Using sales data in accounting firms

When it comes to use of data, accounting firms can be a little paradoxical in their approach. On the one hand accountancy could make a claim to be one of the most data driven industries in the world. Firms take data from their clients, process and analyse that data using the latest AI-enabled technology, and can provide their clients with advice based on real-time financial information. On the other hand, ask a partner of a firm what that firm's conversion rate is on new client opportunities, and I’d be willing to guess that most wouldn't have a clue. Ask them what their last 10 new clients have in common, and they’d probably mumble a guess rather than admit that they have no idea. 

The truth is, whilst being experts in using client’s data, many firms have spent very little time looking at how they collect their own. And this seems especially true when it comes to data collected (or more often not collected) during the sales process. 

Let’s say a potential new client enquires through your firm’s website. What happens next? Typically a senior member of staff, maybe a partner, will phone that prospect up to ‘qualify’ them. The questions that are asked as part of this qualification process will probably vary based on the type of prospect and which partner they speak to. If the prospect is interested in moving forward, the partner might take some notes and book a meeting, sharing those notes with whoever is going to host that meeting. Perhaps a week later the meeting will happen, and some deeper questions will be asked, after which a proposal will go out to the prospect. 

The chances are, the next prospect who enquires with your firm will be asked a slightly different set of questions at each stage. Maybe they become a client too. All good news right? Well, not quite. The problem with the above is that the absence of a consistent qualification approach is causing a missed opportunity to obtain some really valuable data. 

Why is sales data important?

The point at which we first engage with a client is the point at which they are going to be most open with us about their goals and challenges. What don’t they like about how they do things now? What do they want to achieve long term? What brought them to us in the first place? These are the kind of questions we NEED to be asking early on. Because once they become a client, the conversation is going to shift pretty quickly to specifics. And when our time is focused on answering specific questions and discussing specific queries, the big picture can get lost. So early on we need to be not just asking these big picture questions, but asking them in a consistent manner, and logging the answers so that they become data points we can report on and learn from. This doesn’t just help give us a better picture of who that specific client is, but over time can help us see pictures and trends across an entire client base. 

‘when our time is focused on answering specific questions and discussing specific queries, the big picture can get lost’

Starting with consistency in questioning

The first move here is to start bringing consistency to the questions we ask when qualifying opportunities. Whether it is a potential new client, or an existing client who is interested in engaging with us on more services. Having a consistent set of ‘base questions’ (questions to use as a starting point) can make a huge difference. Let’s say for example you established 5 questions that every potential new client is asked through qualification. They could look something like this;

• What are you looking to achieve long term?

• What are your current barriers to growth?

• What is most deficient about your current process?

• How do you calculate budgets for accounting fees?

• How would you measure a successful change in approach?

These would by no means be the only questions we asked. But they would give us a consistent starting point from which to work. More importantly, by asking these questions every time we qualify a client, we now have standard data points which can be logged. This means we could have a field in our CRM / practice management system designated for each of these data sets. 

Turning sales data into insights

By logging this kind of data in the manner outlined above, we are now able to query the data. From a sales perspective this puts us in a position to learn, and shift approach based on those learnings. Let’s say you took on 10 new clients in the last month. Right now you could probably run a report to show you the average size of those new clients. Maybe you can even compare the services they took out. But if you were also able to query the ‘qualification data’ mentioned above, you could take things a huge step further. Rather than just looking at the average size of your new clients, you could compare the challenges they had that brought them to you in the first place. If a majority of those new clients were facing the same challenge, then you can begin to build a growth strategy which proactively attracts more businesses facing that common challenge. Alternatively if we could see that most of our new clients calculate their accounting budget in a certain way, then we can look at shifting the way pricing is presented to accommodate this. So used correctly, sales data can inform and direct your future growth and marketing strategy. 

‘If a majority of those clients new were facing the same challenge, then you can begin to build a growth strategy which proactively attracts more businesses facing that common challenge’

Defining ICP

Sales data can tell us a huge amount about exactly who we should be targeting and also how we should be engaging with them. Logging sales data which factors in more than just a client’s size and industry can put a firm in a position to consider the common attributes their best clients have. It can help in a really tangible way to build a picture of your ‘ideal client profile’. Knowing something about the goals and challenges that your ideal client is likely to have, puts you in a position to create content to attract businesses with those exact attributes. For example if your data shows that many new clients are suffering from low accuracy in management reports, then you might write an article/post about how to improve management reporting accuracy. This in turn, helps you to ‘qualify out’ any bad fit clients before they even engage with you directly. The idea being that those who do not have the issues you are talking about, simply won’t engage. 

Qualifying out

Learning what unites those bad fit clients can be just as valuable as understanding the good ones. Perhaps your sales data might show you that you receive a lot of enquiries from businesses with a certain issue in the same industry. On the face of it, that commonality might sound like a good thing. But perhaps the conversion rate (from enquiry to contract) is significantly lower for this group than any other industry you work with. This knowledge allows you to define how much time you should work on such an enquiry vs one that data shows is more likely to convert. 

Where to start

By necessity this article deals with the basics of how firms might begin to approach using sales data. Clearly there are more intricacies to be considered and a lot more depth of thought that could be applied e.g the value of using pick lists rather than free-type data fields. But the first steps can be relatively simple. Here are some things you can do in the short term to begin using your sales data more efficiently;

1. Understand what information you want to obtain at each stage of the sales cycle. What would it be helpful to know? What buying trends could inform future strategy?

2. Gain alignment on these data goals across your entire organisation. Make sure everyone is asking a consistent set of ‘base questions’ when qualifying an opportunity. Perhaps one set of questions for new clients, and one set for upsell opportunities with existing clients.

3. Give your teams a means of logging this data as it is obtained. Ideally you would create specific fields in your PM/CRM system, but in the absence of this a shared excel doc can serve as a starting point. 

4. Analyze the data on a regular basis. If you don’t have full intelligence reporting this might be as simple as getting everyone together for a monthly meeting to discuss findings and look for commonalities across the data. 

At True Nature Sales we offer services to analyse your use of sales data and help you build a more process driven approach to sales engagements. To find out more email our founder at murray@truenaturesales.com