In Rod’s article this week about making a great practice even better, he focuses a lot on profitability in each segment of your business – being able to measure it, and fractionally improve it by continually upgrading your processes.
The lifeblood of any business is profit – without it, a business, just like an engine without petrol, will seize up and die.
Many accountants in our community are well focussed on profit both for their own practices and clients, while I find advisers often have difficulty saying the ‘P’ word out loud. With all the scrutiny on the value of advice, charging for advice itself and putting the client first, it almost seems embarrassing for advisers to acknowledge that the one key reason they are in a business is to make profit.
A profitable practice is most likely a highly scaled and efficient one – that no doubt delivers excellent advice to their client base and receives regular referrals for new clients.
Profit is a great indicator of good health in a thriving business.
By celebrating profitability in segments of your business you can increase your team’s focus on the value of adding to the bottom line, as well as have the confidence to build further scale and innovative services to your clients.
Here are three ways that celebrating profit can reward you:
- Have a monthly RELAXED discussion with staff on profit figures. Make it a collaborative meeting where each of the key numbers is discussed – did it meet target? Was the result expected? What could we do to improve? Collaboration around hard data always gets the juices flowing and great ideas can come from this.
- Assess which of your services is the most profitable. Ask clients what they like about it. Think about ways that service could be replicated – can it be further scaled and become a bigger focus in your practice? Finding and celebrating your big winner in the profit stakes can lead to even bigger ideas.
- Look at your most profitable clients – and try and identify common attributes. Then take the time to thank them. Take them to a social event. Refer interesting connections to them. Send them interesting facts and piece of content that are not related directly to your business. In other words, celebrate those profitable clients by showing them you care. This can go a long way to keeping and growing your loyal fan base. The bird in the hand analogy still holds true.
While it’s not the only driver to be in business, profit perhaps is one of the most important – embrace it, celebrate it and grow it – and everybody wins.
