All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
Deep Dive: Email Automation
Ever feel like your email inbox is a never-ending challenge threatening your productivity? Discover the art of mastering email management with insights that promise to transform how you handle communication. Amy and Ajack unpack techniques like inbox zero and the triage method, debating the merits of Gmail versus Outlook, and offering practical strategies to tame the email beast, ensuring you maintain focus and reduce stress in your professional life.
Join us as we explore the balance between email responsiveness and deep work, especially crucial for those in client-facing or concentration-heavy roles. We share the secrets of scheduling dedicated email times, using functions like starring and snoozing, and personalising strategies to suit your unique needs.
Thanks to Amy and Jack's expertise, you'll walk away with actionable insights to transform your email habits, paving the way for increased productivity and a more organised professional life. So let's join them on their next tech adventure.
AAAAA IS PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY OUR SPONSORS
Ignition | Spending days engaging clients? Chasing late payments? Dealing with scope creep? We get it. Ignition helps accounting and professional services businesses reclaim time, profitability and cash flow. Automate proposals, billing, payments and workflows in a single platform
Content Snare | Organised content and document collection without the back and forth. Stop getting lost in emails, messy hacked-together systems and confusing shared docs. Content Snare is like a checklist for your clients with automatic reminders
Planet Consulting | We work with firm owners and managers who want to run better businesses and achieve their version of success. We have the experience and knowledge to help you get clear on what that success looks like for you and support and guide you on the journey to achieve it.
FOLLOW US
www.accountingadventures.com.au
Accounting Adventures (@accadvpodcast) | Instagram
Accounting Adventures | Facebook
Accounting Adventures | LinkedIn
Aly & Andrews All Aussie Accounting Adventures (@accadvpodcast) | X
podcast@accountingadventures.com.au
CHECK US OUT
ALL IN Advisory | Your squad of award-winning accountants, tax wizards & biz visionaries, perfectly tailored to elevate your biz. Let's soar together!
Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans
Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly.
Mayday | Revolutionise your finance teams multi-entity month end through real-time accounting
MUSIC
ENTENTE (@ententemusic) | Instagram
PRODUCTION
David Easton (@davidjeasty) | Insta...
Hi Amy.
Speaker 2:Hey Jack.
Speaker 1:How are you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm alright. I've just. I've just so many goddamn emails in my inbox.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:Emails.
Speaker 2:So many Hang on. How are you Not about me? How are you? I'm worse now I'm thinking about my email inbox it's probably flooded.
Speaker 1:No, it's not, but I hear you. I'm thinking about my email inbox. It's probably flooded.
Speaker 2:Now it's not but I hear you. I hear you. Good topic actually responding to emails, moving emails, thinking about doing emails. It's like yesterday, for example. Right, I was actually meant to be reviewing some coursework for one of our new courses that we're bringing out and instead I spent probably a good three hours cleaning up emails all the things that I was meant to respond to that I just like parked and going, yeah, I'll do that, yeah, I'll do that, because you get caught up with doing stuff during the day and it's just. It's one of those things. I reckon I spend 95% of my job dealing with emails.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Maybe not that high, but it's pretty high. Yeah, a really large percentage.
Speaker 1:If you're client facing, which a lot of us all are yeah, it's a huge part of your day. It's kind of mad when you think about it, and then that's kind of why we were like maybe we should talk about this a little bit more. We kind of emails need a fair bit of attention because they are everywhere and it's like why? Why is our life ruled by email?
Speaker 2:god damn it. I know, but what is the? What is the alternative?
Speaker 1:well, okay, so backtrack.
Speaker 2:I guess your life used to be ruled by community. It's all. It all comes down to communication at the end of day, right? And it is one of the forms of communication. So way back when, in the olden days, you know, there was verbal communication, there was letter writing. Email is just an electronic form of, it's just a much quicker version of a letter at the end of the day, right? So it's just the evolvement of the traditional methodology of communicating, and I feel like if you spoke to someone you know 200 years ago, they'd probably go oh my gosh, I've got so many letters that I need to attend to.
Speaker 1:The Ravens have been busy today re-watching Game of Thrones at the moment. Anyway, that would be a few episodes worth of conversation, but, like I mean, this is a huge area and we could probably talk about it in. There's a number of different ways we can tackle this, but I want to talk about like your email philosophy, basically like your strategy. I think individual people deal with emails differently because of how they're wired yes some people are like me and I can't let it go.
Speaker 1:So at the end of the day, my inbox has to be zero who are you?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's. You are the person that I aspire to be. To be fair, though I am a, by the end of the week or before I start the next week, I don't like to be able to have to scroll in my inbox, so I don't necessarily need to get it to zero, but I'm like you, which is I need to get it to pretty much nothing, but during the week it just banks up well, I mean.
Speaker 1:So then it comes into this triaging concept as well, where the idea of a triage is basically you get an email and you can do one of three things with it. You can reply to it yep. You can archive it because there's no action yep. Or you can task it, I think. So you can say I have to come back to this later when do I get to?
