You’ve probably seen hundreds of growth strategies for accounting firms and practices.
A lot of them are good, but in most guides, they’re just collections of individual strategies. How do you know where you should start? How do you know which strategies will work best for your firm?
In this article, I won’t just share a list of things you can do to grow your firm…
I’m going to share a 5-step system that will enable you to build a profitable, successful firm and get the work-life balance you want.
Let’s go!
Table of Contents
- Step 1: Visualize Your Ideal Lifestyle
- Step 2: Package Your Services for Maximum Value
- Step 3: Perform Marketing Based on Your Ideal Client Profile
- Step 4: Improve and Automate Processes
- Step 5: Hire the Right People
Step 1: Visualize Your Ideal Lifestyle
Many firm owners believe that the key to growth is to constantly take on new clients and provide as many accounting services as possible.
While this can work, it often leads to overwork and burnout – both for the firm owner and their team.
(Margins usually aren’t good following this approach, either. I say this after having coached hundreds of firms.)
Is that really what you want?
The counterintuitive best first step is to consider what you actually want your life to look like — in other words:
- How many hours do you want to work per week?
- How involved do you want to be in day-to-day work?
- How much income do you need to support the lifestyle you want?
Your vision dictates your strategy and business model, so you have to be honest with yourself about what you want (and don’t want).
Here’s an example: I shared on LinkedIn that if I had to start my previous accounting firm all over again, I wouldn’t offer tax services.
Why? Because I don’t like it, and I don’t consider myself good at it.
If you do work you don’t like just because everyone else does it, you’ll resent it. You’ll burn out.
Focus on what kind of life you want to live as a firm owner. Then, building around that idea and determining what you have to do to make that happen becomes easier.
Step 2: Package Your Services for Maximum Value
Many accounting firms struggle with profitability because they perform a wide variety of services for a wide variety of clients – usually at a price point that is too low.
Here’s an example: which of these two sounds better?
- Working with 150 clients across multiple niches at an average price point of of $300 per month
- Working with 50 clients in a single niche at an average price point of $1,200 per month
Not only does the second option generate more revenue, it generally leads to more profitability, as well.
Why?
Because an average price point of $300/mo isn’t going to be enough to support the cost of bringing on skilled team members who can actually take work off your plate.
Even though an average price point of $1,200/mo will likely require a higher level of service – it will provide better margins for you to hire skilled team members to perform the work…
It will involve less administrative work, because you’re managing 100 fewer clients…
And it will be easier to systematize, because all of your clients operate in a similar niche.
And yes, it’s possible. Rob, along with hundreds of other Future Firm Accelerate members, significantly increased their revenue while actually working less hours, as you’ll see below.
Properly pricing your services plays a huge role in this success. Here’s how you can do that:
Define Your Ideal Client
High-growth firms don’t go after every client they can get their hands on.
Instead, they look at the firm’s strengths first and the pain points those strengths solve.
Why?
Because it’s easier (and more profitable) to provide more value for one industry than to spread yourself thin across multiple client types.
When you have an ideal client in mind, you can create more targeted marketing campaigns. You can create service packages that truly meet their needs.
Here are a few questions to help you define your ideal clients:
- What industries do they work in?
- What outcomes are they looking for?
- How big is their business (i.e., revenue and number of team members)?
- Where are they located?
If you want to know more about identifying the right clients for your firm, I have a podcast episode that can help.
Use Value-Based Pricing
Many firms still bill by the hour because it’s the “traditional” way of doing things — more client work equals more revenue.
This is not a sustainable growth strategy because your income is tied directly to the hours you work.
I recommend value-based pricing instead. This is when you charge based on the outcome or value you provide to the client, not the time it takes to do the work.
For potential clients, this shifts the focus from the number of hours you work to the value you provide (which is the only thing they really care about).
This is more effective because it allows you to charge significantly higher prices for the same work, which improves profit margins, so you can scale without working excessive hours.
For example:
Let’s say it takes 5 hours per month to provide a service for a client that adds $50,000/year to their business.
If your rate is $150/hr, you’ll charge $750/mo.
However, if you charge based on the value being provided, it’s very possible you could charge $1,500/mo for the exact same service.
Here’s how to calculate a price:
- Analyze the client. What’s their biggest pain point? How much time, money, or stress is it costing them? If your service solves a $10,000 problem, you can confidently charge a fraction of that value.
- Estimate what they’re willing to pay. This part feels uncomfortable at first — but it gets easier with practice. Look at their business size, revenue, and the cost of inaction. If solving their problem saves them 100 hours a year, what’s that worth to them?
The second one sounds terrifying because there’s no science to it.
