Your current client base is a pool of pre-existing leads and opportunities for your financial/commercial/managementl advisory services. Although you might feel these clients are only in need of tax and compliance services, the information you glean from providing these services offers insights into the health of their business. When you can use what you know about your clients to identify opportunities to “upsell” financial/commercial advisory services, you can gain recognition for your value-added services and begin building on a far more lucrative aspect of accounting.
The best way to identify client opportunities is to perform a business health check. Here’s how the business health check is the gateway to introducing your business financial/commercial advisory services to SME's.
WHAT IS A BUSINESS HEALTH CHECK?
Many businesses aren’t keen on benchmarking reviews as it compares their performance to other businesses that could include some of their competitors. Although benchmarks are a valuable tool for any business interested in accomplishing best-in-class performance in their industry, the disclosure of information can be a source of hesitancy. However, if your firm has insights into industry standards for benchmark comparisons, it really becomes a valuable tool as long as confidentiality is respected.
The business health check goes beyond the normal benchmark review and is performed on a regular basis to enable month-by-month or quarter-by-quarter comparisons. Clients might be more willing to share the required information as it is specific to their own business and isn’t shared on any level with other businesses. Although opting out of a value-added service like benchmark reviews can hold clients back from achieving growth-driven goals, the business health check still provides key measurements that help improve performance.
WHAT DOES A BUSINESS HEALTH CHECK ENGAGEMENT ENTAIL?
To perform a business health check, you need your clients to supply answers to a number of questions so that data can be prepared and analysed. Using an industry-specific template such as the “Pharmacies – Data Required for Key Performance Indicators” (BAS401) form available in the ESS BIZTOOLS kit makes it easy to identify the information you need to collect and prepare a health-check report. The checklist approach of the form provides the numbers you need to perform and create the following:
- Sales
- Sales dissection based on products and services offered
- Customer details including if they have any form of speciality groupings such as loyalty program members or various levels of subscriptions to services.
- Gross profit analysis
- Business analysis
- Wages analysis
- Expenses analysis
- Team Members’ analysis
- Suppliers’ analysis
- Productivity analysis
- Ratio analysis
- Financial analysis
As an accountant/bookkeeper, you can assist in collecting this information, but client input is key to ensure every aspect of their financials is provided.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE HEALTH CHECK?
Once all the information is collected, it is collated on the worksheet (BAS501), providing an easy summary of findings from the health check. If this is not the first health check, the results are compared to previous checks. However, even at the first health check, the information collected provides valuable data that can be used to reflect on the financial health of the business and what steps can be taken to improve financial health. This is the process larger companies use to ascertain their client’s current state of health, and as more checks are performed, the comparison of reviews becomes more telling.
BUSINESS-SPECIFIC DATA
The data relating to individual financial performance for the business includes statistical data relative to sales. Your clients can track everything to measure their success. For example, customer responses to marketing campaigns allow them to measure if their investments helped them meet their sales or marketing goals. The level of success provides insights that allow them to make improvements, so they see a higher ROI on their next marketing spend.
A retailer might be more intent on finding out the percentage of total shopping centre visitors entering their business and measuring this against sales for that day. Marketing measurements are related back to the sources, so your clients understand which of their efforts is most successful in driving visitors to their business or website.
Data collected and measured must be customised to align with an operator’s business goals and objectives as well as to help them develop new business strategies. Opportunities can be identified, and possible risks are spotted earlier on. This allows operators to take a more proactive approach to their business as they learn to use past performance to foresee future performance.
ONGOING SERVICE
Your business health check is the gateway to your financial/commercial advisory services as it allows you to showcase how your clients can gain from your knowledge and expertise. You remove yourself from tax services as your focus and instead become a “real accountant/bookkeeper” offering financial/commercial advisory services that clients become dependent upon for their business operations. Instead of seeing a rush of work at peak tax season, you see demand throughout the year. For companies keen on upscaling their business, you can even seek the opportunity to become their Virtual Chief Executive Officer, helping speed up their expansion journey. The business health check is the stepping stone for your success, providing the perfect opportunity to present yourself as an advisor and partner instead of just a tax lodger.