Speaker 2:when do I get to delete it? Uh sorry, delete.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, fine, archive just means you can search it later, which is maybe important yeah, okay oh my goodness, hack. I mean, I don't know if it works with Outlook, but when I learned about the send and archive functionality in Gmail, I was like, oh my goodness, this is great, because as soon as you send an email, usually the email is still in your inbox until you folder it or archive it, whereas I hit send and archive, so it sends and archives at the same time and I just move on to the next email.
Speaker 1:It's out of my inbox.
Speaker 2:Hang on, all right, the OCD is just kicked in let's go. The OCD is just kicked in when is it filed? Exactly when is it filed? Where is it filed for future reference, although you're in Gmail and search functionality, in my opinion, in Gmail is far superior over Outlook.
Speaker 1:I mean? I mean, obviously I'm not in an accounting firm right now, but most good CRMs are designed so that you get an email or send an email to an email address. That email address is associated with a business File, this email under that business.
Speaker 1:So that when I go, into FYI, into my documents tab. There's all my emails, like they're there and if I need to go and put it to something specific I can. But let's assume 90% of the time we're just conversing. 10% of the time I need to put it to somewhere other than the correspondence folder or cabinet or whatever, of course, but like it would slow me down so much, I'd get so much less done if I had to think about where to put every single email when search is really powerful these days. You just search for stuff and you find it.
Speaker 2:Yes, whilst I really agree with that from a Google perspective, I don't second that from an Outlook perspective, and I'm speaking purely from personal experience here, which is I used to be a Google person. I am daily reminded why I hate being a Microsoft person, and I have been this for probably the last at least three years. Nearly four years. We've been using Microsoft and it was a decision, you know, business decision. I still hate Microsoft, but I definitely don't think that the search functionality in Microsoft or in Outlook is as superior. There are just not as superior as Google. Why Do you think that the search functionality in Microsoft?
Speaker 1:or in Outlook is as far superior. There are a lot of memes about it.
Speaker 2:They're just not as superior as Google. Why Do you think that it is more superior or not?
Speaker 1:No, there's memes about how you can't find things Correct.
Speaker 2:This is my point. This is literally the reason why I have such an intense folder structure in my Outlook, just because I just don't trust it yeah, okay, so you're an intense folder structure. Everything gets a spot. Yep, everything's got a spot.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool. Well, so on that front we're very different where I nearly I folder a few things, but not very much. Most stuff just heads to the archive and I know, I can search it up or the CRM's captured automatically. You're foldering. Interesting, great, unfortunate, but it is what it is and I'm sure for many accountants you kind of need to like. Don't get me wrong. I get the importance of, uh, you know there's record keeping requirements, as you know, so so you know I think mine's more.
Speaker 2:Um, like I'm just, it was just part of my early on conditioning of the way that you know I used to be. Many moons ago, many moons ago, I used to be a pa and I used to work for, you know, investment banking companies. Prior to that it was hospitality, but you know, I had to being a personal assistant. You had to be on the ball about where things were saved and where things were, and because of that I I never been anything. No, I never been.
Speaker 2:I never been anything apart from like something that's legitimately like it's just trash. But from a correspondence perspective, you just don't bin emails because you never know when it might come back to bite you in the butt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I agree, I agree with that and I don't bin. The archive button has been a saviour of mine, just from a like it's a freeing. It was a freeing moment when I like realized, oh actually, you know what. It's one percent of the time that I need to go back to some of these emails important ones, different but there's a lot of stuff that's not that important. It's just general correspondence. Archive done, cleared inbox, moved on, put these special ones in a folder, whatever that's.
Speaker 2:That's just part of the I don't believe outlook has it. I'm literally in my emails at the moment whilst we're having this conversation. I'm a bit depressed that I don't have that functionality. See another reason why I need to go back to google anyway well, you brought up another interesting thing, which, like, let's just go down all these tangents, because why not?
Speaker 1:yeah um on, like if junk comes through, you've been it. Yeah, do you report as I?
Speaker 2:do, yeah, and the reason why I do that is because I also know that, for those who don't are not aware of this, microsoft is one of the most hacked pieces of software out there. So the only reason why I mean I'm like I am trying to do this is, like you know how? There are lots of greenies out there and they're like save the planet. This is my like safe security. Yeah, I don't know why I'm like this is just my little thing that I feel like I need to do. I know it probably doesn't make a massive impact, but it does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I think eventually. So, yes, I do report, so I don't. If it's a complete cold, like I've never heard of this, it's clearly not relevant to me. This is just some random who's got my email from a list somewhere. Yeah, absolutely, report a spam. There's probably a middle ground there where I'm like, okay, you might have actually got my email legitimately somewhere. I will just unsubscribe or yeah, yeah or delete um, but yeah, I try and unsubscribe from I do too nearly everything.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, we both, both of our businesses, would be sending email newsletters all the time yeah and so, like you, there's a world of people out there who read? These things. But I think that's the thing, like we probably all have one or two newsletters or email things that we do actually read. It's just not 50 and so clear. The other 48 out of your inbox focus on the couple that are actually interesting and relevant to you on a day-to-day basis. Unsubscribe from the rest.