Believe it or not, it works. Just ask Tammy from Future Firm Accelerate:
Many firm owners price really low because they’re afraid the client might think they’re not worth that much…
But that’s far from the truth. Their services are worth the money — they just don’t have the confidence to commit to the price yet. 🙂
Clients won’t hesitate to pay if they’re saving many times that amount from your service offerings.
Check out my post on pricing accounting services for more details on how to do this correctly.
Pro Tip: Use a Three-Tiered Pricing Model
It’s hard to find the “perfect” intersection between how much a client can afford and how much you’d like to charge.
That’s why I recommend three-tiered pricing:
- Bronze tier: The minimum amount you’re willing to make. Include only essential services here and basic client support. $500 per month is a good starting point for this plan.
- Silver tier: Most of your clients will choose this one. This plan will include more features like limited advisory services and increased availability for clients. If your Bronze tier is priced at $500 per month, a good starting place for this tier is anywhere from $800 to $1000, although it can go much higher.
- Gold tier: The full package. This will include everything your firm can offer and things like same-day support and virtual CFO services. Gold tier pricing can go upwards of $2000 (and even $3000+).
Starting from the Bronze plan, increase the price based on how much more valuable the features of the Silver plan is. Again, there’s no formula here.
I recommend making the gap between Silver and Gold bigger than Bronze and Silver. You’ll be providing the most premium services there, so the pricing should reflect that.
Here’s an example of a three-tiered pricing plan I like, from one of our Future Firm Accelerate members.
Step 3: Perform Marketing Based on Your Ideal Client Profile
Most firm owners I know don’t enjoy marketing.
But if you want to grow your firm – marketing is non-negotiable.
The good news is:
You don’t need a dozen marketing strategies. Pick one or two and then make an effort to be good at those.
While we have a lot of marketing ideas for accounting firms, at Future Firm, we focus on 3 main marketing methods: content, email marketing, and social media.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are some marketing tactics you can implement right away.
a. Use a P.S. Line in Your Emails
You know that section at the end of emails that people use for signatures?
That’s free marketing real estate — one of those marketing tools you set up once and ignore.
Here’s an example in practice. This is a previous newsletter of mine:
It’s about my video and audio setup. It isn’t promotional.
But here’s the bottom of the email:
The email was sent to around 9,000 people, and it had an open rate of 57%…
Which means I had just advertised Future Firm Accelerate to more than 5,000 people without doing much of anything!
And that’s going to apply to every single conversation you have over email.
Here are some P.S. line template to get you started. Feel free to personalize them.
b. Set Up Your Google Business Profile
According to a Statista report, 87% of consumers use Google to find local businesses online.
Source: Statista
These are keywords like “accounting firms near me,” “bookkeeping firms [location],” etc…
Just to show you how impactful a Google Business Profile is, I started an accounting firm, Xen Accounting, back in 2013.
My goal with the firm was to provide fully cloud accounting solutions, which meant I had to make the firm visible online.
So I set up a Google Business Profile for it.
And today, it still shows up when I search for “accounting firm montreal.”
I won’t go deep into search engine optimization for accounting firms here, but setting up a Google Business Profile is a big step to getting seen.
It’s free and only takes a few minutes.
And when your Google Business Profile is ready, you can start asking clients for reviews — which plays a very big role in a potential client’s decision to work with your firm.
Getting reviews is pretty straightforward: just ask.
Happy clients will be more than willing to do that for you since it also only takes a short while.
Here’s a template you can use to ask for a Google review:
Subject line: We love working with people like you
Hi [First Name],
I’m reaching out to you because I’ve really enjoyed working with you over the [Time Period]. Clients like you make this job incredibly worthwhile and rewarding.
Google has become really important for how we continue to grow [Your Firm Name]. I’d appreciate it if you’d take a couple of minutes to leave us a rating on Google.
Here’s a link to our Google Business Profile review page (embed the link to the review page in “a link”). You’ll find Google’s instructions on how to leave feedback. But feel free to email me if you have any questions.
Here’s an example to give you an idea of what we mean:
“I’m glad I switched over to [Your Firm Name] because the team has really helped me get my business back on track. The new systems and processes they implemented free us up to work on the part of our business that we love!”
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Many thanks,
[Your Name]
c. Start a Newsletter
An email newsletter is a simple way to stay in touch with clients and prospects by sending them useful updates and relevant content straight to their inbox.
It’s one of my favorite marketing strategies, and I use it a lot at Future Firm. It’s a highly effective way of building trust, maintaining relationships, and turning prospects into paying clients.
Here’s how you can do that:
- Ask your contacts if they want to be included in your newsletter: Similar to asking for Google reviews, you simply have to ask. This includes existing clients (great for retention), but also leads, prospects, and people in your network. You can also ask during onboarding — just let them know you will regularly share valuable content that will help them stay on top of expenses, manage their finances better, or with whatever their biggest pain point is.
