Good client service and expanding the range of services offered to existing clients are key to organic practice growth
A key part of my role in No More Practice 4 involves helping advise Jim Taggart on the process of maximising his earn-out in selling his practice. Jim has built his business over up over many years to become a well-established practice, and organic growth has been a key part of this process.
Good client service is the foundation of organic growth within any practice. Once you have the basics of good client service in place and are servicing the most pressing needs of your clients, then you have an opportunity to expand on the range of advice and other services you provide. For example, a risk adviser may be able to expand upon basic insurance advice into financial planning, mortgage advice or other services.
In the institutional world, they work on the premise of wanting “three claws” in a client. In other words, they would want to provide a client with a term deposit, their life insurance and their home loan. The more “claws” an institution has in a client, the more likely that client is to be loyal to them.
Another example is those TV ads you see for comparing car or health insurance providers are a great example of how to go about organically growing services. So once a consumer takes out one product with a company, they will be looking to upsell by offering the next product and the next. That’s the way the commercial world works.
So you can adopt the same approach and proactively communicate with your client base in a number of ways and encourage them to look at the different services you provide – and if you don’t offer other services, the first step you probably need to look at is how you offer an expanded range of services going forward.