Speaker 2:Um, so anyway it's a hard one, though. Like trying to find the balance, especially with and this plays to the point of a lot of accounting practices out there around their levels of comfort when they want to send out emails to their clients from a marketing perspective, like a newsletter, a quarterly update, a monthly update, whatever the hell, you know, whatever that kind of thing is right. We're the same. We both work for businesses, where we're trying to obviously not only educate our current client database, but also try and generate more traction and let's be commercial, we want more clients. So there is a balance, though, as well, because you know what's too much, but what's enough.
Speaker 1:You know, what I mean I remember talking to someone about this I think it was Meryl, actually Meryl Johnson and she was saying that they for one point in their, their practices life, they were doing them monthly, but once a month wasn't often enough that it became a process that someone just kind of knew and could repeat yeah, all the time. And so monthly was like I've got to sit down and do the email newsletter and remind myself where the list comes from and how I put it together and how I filter it and how I do the content and then send it out, and so it was an inefficient. Once a month process versus going weekly was like now it's actually routine.
Speaker 1:I can do this. It's quick and easy. So we're getting out more emails. It's easier. Sure, total time spent would be more, but the total impact is a lot more.
Speaker 3:Total time spent would be more, but the total impact is a lot more.
Speaker 1:But I think if you're going to go as frequent as weekly I know we're getting into nitty-gritty of newsletters now we don't need to, but like if you've got good, interesting stuff to say to that person, then great, but if you just fill it with junk every week, then it's not great. So not all newsletters are equal. Hopefully you've all found one or two that you're like hey, this person gets it.
Speaker 1:their email newsletter is really clean one I follow is jason stats's accounting yep tech newsletter and I'm like you know what. I don't click on it every time. There's not always something in there that I need, but it's outlined very simply and easily. Um, you know, he kind of just dot, points things out, links out to other articles. It's kind of like a summary of like okay, cool, this person's invested a whole week of their own time finding some of the best stuff for this audience, so I don't have to go and find it all myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah I could just ignore it, but that's fine too yeah, agreed with that.
Speaker 2:You're never going to keep everybody happy, I think it's, at the end of the day. But, um, so I guess your own personal strategies are really interesting. Like we've talked about a lot of um components of this, but then there's other things. Like so we're talking about triaging a little bit like hey, triage, um, you like a zero inbox? I like to strive for a zero inbox. Yeah, what's a time box?
Speaker 1:zero inbox. I like to strive for a zero inbox. Yeah, what's a time box? So time boxing is. I was gonna ask if you do this, but it's where you say I'm gonna put two hours in my account or half an hour on my calendar and that's the only time I'm gonna respond to emails so that I don't get distracted yeah, right so, as you would know, as I know. When an email comes through, you get notification. Your eyes light up, you go see it, you think, think about it, you respond to it.
Speaker 1:Oh, what was I doing?
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 1:I'm back. If broken, broken focus, you know flows gone and then you get distracted and go off and do another email and then eventually get back to that important bit of work that you're actually doing. So I don't do this, but I'd like the idea of it. I do it in the mornings. So when I the idea of it, I do it in the mornings so when I wake up in the mornings if I've got stuff in my inbox, because I work with team over in the uk.
Speaker 1:I clear my both my email inbox and my slack inbox, kind of you know, notifications, um and then I get to work. Basically that's kind of like before you know, while I'm having my morning coffee. That's what I'm doing. Time boxing, I think, is something that a lot of, a lot of people in engineering do, where they're like I don't want to be distracted. I've got to sit down, focus, put my headphones on.
Speaker 1:I might be gone for three hours and you might not hear from me yeah, but I need this time to really get into this big problem, and then, half an hour after that, I'll break, I'll do all my emails that I can do and then I'm back in focus mode for another two hours or whatever it is, and I mean I love the idea yeah, but I think, I think, if you're in a client facing royal sales, you know your partner of a firm or whatever else I get it why, like it's hard to be, like I can tell then I could just respond right now, yeah I am a little bit of.
Speaker 1:If I can respond to this in like a minute, I'm just going to get rid of everything that I can in a minute, if it's going to require me to go and do some research, look up something, whatever else, those ones I might kind of batch together and do later. Like I can tell that someone asked me a pretty detailed question here, they're not going to be expecting a response in five minutes whereas for others you just like just get it off your mind, get off your plate.
Speaker 2:One of my team members actually does time blocking, or what did you call it? Time boxing? Time boxing, time blocking Same same. So one of my team member does it and it works really well for her. Yeah, I think my biggest issue is that, you know, I have my laptop and I have two additional screens, so technically I have three screens. One of those screens is dedicated to my emails. It's just there. So maybe that's a strategy which is just move it, but it's literally how I run my life, like everything is via email. So, you know, whilst I'm whinging at the beginning of this conversation, I'm like, yeah, it's going to my life, though Realistically, I'm in a service-based business, it's communication, it's correspondence, like that's how, everything, that's the way of the world.