- Email template: “Hey [First Name], I’m launching a newsletter that shares tips to help you save on taxes and stay up-to-date on big news in the XYZ industry. Want me to add you?”
- Share valuable information (not just promotions): There are two ways to provide value in a newsletter:
- Create original content: Writing articles, sharing a tip or insight you’ve learned from working with clients, testimonials from satisfied clients, etc.
- Curate content: Sharing helpful articles, tools, or resources you’ve found from other sources, with explanations about how they’re relevant and how they can use the information in their businesses. Here’s an example from my newsletter of what that looks like. I personally share both original and curated content about helping accounting firm owners scale their businesses and work fewer hours in my Future Firm newsletter.
- Adjust based on metrics: Look at open rates and responses. If only 10% of people are opening your emails, try changing the subject line. If nobody clicks, maybe your content isn’t relevant enough. Here are the main metrics to look out for:
- Open rate: The percentage of people who open your email. 20% to 30% is a healthy range.
- Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who click a link in your email. Aim for 1% to 2%.
- Conversion rate: The percentage of recipients who take a desired action, like booking a call or signing up for a service.
- Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of people who opt out of your emails. Anything under 0.5% is normal. Higher means you might be sending too frequently or missing the mark on content.
- Bounce rate: The percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered. Keep this under 2% — a high bounce rate means your email list might need cleaning.
I have a very detailed guide on email marketing for accountants if you want more actionable marketing tips.
Step 4: Improve and Automate Processes
Automation can save you a lot of time if done right.
Here’s how you can use it in your firm.
Standardize and Document Processes
Ideally, your firm should keep running smoothly even if a key team member were to disappear tomorrow.
Every critical task — client onboarding, financial reporting, compliance checks — needs a standardized process.
Instead of relying on memory, write standard operating procedures (SOPs). Here’s how to do it:
- Assign the SOP to the person who does the task daily. They know the process best and should document it step by step.
- Write the steps as detailed as possible — steer clear of high-level stuff. Use bullet points, checklists, screenshots, and video clips if necessary.
- Revisit regularly and update if needed. Whenever a process changes, the SOP should be updated to reflect the new workflow.
Here’s what an SOP template at Future Firm looks like:
Pro tip: Instead of writing a standard operating procedure from scratch, do this:
- Record a Loom video of yourself performing the workflow.
- Copy the transcript of the video and paste it into ChatGPT.
- Ask ChatGPT to turn the transcript into a standard operating procedure.
Here’s what it looks like in action:
Identify Repetitive Tasks for Automation
Take a step back and audit your daily workflows.
What tasks keep coming up that don’t require your expertise? Chances are, you’re losing time on things like:
- Data entry: Manually inputting numbers when software can sync them automatically.
- Invoice processing: Chasing payments and sending reminders instead of using automated billing.
- Expense management: Sorting through receipts when clients can upload them directly.
Since these do not require client interactions, you should definitely put them on the list of things to automate.
Implement Automation Tools
Once you’ve identified what to automate, the next step is choosing the right tools.
Here are a few types of tools that can make an immediate impact:
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
This technology can extract data from receipts, invoices, and financial documents so you don’t need to perform any manual input.
One of the tools I like to use is Dext. I use it for my Future Firm team’s invoices, but I like its ability to capture invoices from camera photos.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
RPA is great for tasks that are repetitive and follow the same steps every time.
For example, you can use it to automatically pull bank transactions into your accounting software instead of entering them manually.
It can also generate and send recurring invoices without your input.
Using Dext as an example once again, you can configure the tool to automatically extract and categorize expenses based on parameters like supplier name, expense type, and other predefined rules.
Beyond expense processing, RPA can also be used to automate payroll calculations and generate financial reports without manual input.
It can also handle data reconciliation by cross-checking records across multiple systems.
AI-Powered Assistants
I’m a big fan of AI assistants.
They save me time, yes, but they’re also amazing for maintaining client satisfaction. Here are some great tools:
- ChatGPT: This one has so many use cases in accounting, including (but not limited to) creating blog post outlines, summarizing long meeting transcripts, and classifying uncategorized bank transactions. It can even help you write emails to clients with virtually endless ways to tweak the output.
- ElevenLabs: ElevenLabs is an AI voice synthesis tool. I use it to automate my podcast recordings — after writing the script, I upload it to ElevenLabs, and it generates a sound recording that sounds like me. It’s an easy way to add an audio component to your content without hours of recording.
