Not all clients are worth your energy.
You probably know that; although you hate to admit it.
Many accountants seem to spend far too long servicing clients who:
– drain time and never refer anyone
– pay late (and not that much to begin with)
– don’t respect you or value your advice
And yet, when asked “Who are your best clients?”, many accountants answer instinctively, not strategically.
You might think of:
– those paying the highest fees
– the friendliest ones
– the long-standing loyal clients
– or those who regularly refer new business
But are they really your best clients?
There’s a subtle danger here — confusing ‘best’ with ‘most visible’ or ‘most vocal’.
And that confusion can quietly undermine your marketing, your growth plans and even how you allocate your own time and attention.
When the wrong assumptions lead everything astray
Years ago, I worked with a firm that ranked new clients by the projected fees the partners expected them to generate in year one.
Some partners gamed the system. They included inflated projections based on potential corporate finance or advisory work — which frequently never materialised.
These pie-in-the-sky projections skewed everything.
I remember the managing partner telling me he routinely downgraded Ted’s forecasts.
But Ted’s ‘big’ new clients still got all the attention — and priority when it came to allocating staff for audits and tax work.
Even though the actual revenue rarely matched expectations.
Staff became demotivated when they saw the new clients weren’t as profitable as promised.
And other partners weren’t thrilled either — once they realised Ted had been gaming the system.
Priorities had been set based on false assumptions that served no one other than Ted’s ego.
Do your fee projections for new clients impact your priorities? And are the projections typically acheived?
Frequent contact may not equate to valuable clients
Some years later, I took over responsibility for a tax consultancy with thousands of accountant clients.
When I asked the consultants to identify our ‘top’ clients, the answers varied wildly. Across the teams we seemed to have over 200 ‘top clients’
Clearly that wasn’t right.
I knew that one team in particular had confused frequent contact with financial value.
Many of their favourite (“top?”) clients were regular callers to the tax helpline…
… but didn’t pay us more than a few hundred pounds a year.
Beyond that we discovered that only 20 of the 200+ “top” clients had paid us more than £2,000 a year during each of the past three years.
That was the wake-up call.
We stopped trying to keep thousands of occasional users happy.
Instead, we focused on deepening relationships with those 20 top clients — and a few others who showed potential.
Everyone’s time was used more wisely.
And we saw stronger growth as a result.
Where are you focusing your energy?
It’s worth asking yourself — and your team, if you have one:
– Who really are our best clients?
– What makes them ‘best’?
– Are we all aligned on that?
– Are we investing time and marketing effort to attract more of them; Or just… anyone who walks through the door?
This is exactly the kind of clarity I have helped accountants find in mentoring conversations.
Because it’s often hard to spot these patterns on your own — especially when everything feels ‘fine’ on the surface.
If you’re unsure where to focus your time or which clients to prioritise, let’s have a chat.
Sometimes just one short conversation can reveal what’s been hiding in plain sight.