Speaker 1:Well, I think everyone has to look at their own role and say is this what I do every day, or like is it my responsibility to be responding within five minutes of every email that comes in? If it's not, then it's nearly like then you probably don't need to. You probably do. You know you might need to.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You've got to be on top of it. But your team might be actually doing like an important implementation for a firm and they might need two hours to sit there and really map it out and think about all the ins and outs, whereas if they're getting an email every 10 minutes and they're worrying about it, they're going to miss something and get distracted.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I get. The different roles are going to require that focus time. I mean, even for me, even if I do have a lot of emails, which I do, there might be one day a week where I put a couple of hours aside and say you know, anytime I've got a big project. I do need to find a couple of hours, but it's not every day. Yeah, it's just yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:I think there's um, and then that talks to other point. Like you know, do you reply straight away, do you leave people hanging like? Do you respond out of hours do?
Speaker 1:Do you schedule emails.
Speaker 2:There's other things like starring emails, labeling emails. Do you put emails in? You know we've already kind of talked about this folder. You know, putting your emails into folders versus searching the snooze function oh, I love the snooze function.
Speaker 3:That's my favorite function.
Speaker 2:The snooze function for me. The way that I use it is. I don't want to file it away in a folder, because the way that I've always basically run my inbox is if my, if it's in my inbox, I haven't dealt with it that's the reason why it's there, right, so I need to.
Speaker 2:I keep it there until I've dealt with it, but I do deal with it on a regular. So I don't have one of those inboxes that's got 1500 emails, because people like that. They just make me twitch. Oh god, I can't deal with that. Yeah, anyway, um, but the snooze function is I want it out of my inbox but I don't want to forget about it, but I don't also necessarily want to deal with it just right now. So I'll snooze it for next Monday, next week or like in a couple of days or when I know that I'm like I know I need to deal with this, but right now, like we've got a whole heap of events coming up, I just don't have the brain space. I'll deal with it after those events.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't need to take the time to go into another system and create a task. Yeah, this can just flow back into my inbox in a week and that's fine, and it just automatically appears. I should use that more to be honest.
Speaker 2:I like it. The snooze function is one of my faves actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a good one. I mean on the responding Responding out of hours. Do you respond out of hours?
Speaker 2:Yeah, damn straight, I do Because I have to. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1:But do you respond and send, or respond and schedule?
Speaker 2:So no, I actually just respond and send because it doesn't really phase me all that much. There's no like psychology associated with it. Like I know there are some people that you know if you talk old school for really high, high performing firms, you know it's like it was almost like a badge of honor. If you worked late and you worked out of hours, you know you could send an email and nowadays I think it's a respect thing more than anything that you won't send it until it's within business hours. Yeah, I don't really care. I'm like, hey, I'm working, now I'm gonna send an. Should adopt a different rule.
Speaker 1:Well, I just had an idea. If you work in one of those firms where they think it's a badge of honour, what you should do is knock off at 5 still, but schedule all your emails to go at 10 pm.
Speaker 2:I love it. So there's a little hack for you If you're a partner of the firm, then ignore everything I said.
Speaker 1:But I mean I think, yeah, I go a little bit both ways. Sometimes I respond and I'm like cool they you know if it's a CFO or something like that who I'm dealing with, sometimes they are actually online and they might need this now, so I'll just respond.
Speaker 1:So they've got it straight away, whereas if I'm like, okay, this is a lower level person in the business, I don't want to bother them, or whatever, I'll schedule it for like seven in the morning so that that way at least it's their first thing, for them it's not like they had to wait till nine yeah when the scheduled email came through, it's like straight away it's ready for them um and for team stuff, like we're talking about emails.
Speaker 1:But you know internal comms should not be on email yep and so they're either through teams or slack or whatever you're using for slack. I will often schedule to say look, if I'm responding to this, I'll respond in the morning. I work with the uk team as well, so I don't want to send them a message in the middle of the night, so I often schedule it so it goes out at the end of my day morning. Their time.
Speaker 2:That kind of thing, I think, makes some sense I think it's, uh, personal boundaries as well, though I do feel like responding out of hours does, in some instances, create a rod for your own back, like, I think, a lot of accountants out there have not necessarily done themselves a good turn by responding out of hours because, I do think that it then makes your clients feel very comfortable with just thinking that you're available 24 seven.
Speaker 2:So I do think that there needs to be a balance in place around boundaries. So I think if I happen to email you out of hours, that's out of the norm rather than that's just when I work. So, because that's not when I work, do you know what I mean? But I think that's just something to be mindful for practitioners out there listening into this, which is, don't make a habit of responding out of hours, because you do set, you know, challenging boundaries for your clients in relation to when they think that you should be available.