- Delphi.ai: As the firm owner, you have a limited amount of time, but the demand for your expertise is seemingly unlimited. With Delphi.ai, you can create a bot and train it in your knowledge — so if a team member or client needs your opinion on something while you’re not available, your AI bot can point them to the right direction. I used this tool to create my clone, RyanBot. (Here’s the story behind that.)
Invest in You and Your Team’s Development
No one benefits more from a skilled team than the firm itself.
That’s why I strongly recommend actively supporting your team’s growth. The more they learn, the stronger your firm becomes.
Here’s where you can start:
- Books and online courses: Buy industry-relevant books or reimburse online courses on accounting, automation, or client management.
- Workshops and conferences: Cover the cost of key events like accounting conferences, where team members can learn from experts and build connections.
- Cross-training: Set up knowledge-sharing sessions where team members from different departments can share practical skills with each other.
- Dedicated learning stipends: This is the simplest and most flexible option. You can set a budget per employee for professional development and reimburse at the end of every year.
- Coaching and community: Get support through coaching for accounting firms to get guidance on scaling your firm. Programs like Future Firm Accelerate also have communities of accounting firm owners who you can learn from and exchange ideas with.
At Future Firm, if a team member wants a book or resource to improve their skills or make their job easier, we cover the cost…
Because the results that it delivers is tenfold. 🙂
Build Soft Skills for Delegation
Many firm owners don’t delegate as much as they should.
And when they do, they often fall into the perfectionist trap — rechecking every detail, making small and unnecessary tweaks, and ultimately redoing work that was already “good enough.”
I know this because I fell into this trap before too. Like I shared in this podcast, I realized my perfectionism held back the firm’s growth.
Don’t try and fix everything yourself just because it’s easier or faster. Instead, give constructive feedback, and accept that “done well by someone else” is better than “done perfectly by you.”
The more you let go and trust your team, the more the firm can grow.
Step 5: Hire the Right People
Your firm can only grow as fast as your team allows it to. If everything flows through you, you become the bottleneck.
Obviously, you’ll need people with good technical capabilities.
But that’s not the most important thing: I would always prioritize attitude and fit over skill.
Why? Because when new hires fail, it’s because of attitude and character 89% of the time.
These accounting interview questions are great for that (I also used some of these when hiring at Future Firm).
If you want to scale your firm, I recommend starting here:
Hire Senior Accountants to Free Yourself for Growth
Most new business owners start by doing everything themselves — just like in a traditional accounting practice.
That works early on, but as the firm grows, it will slow you down fast.
Senior accountants help bridge that gap by taking key responsibilities off your plate, so you can focus on scaling the business. Here are some of the things they can do:
- They can manage client relationships so you can focus on attracting new clients.
- They can train junior accountants so you’re not stuck reviewing every detail.
- They can handle complex advisory work so you have time to refine your firm’s strategy and services.
- They have the experience as financial advisors help clients smartly plan taxes and manage wealth.
Hiring senior accountants are a big financial commitment at first, though.
If you’re choosing between a couple of junior accountants and one senior accountant, go for the latter.
However, do not go negative for this.
I shared in a podcast episode that when my previous firm was making decent revenue, I hired a second senior accountant. It was initially challenging, but it allowed the firm to scale.
But even so, if the firm was not making enough revenue, I wouldn’t have brought on a senior. Only hire one if you have the cash flow for it.
Hire a Director of Operations to Manage Workflows
If your firm is just getting started, this might not be an immediate priority.
But once you’re gaining traction, a Director of Operations makes everything so much easier.
A Director of Operations can completely take over workflow management, delegation, and administrative processes. This ensures client work is completed on time even without your involvement.
So instead of you juggling deadlines and chasing team members, you’ll get well-designed operational systems that keep the firm running like a well-oiled machine.
This doesn’t have to be a full-time hire right away. A fractional Director of Operations can still bring structure and oversight to your firm while you focus on growth.
Hire a Virtual Assistant to Handle Admin Work
Low-value tasks like scheduling meetings, managing emails, organizing documents don’t grow your business, but they do eat up your time.
A virtual assistant (VA) can take these off your plate, so you can focus on higher-impact work. At the minimum, virtual assistants can do tasks like:
- Managing inboxes
- Preparing reports
- Serving as the right-hand person to the Director of Operations
That said, a VA can’t do everything. If you start looking for a VA expecting that, you won’t get far.
As an example, I shared on LinkedIn that I have 4 VAs on my team that take care of several types of work.
My advice? Think about what you need most, then prioritize that. Later on, you can hire more VAs to cover other specialties.
Use This System to Scale Your Accounting Firm
That’s a wrap!
That was a lot of reading, but you can always come back to this article later. Now, it’s time to apply that knowledge and start growing your business.
Do you have any growth tactics that always work for you? Is there anything we missed?
Share them in the comments below!
