Being the leader at an accounting firm has many responsibilities, the most prevalent of those being to increase performance and profitability in order to grow the company. With so many tasks to do, creating or choosing a strategy to achieve either goal is tough. The following is a list of relatively easy to implement, but highly effective strategies to increase both your staff’s performance and the company’s profitability.
1. Hire Remote Staff To Take Over Backend Tasks
Hiring remote staff achieves both higher performance and profitability, with bigger savings if you elect to hire offshore. Any backend task that your staff find themselves doing instead of their primary tasks can be given to your remote staff. In many cases, as long as the work can be done from a computer, you can even hire CPAs that will work in a remote capacity.
The average accountant in the Philippines makes about 30,500 Philippine pesos a month, which equates to about $546.62 a month. Their US equivalent makes about $3,803 a month. The amount saved by offshoring tasks to the Philippines makes your business more profitable and allows you to reallocate the funds to other aspects of your business without sacrificing quality. Moreover, if you decide to partner with a business process outsourcing company (BPO) and avail of the remote staffing service, you have full control of your staff while the BPO will take over all administrative aspects for you.
In line with keeping the same level of quality without overspending, you also increase the performance of your in-office staff. By hiring someone to handle the backend minutiae, your primary staff will have more time to complete their main tasks, such as, being more hands-on with clients, providing better service, and building better relationships.
2. Keep Your Employees Engaged
Engaged employees bring a plethora of advantages to your business, the most notable being higher performance and profitability. Engaged employees want to go to work because they are actually contributing to something bigger than themselves and can see or feel the results of their labor.
Engaged employees have improved performance as they’re more likely to spend more time staying on task and collaborating with others. This collaboration also increases the productivity levels of their whole team. As previously stated, these employees can see the impact of their work, and this helps drive them to continue to produce results.
In terms of profitability, engaged employees help save you thousands if not millions of dollars. Replacing an employee can range from half to double the employee’s annual salary. With an average employee attrition rate of 18% in the US as of 2020 and no indications of it decreasing, an exorbitant amount of capital lost due to attrition. Engaged employees remedy this as companies with high employee engagement have a lower turnover rate, 43% less for low turnover companies and 18% less for high turnover companies.
A simple way to engage employees includes having a proper onboarding process. This sets up their expectations from the get-go and allows them to integrate into the company culture well. Many employee surveys state that having opportunities for growth is a driving factor in keeping them engaged, in addition, the same employees end up stating that workplaces that offer continuous training also foster more engagement from their employees.
3. Create A Referral Program
Implementing a referral program for your already existing customers is a great way to increase profitability. Bringing in extra customers is a big deal, even more so if you’re referred to them. A referral comes with the added benefit of innate trust. Being able to trust someone even before business has begun greatly improves the relationship.
In a loose example, think back to a time when a friend you trust recommended that you try a restaurant because they think you’d like it. Chances are if that friend knows you well, they’d be correct in assuming you’d like the food there, and you would then have a new place to go eat.
Offering rewards such as free or additional services to existing customers for each referral incentivizes them to actively recruit their friends, family, and acquaintances. This essentially becomes a free and more powerful form of advertising and marketing. In the right environment, this is potentially a free self-sustaining advertising strategy, giving you all the benefits of a marketing team, without the cost of one.
4. Improve Marketing Strategy
Take a look at your marketing strategy for clear and measurable metrics. If you can’t measure an outcome, you should rework it. Being able to measure how close you get to your goals is important when quantifying the success of marketing campaigns. Having milestones to let you know you’re on the right track is also important, especially if you have a team.
Having a proper target market is another way to improve your marketing strategy and increase profitability. Being able to narrow down your target market means being able to accurately reach out to them and get their attention. Listing everyone who has the money to avail your business isn’t a good way to go about marketing as you will essentially be using money to send a message to the general public who don’t necessarily want to hear about it. In many cases, your efforts to attract the masses will end up falling on deaf ears and may even be considered spam.
5. Add/Subtract Services
Some services will just outperform others in terms of generating revenue. In these cases, it would be beneficial to do a mini audit of sorts in order to find out which services are considered beneficial and which are just costing you money.
Adding services after doing a bit of research may make your business more profitable. For example, if a majority of your already existing clients are looking for someone to do payroll for their businesses, your firm can add that service in order to increase profit.
The solution isn’t always to add services, in some cases, removing services that are costing you more than they’re making you will increase profitability. Don’t be afraid to cut cost-ineffective services.
The Wrap Up
There are many ways to boost your accounting firm’s performance and profitability. Whether you incorporate multiple strategies at once or just one of them, any boost will make itself apparent either through your financial records, the amount of excess time you’ll have, or in the reviews your firm will receive from customers. No matter which strategy you choose in order to continue to grow, you will have to continuously improve both performance and profitability.