Speaker 1:I mean that so that there, I think, is the biggest reason why scheduling emails makes sense, Because you probably still have to deal with the emails out of hours. Sometimes you've had a big day finish, sit down at home and you're like, okay, I still have to clear these 20 emails, whatever it is 200, who?
Speaker 2:knows.
Speaker 1:That is a great time to schedule them to go out the next morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 1:The client hasn't got an expectation. You're responding at night, even though you're doing it at night, yeah, you haven't taught them it's okay to contact me out of hours. So, yes, I agree with that 100%, and that is a great example of where scheduling emails makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. Hey, I feel like we should maybe hear from our sponsors. Yeah, let's do it yeah.
Speaker 5:Ali, I know that there's one thing you don't have a problem with these days and that is losing client data. Right, yeah, right, because you run content snare heavily through your business.
Speaker 3:Absolutely it client data right, yeah right, because you run content snare heavily for your business. Absolutely, it is the easy, stress-free way to gather content and documents. It's also great for checklists.
Speaker 5:I love it, and it means there's no back and forth in terms of chasing things up. It means your team can get on with their job and do it, and your clients have a really good experience with it too, right.
Speaker 3:Yep Easy to use.
Speaker 5:They love it as well. Clients and team. It fits and ticks every box Right. I guarantee you'll be content with contents there. If there's one thing that I know, ali, is that I need a lot of help Now, outside of personal life stuff it's when I'm running my accounting business. I can get stuck in my head. I'm going round and round in circles, but you know there is someone out there who can actually help you as an accounting firm owner, to do good stuff.
Speaker 3:And it sounds to me like you need to hit up Planet Consulting. They are tailored solutions for professional firms and their purpose is to enrich your life.
Speaker 5:I love an enriched life. I really do. They do workshop facilitations, professional coaching and mentoring. So, no matter where you are, get on the planet consulting.
Speaker 4:Over the last 10 years, ignition has helped to transform the way that Illuminate communicates and sells our value. It helps to provide clarity on the scope of work and our fees and ensures that every signed proposal equates to instant revenue for us. Did you know that the smartest businesses that run at Ignition 24% average revenue growth in 12 months, 18 hours saved per week on average and 91% of payments are collected automatically? Now, in professional services, we know time is money and every hour that ignition saves is billable and can generate more revenue or simply helps you get time back, which is probably what Ali's doing right now, because she's not here with me. She's probably relaxing on a beach or something. Hey, ali Ali, where are you? Anyway, you know what? Get an ignition. It's going to help to transform your business and your life.
Speaker 1:Now, we've talked a lot already about just managing email inboxes, so it's clearly Maybe this is more than one episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean we were hoping to cover a lot more, but I think that was worth doing because it is clearly it's a huge topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's massive and it's weird Like we talk willy-nilly about change practice management system and do this and do this, and do this and it's like just emails and just managing an inbox can be a whole episode but, I, mean it can be so I mean, I do want to talk let's talk a little bit about automating emails, and then we can talk some about the apps as well that are out there that are related to emails, because they kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to automated emails, for me I'm primarily talking about prospecting and lead nurturing. So you know, we've gone to an event, someone's expressed some interest in our firm, our service, our product, whatever it is, and so you know we want to touch base with them. If we just send them one email and say, hey, it was great to meet you at this event, you know, feel free to book a meeting or whatever, and then that's it, sure, you're definitely not going to come across as too salesy, which is great, but you're also probably not going to win them as a client potentially yeah because they're busy too, and one email might not cut the mustard.
Speaker 1:It might not get through to them. Um, you know so much evidence-based stuff on this that you know how many times you have to see a brand before you know you actually buy those kinds of things. Um, so, but you don't want to have to be manually. Oh yes, sorry, it's been three days since I sent that first email. It's time for me to send the next email, or I better task up to remind myself in six days and 12 days to send out another email. Don't worry, I've been there. So what's your? You know, what do you see? Do firms do a good job of doing this automatically, or Firms? No, no.
Speaker 2:Sorry, no offence, no, firms do not do a great job of following up emails and making sure that things are followed up. Basically, look, there are definitely outliers, so forgive me if you're listening and going way better than what she's saying that we are. So there definitely are outliers with this, but as a generalization, I don't believe firms do enough in that space. In relation to scheduling in good communication and scheduling in you know, comms around things. Basically, I think that there is definitely room for improvement around being a bit more structured with responses around. Just, you know, it could even be not necessarily automating, but if you've sent an email to a client, what's your process for follow-up if you haven't had a response?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is it one day? Is it two days, is it? You then pick up the phone, like we have something internally which is if we've sent an email, we might send another response, and if we haven't had an outcome, you know a response after the second email. You pick up the phone, call the client.
Speaker 1:I mean that's a good example. I mean that's a workflow where you know if you are requesting information. There are apps to do that and that will send automated reminders to clients to say hey you've still got this form that hasn't been completed. We automated reminders to clients to say, hey, you've still got this form that hasn't been completed. We're still missing information, that kind of thing. Content snares of the world. So yes, I mean for sure from that perspective, I mean, do you see much on the prospecting side.
