability as soon as your Monthly Recurring Revenue covers your operating expenses. This is because once a new customer is acquired, there are no further fixed costs or sales expenditures. MRR is also a very predictable source of ongoing revenue and a major source of revenue for service businesses.

Growth Rate: Your firm needs to be able to scale efficiently. You need to calculate at what percentage you are growing your revenue and what compounded annual growth rate you are achieving. As soon as the cost of acquisition is lower than your client’s lifetime value, you can grow your business rapidly and will have the solid underlying business model to achieve profitability.

Average Revenue Per Client: You need to be able to segment your client base and work out which customers are generating the most/least revenue for your business. This helps you to prioritise your clients and measure how effective your service offerings area. Your business should target the right clients as you will boost the value you provide and increase the average spend in return.

Churn: This is the number of subscribers who discontinue their business. This is very negative as it reduces your MRR. For your firm to grow sustainably, you need to keep the churn rate low.

Net Promoter Score: The Net Promoter Score is a metric for customer experience management. It is calculated on a 0–10 scale, with the question being: How likely is it that you would recommend the brand to a friend or colleague? You want your business to have as many clients as possible scoring 9–10. This means that they will be very loyal customers and are likely to refer others, you should have a plan for them to be nice and make referrals.

How do I get Metrics like these?

You should centralise your data and then build a dashboard over the top to display key metrics. For Practice Ignition customers, this is done for you with Practice Ignition’s Dashboard. It tracks your firm’s average Monthly Recurring Revenue, Growth Rate, Average Revenue per Customer and splits your earnings between MRR and Projects.

Takeaways

To leverage business intelligence you need to focus on key metrics. You then need access to all of these metrics in one place so you can actually implement changes which make your business more efficient. Be sure to check out our guide to becoming a firm of the future.

The Practice Ignition Dashboard provides your business with all the key metrics and presents them in a way that is easy to interpret. Learn more about our Dashboard

Key Metrics For Running Your Accounting Firm was originally published in Practice Ignition on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.