Clients are the lifeblood of your firm, but should you welcome every prospective client with open arms? Many firms make the mistake of answering “yes” to this question and quickly find that their team is burnt out, frustrated and overworked.
Potential clients interview your firm to see if you are a good fit for them. Your firm should be doing the same.
The right clients will make your work enjoyable. The wrong ones will make you dread the office. But how do you know which clients will be a good fit for your firm? I am going to share five simple tips to help you weed out the bad apples.
Here are five simple tips to help you choose the right clients for your firm:
1. Trust Your Gut
Have you ever met with a client and felt they would not be a good fit but worked with them anyway? You are not alone. Many firms make this one big mistake: They do not trust their gut instinct.
The first meeting or two with a client can tell you a lot about what it would be like to work with them.
Listen to your instincts if you notice any red flags or your gut is telling you they will not be a good fit.
2. Work with Clients in a Specific Niche
What kind of work do you enjoy doing? What do you know, and what are you comfortable with? Sometimes, it is not necessarily the client’s personality or behavior that is the problem. It is the type of work they require.
Figure out the type of work you and your team enjoy doing, and focus on clients in these niches.
For example, when I ran my firm, I did not enjoy job costing, so I chose not to work with clients in the construction industry. I did enjoy the simplicity of professional services, so I focused on attracting those types of clients.
Remember that your firm is not obligated to work with every client who walks through the door. If you and your team dread working with clients in certain niches, it may be time to cut them loose.
3. Make Sure Clients Can Afford You and Value Your Services
Before taking on a new client, make sure that they:
- Can afford your services
- Value your services
Both of these points are important. A client may be able to afford you, but they may not perceive your service as valuable enough to sign on as a client. You must be able to demonstrate and communicate value when considering new clients.
4. Look for Red Flags
When you are first communicating with a new client or going through the onboarding process, look for red flags.
For example, are they collaborative or do things have to be done their way? If they are not collaborative, you and your team will find yourselves jumping through hoops and making new systems or processes to work with this client. Is it worth it? In most cases, no.
Here are some other red flags to look for:
They Do not Value Your Time
You don’t want to work with a client who does not value your time. These clients are the ones who:
- Walk through your door with a shoebox full of receipts. They are disorganized, and they expect you to make sense of their chaotic mess. Clients should be organized. I ran a virtual firm, and clients were required to deliver everything electronically.
- Come around only at the end of the month and expect you to have their financial statements ready immediately. Clients like this may expect you to drop everything you are doing to cater to their needs rather than respecting that you have other clients and work to do.
- Fail to provide input promptly. Your work is a collaborative affair and clients have to do their part to provide input on time.
Clients that do not value your time may have unrealistic expectations about your firm’s services and communication policies. In many cases, they are more trouble than they are worth.
You Have to Chase Them
If you are already chasing a client at the start of your working relationship, things will not get better in the future. For example, if you have to hound a client to send over their documents, there is a good chance that you will have to hound them every single time they need to share documents.
They are Poor Communicators
Communication is important in this line of work. Clients that go MIA and fail to respond to emails and messages will only waste more time and make it more difficult to meet deadlines.
Open communication is important. If a client can’t meet this expectation, it may be time to let them go.
Potential clients interview your firm to see if you are a good fit for them. Your firm should be doing the same.
Premium Prices Are not Worth the Stress and Toll on You and Your Team
Many firms ignore red flags like these because they are afraid to lose the revenue the client brings to the firm.
But even a premium price will not make a difficult client worth the stress and toll they will take on you and your team. If you are struggling with a client now, it will not get any better later.
- Raising your prices will not change things
- You cannot change your client
The best you can do is communicate the problem and work together to find a solution. Clients can’t change if they do not know there’s a problem, so make sure your firm is also doing its part to communicate openly.
5. Are They Happy to Follow Your Processes?
Clients should be willing and able to follow your processes and utilize your firm's technology stack. Remember that you are the expert. You know what works best for you and your team. You know which processes and technology get the job done the best.
The right clients will be happy to jump on board and get familiar with these tools.
But your firm can also do its part to make it easier for clients to say “yes” to your processes. Having all of their files, tasks, resources, and apps in one central location makes your service more valuable and convenient. Client Hub is an excellent option for this because you can handle all client communication, document sharing, tasks and more from one easy-to-use platform.
Bad clients can have a negative effect on the entire firm. Teams can easily find themselves dreading work and feeling burnt out because of stress and the hassle of working with certain clients. By being more selective about the clients you work with, you’re saving yourself and your team a great deal of stress and frustration.
Judie McCarthy is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor (Advanced Certified), speaker, author, experienced accounting professional, and co-founder of Client Hub, a one-of-a-kind, all-in-one web-based, frictionless workflow and client collaboration tool built for accounting professionals. Client Hub takes communication out of cluttered, unsecure email inboxes and into a secure, firm branded workspace. To get in touch with Judie or schedule a demo of Client Hub, CLICK HERE.
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