Speaker 2:And you know the reason why is because most accounting practices forgive me again, there are differences in terms of where you're at with your life cycle but most accounting practices out there, they don't need to chase clients for work, they're just flat out.
Speaker 2:They're just flat out. That's the first thing. The second thing is is if you've had a conversation with a client, they might follow up once or twice, which I think is very good practice. But beyond that, if the client isn't ready to jump pretty much instantaneously, then the accountants it's a fairly safe bet for them to turn around and go well, are you just shopping around? If you want me, you know where I am, you've got my details, that kind of thing. But I don't think from a prospecting, like you know. This is where I'm going to open up a can of worms here, jack. But prospecting and the sales process in a practice is typically not that strong. That process it's typically not that strong. This goes down to many episodes I've spoken about this which is accountants don't necessarily need to prospect in the more traditional senses, like other business genres do, because you know you will have a dedicated line of work dictated to you by your governing bodies in your relevant country that is trying to make you collect tax on behalf of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's right. I mean if you've got, if you have no need for more business, then I would 100% mean that that's right.
Speaker 2:I mean if you've got, if you, if you have no need for more business, then I would 100 agree that it's not a yeah, exactly, but for those who do have a need for it, I think that there is actually more of a desire around it. Therefore, there's a bit more of a process around it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, which makes sense, I mean if you want to grow your firm and it's not just happening organically, if you're sitting there thinking, yeah, I win clients, but I'd like to win more clients.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 1:I think this is an area that it can help, because if you think about that potential prospects experience, they met you somewhere or you know they somehow engaged with you at some event or online or whatever it is, and now they're on a list that you have, you send them out an email to say thanks, it was great to catch up, but nothing comes of it. Yeah, but that's because that week they were busy. They were, you know, they had a few things going on with their family. They just archived that email and moved on. You know, two weeks time they're thinking about their financials, or it's a bad week. This week your email comes into the inbox and they think, oh, actually that's really timely. Um, oh timely. Oh, but actually, you know, not this week Archive, oh, that's it. You've stopped emailing them now. So the next time they're having a tough moment they've forgotten, you know, to you, your business is the only thing on your mind. To them it's not, it's the millionth thing on their list.
Speaker 1:So, I think just you don't want to be bothersome because otherwise you get the unsubscribe or the reporter spam. But I think just being like showing up every now and again with something of value or just a very lightweight hey, you know, it was great to talk to you. You know, a few months ago I just wanted to check in how is everything going with the business that's just a really harmless kind of message, and if they don't respond, they don't respond. You don't take it personally, but that's the kind of stuff that can technically be automated to a degree. And so it's like look, we're going to have an email that goes out the day after the event, seven days after the event, 21 days after the event, and then we're going to wait. For, you know, we're only going to do a quarterly check-in after that. We're not going to bother someone if they haven't taken, you know, and I think that stuff's easy to do.
Speaker 2:I agree, but then there's also the in the next year, or 12 months to two years later. It's also something to highlight that sometimes rounding back then is actually not a bad option either, because I know that we've found that with clients for our business, which is you know, sometimes we talk to them about changes and it's like oh wow, that's very overwhelming and there's just so many other conflicting needs and business requirements at the time that they're just not ready for it. So, making sure that you've still got access to that list and you don't forget about it, that's also something to remember. But yeah, the automated like, yeah, the automation side of that is I mean, where do you draw the line?
Speaker 1:So I love you know, we all love a good automation, but I do think when it comes to automating emails, especially from your own email address, there's a point where you get a bit scared and a bit nervous.
Speaker 2:I've been there. I do yeah, so what's on your mind?
Speaker 1:What do you?
Speaker 2:Oh, there's just some cringe stuff that you do in the past in the early days around automating certain emails and bits, bits and pieces. I didn't do too much of it and I'm glad that I didn't, because I only dipped my toe in the water a little bit and then went. I don't like it. It's not me. I'm obviously much more of a personal kind of human being. I like to make them, you know, a personalized experience as much as possible, but we definitely automate a lot of our emails when we actually when, for example, I used to do this manually, but this process is now automated.
Speaker 2:Somebody books in a meeting online via the website. They get an automated email that says thanks so much, please. You know, great, can't wait to look forward to catching up. Blah, blah, blah. By the way, here's a form. Please fill this in. That form, if they do fill it in, great, you know, they'll get an automated reminder about the email. Sorry about the meeting coming up. If they don't fill in the form, they'll get an email to say, hey, we still need that form. Please fill it in. You know, in preparation for the meeting, that kind of thing. But yeah, they'll also get a reminder in relation to the upcoming meeting.
Speaker 2:Those little automations allow me to not have to go. I wonder if this person's going to turn up and I wonder what they're going to be talking about, which? In the early days, I used to do that. Now it's like if I don't hit, there are certain checks and balances in place. So I get a notification, you know, the day before if I haven't filled in that form, which tends to make me go. All right, you either just want to pick my brains or you're just going to waste my time. Whichever way, you want to go about this, right? Therefore, I'm probably maybe going to pick up the phone and just go. Hey, just wanted to make sure that you're still good for this meeting, because my time is just as important as yours. I don't blatantly say that outrightly, but you know.
