Managing people shouldn't be this hard. We shouldn't have to work this many hours. We should have better pricing. We should have better clients. I should be a better parent, spouse, friend and better to myself.
We have connected with hundreds of firms. Tax season once again, was mostly hard. It shouldn't be this hard (HA). How easily the grind fades.
Tax season can be better, more manageable and is for Renew firms.
One of our firms joined a large regional firm (plug for our Transition services, ping us if you want help evaluating your options).
Here is an email that we received the morning of April 15th from the MP of that firm — sent after they joined the regional firm:
"The firm we joined has hundreds of returns left to do. I'm at the Gym."
What gives?
We at Renew know high volume transactional (once a year) tax business is the root cause of many of our shoulds (list) above.
Yes, our in-boxes are filled with emails from technology vendors that AI can solve our woes. The vendors call it selling season. They are coming at our industry like never before. We call it Tax Season Woebegone season.
For the record, we aren't luddites. We agree that staying on top of technology trends and AI is important for a current firm. We also know technology does not solve serving the wrong clients, with the wrong services, at the wrong price.
We have hard every Yeah, but there is.. notably.. you can't lose revenue, those legacy clients have been loyal.. you have payroll to make or even worse debt payments.
Yet, here's the thing, you can take calculated risks and improve your should list.
Here's how. Run a Pareto Analysis and categorize your clients by Zones. We run this powerful for all new and existing firms. We wrote about this last week.
Pareto for Profit™ is a proprietary client profitability analysis we run with every firm that works with Renew. Firms submit their client count and total revenue in each price band. No client-by-client list required. From that data, we map the entire client base into four zones: the Leverage Zone, the Fragility Zone, the Danger Zone, and the one most firm owners are not prepared to see — the Insanity Zone. The insanity zone, are once a year transactional tax clients at less than your target client price.
One of our newest firms (this was their first tax season after starting our transformation program) increased revenue by 43% and reduced their client count by 200.
Same MP sent us this on April 16th:
"Only worked over 50 hours for 2 weeks at the end of tax season…off to Cabo!"
Rocket science? We'd say no. It's a combination of deep analytics, calculated risks, a proven system and a bit of courage. Let's call it art and science.
The 2 things we hear from almost every firm we have ever worked with.
"We wish we would have done this sooner. We should have been bolder with our pricing."
It's May (don't waste it) and you can tell yourself it will be different next year. Most firm owners have good intentions yet fall short on making the necessary changes. BTW, it's easier to buy new software than it is to transform your model.
We suggest you run the Pareto, see exactly where your time is going, and make the decision to transform your shoulds before tax season. You'll be surprised at how much you can accomplish in your first year, just by making the time to work ON your firm with a proven operating model.
Join us on Tuesday, May 12 for our free 60-minute webinar*, The 40-Hour Firm: The Proven Operating Model for Accounting Firms.
* 1 hour of CPE – Renew Group LLC is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors.
