How Often Should You Stay in Touch with Your Clients?

All accountants should be in contact with their clients a minimum of 12 times per year. The benefit of doing this outweighs the cost of not staying in frequent contact by 100 times.

The advantages of getting in touch with your clients 12 times per year include:

• Higher client retention rates (you don’t have to continually get new clients each year to replace the ones you are losing due to your apathy)
• Higher client satisfaction
• More client referrals
• You can charge higher client fees (as clients perceive you are providing a more valuable service due to the constant client contact)

Ways to provide clients with contact a minimum of 12 times per year:

• Monthly tax newsletter – The newsletter is branded to your practice and emailed to clients 10 times per year.
• Email specific client groups with relevant tax or business information twice per year. For example, all business clients could be emailed tax planning/savings strategies in May of each financial year and invited to book an appointment for a free 30 minute tax planning session. Email the budget tax changes every year.
• Invite clients to a free seminar you are having. The seminar could be on self managed super funds for example. This involves inviting 10-20 clients who you have identified that a self managed super fund may be a good option for them. The seminar allows the clients to gain some SMSF knowledge for 40-60 minutes plus have a couple of drinks afterwards for networking purposes. These seminars get results and you will pick up new SMSF clients.