Speaker 2:I think, about it because it is. But those automations that I've got in place are actually there to save me time and they do work. It's rare these days that we have to pick up the phone and call people and sort of say, hey, you still turn up for this meeting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a great example of an area where a little automation step is useful. It's not harmful, there's not really any risk attached to it, whereas when you're doing a, you know bulk mail out on a regular basis, automatically filling in like 16 different fields on the email.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, those are the ones where I'm like actually just draft it for me. Like, those are the ones where I'm like actually just draft it for me. Still, have the system drafted for me, whether it's FYI or something else that's saying, hey, on this schedule, if I've got a client, I want to at least be touching base with them every six months, if nothing else, just to see how they're going. Please draft up the email for me using this template, and draft up the task for me to do it. The reason why that's good is it gives you a starting point. You're not using mental energy to figure out just a default email that I should be sending. But also you know it might have some empty dot points or something like that, where it's like oh, how's the kids? You know, last we spoke you were thinking about opening up another venue. How are you going with that? Those kinds of little things that you can just throw in there. So you take a very automated process and then you customize it and shoot it out.
Speaker 2:Agreed.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Some of the like. We could talk about this topic for hours honestly, I didn't realize how big this topic actually was. Jack, In relation to, I guess is there any more on automations that you can think of? I've covered that.
Speaker 1:I don't think we need that. Is there any?
Speaker 2:more on automations that you can think of.
Speaker 1:I've covered that I don't think we need that. Yeah, sweet, awesome Done. Everyone's got their emails automated.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, yes, woo, great. What about? Here's one that we get thrown a bit of a curveball, which is managing multiple inboxes or multiple emails. So, depending on what type of accounting practice you are and the services that you provide, if you're a bookkeeper, I know bookkeepers really struggle with this because the client wants their bookkeeper to, from an outward perspective, to look like they're working for them, but in actual fact, they're obviously not. They're just contracting, for example. So how do you manage the multiple email situation and multiple inboxes?
Speaker 1:And I don't know, do you have any thoughts on this one? I mean, I, I, I will put my head up and say I'm not an expert when it comes to this stuff, because I worked at fy for a while and there were a lot of businesses and firms that came to us and said hey, we've got this shared email or we've got these like 10 different emails that we all manage, yep and I'm like why?
Speaker 2:Why do you have that?
Speaker 1:So I mean, I'm not a big like. I guess I can understand some use cases for it. Yep, I'm also a big fan of like hey, we're all people here and let's just communicate Jack to you, you to Jack, and it's going to be okay if Jack left, or something like that, we'll get on with it, we'll get on with our lives, but there's technical ways of doing it. Yeah, yeah, I'm not, I think there's a persona these days?
Speaker 2:I think it's. I think the world has evolved enough now where, uh, there, there doesn't have to be this big front of, oh, I don't want, I don't want my clients to think that I'm losing. You know team members and that perception thing. Do you know what I mean? It's like yeah, you know people's businesses ebb and flow. It's just the way of the world these days, right? So the perception that your clients must think that you, as an accounting practice, are perfect and that you never have staff that leave I think you need a reality check.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the way that you're going about that one. I mean, I imagine there's some scenarios excuse me if I'm wrong here of like hey, we do you know, basically where the outsource finance function for 10 businesses, so we've given them all the specific email address for bills that they can email into those kinds of situations. Um, I don't know if you've seen that in.
Speaker 2:No, no, not really, but, um, I think. But I do think that it all comes down to communication, which is, if you do the correct introduction, which is um, you know, I might have a bookkeeper that I'm working with, for example, and I need them to go and meet one of my suppliers for some reason. This is probably a horrible example. Apologies everyone, but it all comes down to the email that I would send, which is hey, just introducing into my bookkeeper Um, she's just doing a bit of work with us at the moment. I'm going to hand you over to her to deal with whatever the situation is.
Speaker 2:Yep, Simple, done, sorted. Everybody knows who everybody is. There's no, no, it's no buts about it, but I think, especially bookkeepers they're managing multiple inboxes and having access to that can be a real problem, and I don't feel like there's a perfect way of handling it. Apart from, you know, you can have one application that handles multiple inboxes. What I mean by that is like Gmail, for example, and I'm pretty sure Microsoft does it as well, Even though you don't have I know. I just know I used to do it with my Gmail account, which was I have. I used to have three or four different domain related emails. They would all come into my Gmail, but I would have to flick between each email inbox right Within the app.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like hello at. Clarity Street as like the generic contact us email.
Speaker 2:No, I'm more talking like I would have an Amy at Clarity Street. I would have an Amy at Red Coat Cake.
Speaker 1:Oh, gotcha my little cake business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little. You know selfish plug there, but you know there's and, like, I had a couple of others because I was doing some work with some clients at the time as well and I was actually there working with them. So it wasn't centralising it into one inbox, but it was centralising it into one app and then I could see, between flicking between each inbox, that there were different emails, basically, and I had to go and check each one. It's not perfect, but it is probably the cleaner way of doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so that's where one person has three or four email addresses and they want to view them all in one place.
Speaker 1:The other is we have one email address that we want four or five people to look at, such as support at email address which is like basically, any generic question you have for our firm, just email this address and one of our team will get back to you. Whoever's available on that day can be great, because it means that it's not just with one person to respond. Anyone can pick it up, so the person's going to get a response faster. So I understand the use case for something like that or a hello act, which is that generic. You're on our website, who do I contact? Just contact hello at and someone will get back to you Once again. You might have six or seven people who that goes to and they can all access it. So I get it. I think it always adds some complexity when you sign up to like a document management system or anything, oh doesn't it.
Speaker 1:But you know you can obviously work with them and their teams to figure out the best way to deal with it. But yeah, I'm glad we kept that not very helpful and quite high level to deal with it. But yeah, I'm glad we kept that not very helpful and quite high level.
Speaker 2:I think high level. Let's kind of round this one out because I'm just like we do need to talk about some connected apps that can probably help you manage Rapid fire. Yeah, you know, just manage your emails a little bit better, depending on what your needs are. You've got Carbon. They have a nice little inbox triage system. You've got FYI same situation. Uh, you've got um HubSpot. You've got MailChimp that handle emails. Um SweetFiles obviously helps with your filing of emails. Um Content Snare.
Speaker 1:Replaces some emails. Like if you send out a form via Content Sn, content snare, then it would automate the follow-ups of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that kind of thing same as seamless in that space. Um, and then there is how about we don't use email at all to communicate and things like slack or teams?
Speaker 1:you know that would be an alternative to maybe just not sending an email yeah, I see that with some firms who have, you know, some special clients or maybe they're a small firm that only works with a handful of clients where they say, actually we want to feel like, we're part of your team, so let's integrate how you communicate with us the same way you communicate with your team.
Speaker 1:And so when the client goes to their Teams or their Slack, they've got access to their account right there, and then Now, obviously you can't do this. I, they've got access to their account right there and then Now, obviously you can't do this. I don't think you'd be able to do this at scale where you've got 300 clients and you're talking to them all via Slack. I imagine that would be a nightmare.
Speaker 2:And I can tell you don't do it via Teams. It's a pain in the backside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so Slack's not too bad.
Speaker 2:Slack's much better for that Teams. Not so user-friendly. Not for that Teams not so user friendly.
Speaker 3:Not so good.
Speaker 2:But I think, internally though, for internal stuff, please don't send emails unless you have received an email from an external source that you need to forward to the team. That's different. But if I'm doing a hey team, just sending you around some information about the event that we're holding or whatever, don't, no, don't, don't need to hey guys, I'm running late for the meeting. You don't need to. Yeah, hey guys, I'm I'm running late for the meeting. You don't need to do a send all email.
Speaker 1:That's a message in your teams or your slack, depending on what that actually is correct and I please, if you're still doing that, if you're still emailing your entire firm about things or someone is, please don't, yeah, stop. Do you remember back in the?
Speaker 2:day we used to be on mailing lists. Oh wow, they just don't even exist Mailing lists. Do you remember we used to be on them.
Speaker 1:They're your channels now, right yeah?
Speaker 2:no, exactly right. That's why I'm like, oh, back in the day, look how far we've evolved.
Speaker 1:Oh, gosh, I remember some of those at PwC like you list of 400 people or something, and just the replies would just never end. They just keep coming for like years because someone would respond in like 12 months saying hey, sorry, back from leave and they would just bring it back alive again, classic classic.
Speaker 2:Uh, okay, that was it. That was a beefy episode, jack emails. Uh, I didn't realize everywhere yeah, okay, to be fair, I really didn't think. I was like, yeah, this will be great. You know, we'll just whip out this episode.
Speaker 1:There's so much more probably.
Speaker 2:So much more.
Speaker 1:Hopefully that was helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great to chat, as always, jack, thanks.
Speaker 1:Likewise, have a good one. Bye.
Speaker 2:Bye, bye.
Speaker 3:Hey team, hey team. It's Ellie and Andrew from All Aussie Accounting Adventures here. I hope you really enjoyed this episode with Amy and Jack. What did you think, andrew?
Speaker 5:Oh, stunning as always.
Speaker 3:The two of them are brilliant minds and are brilliant communicators.
Speaker 5:So we hope that you have got some incredible learnings out of this episode and if you'd like to continue to follow us, make sure you check out our website. Find us on the socials. You'll see accounting adventures or look for all aussie accounting adventures wherever good stuff can be found, whether that's conferences, whether that's websites, whether it's podcasts or social media remember to share it around my friends.
Speaker 3:Like review, we love that stuff, so come on, join the adventures with us.