All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
CRM Strategies for Accountants
🎧 CRM or C-R-Meh? Let’s Talk About It.
Customer Relationship Management systems: the name alone sounds like something you'd buy at a corporate garage sale. And for accountants? Confusion often comes free with purchase. Should your practice dive into one? Will it actually help—or just become another fancy dashboard you never open?
Fear not as Amy and AJack are on the case! In this episode, they untangle the CRM knot with the precision of a reconciled bank statement (yes, pun fully intended).
Here’s the kicker: Unlike most businesses chasing leads like it’s a Black Friday sale, accounting firms often grow through good ol' fashioned referrals. That means CRMs built for cold outreach and hyper-funnel nonsense might not fit quite right. Before you start signing up for trials like it’s your hobby, ask yourself this: Are you really looking to grow beyond your referral base—or just romanticising automation?
From HubSpot’s mighty free tier to some niche tools that speak accountant-fluent, Amy and Jack walk through your options. But wait—there’s more (and it’s not a subscription upsell). They also dive into the human side of CRM use. Because let’s face it: if you’re still the one doing everything yourself, no system is gonna save you from CRM chaos.
It all comes down to this: are you an accountant who owns a business... or a business owner who runs an accounting practice? That mindset shift can make or break your CRM journey.
Whether you're CRM-curious or just trying to figure out what those three letters even stand for, this episode is your practical, slightly sassy guide to smarter client management.
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MUSIC
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PRODUCTION
David Easton (@davidjeasty) | Insta...
Hey Amy.
Speaker 2:Hey Jack.
Speaker 1:How you doing.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty good. How are you? I'm a bit overwhelmed to be honest, why are you overwhelmed?
Speaker 1:Because we're talking about CRMs and they're deep and there's a lot of complexity here. I think personally yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I appreciate why you're overwhelmed. It is especially for the market segment that we talk to our beloved accountants out there. I feel like the concept of a CRM actually is kind of overwhelming because there's a lot of conflicting ideas and thoughts around what it is and how it is, and I think um personally, for me, I love this topic. I love unpacking this topic. Um, because there's a lot of um, there's a lot of why questions that you need to ask yourself and is this the right fit?
Speaker 2:well you know. So I get a lot of accountants that you know um will ask me, you know, do I need a crm? And my first question back to them is always why do you think you need one?
Speaker 1:do you know what it means? Correct do you know?
Speaker 2:what a crm is? Do you know what they do? Do you know what like? What is your definition of a crm?
Speaker 1:mine, mine. I mean, if you're asking me, I guess I will ask you, but that's usually a question that I ask the accountant.
Speaker 2:But yes, what is your definition of a CRM Jack?
Speaker 1:I mean, for anyone listening who doesn't know what CRM is, it's Customer Relationship Management or Client Relationship Management. And I mean, I think this is where things start to get a little bit blurry in our industry, because we all use practice management systems and I mean, to some degree there's potentially's, potentially, you know, crossover with what a traditional crm would do. If you know, if you're in another industry that doesn't have, uh, you know, practice management, you probably have some tool that has a list of the customers you work with on a regular basis, or clients that you work with. That stores the emails, uh, that you, you know, have against them, that has notes against those customers like this person likes cappuccinos or lattes when they come into the office, or this person's just gone through some really tough hardship. Let's not bother them for the next two months with our email and newsletters, those kinds of things that just help you to track what's going on with your customers and clients and make sure that they're getting the you know, the best experience possible.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's the part of the customer relationship that gets a little bit blurry for accounting firms, but the bit that I think isn't as blurry is, you know, tracking leads and prospects, you know, marketing to leads and prospects, and then, yeah, basically everything up to the point that somebody becomes a client. I think that's the element that I generally focus on when I talk CRM with accounting firms, because it's like, once they are a client, I appreciate then they're probably going to be managed and looked after within whatever practice management system or document management system you're using. But yeah, how does that align with your thoughts on this?
Speaker 2:Agreed wholeheartedly. There is a lot of crossover once they become a client. But this is to the point of why I ask accounting practices, why do you think you need a CRM? Because what you just explained then is, for the most part, it's either marketing to potential leads and prospects and or nurturing current clients, or nurturing prospects and leads, and a lot of the time, accounting practices aren't necessarily wanting to attract new clients and or wanting to grow, so there is something to be said for well, do you need a crm?
Speaker 2:well, that's a great point so I think yeah, like, and also the other challenge that I face with this industry wanting a crm in the traditional sales pipeline, sales funnel perspective of managing your sales funnel um is that accounting practices don't have a traditional sales funnel. Typically speaking, I would say and this is a gut feel, so there's no actual hard evidence, but I would suggest that at a minimum 75 of leads or people who contact you have come from a referral of some sort if, if not higher.
Speaker 2:Therefore, you don't have to typically do the cold outreach or the nurture sequences or the you know a lot of the social media campaigns to try and attract new clients and all of the things that you know non-accountants typically have to do Like. If we look at financial planners right, similar industry but completely different because there is a compliance requirement associated with public practice accounting. As opposed to financial planners, there's actually no compliance requirement associated with it, which means that financial planners, compared to accountants, kind of have to hustle like you and I do.
Speaker 2:Like we have to hustle for clients effectively, right, whereas accountants they don't really have to hustle, Like you and I do. Like we have to hustle for clients effectively, right, Whereas accountants they don't really have to hustle.
Speaker 1:What a pleasure.
Speaker 1:I know Nothing sure in life, Death and taxes, man I mean I guess maybe that's a good, you know, because we could obviously now talk for 30 minutes about how you don't need a CRM. But I guess maybe let's draw the line and say but I guess maybe let's draw the line and say, if you're not looking to grow or you're getting plenty of growth organically, what word of mouth is generating for you? Maybe looking to scale up as a business and saying, look, we've got three or four team members, We've got a good client base. But I have no intention of slowing down, I want to take this firm to something really huge and big.
Speaker 2:Or you're wanting to offer a new service line, like you're all of a sudden getting into estate planning, or you know you've come up with a really good service offering around advisory and you've come up with a great package and you really want to push that. Something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's say you're one of them. And then someone says okay, amy, sounds like you meet the definition of an accountant who needs a CRM. Where do I begin? Where do you begin that process, that journey? What are you thinking about next?
Speaker 2:My go-to on this is first work out your process, which is a bit boring, I know, but also, well, what is your sales process? Have you actually mapped it out? Because I know what we're obviously wanting to get to which we will get to shortly is the tech associated with it. But before we get to the tech, I think it's really important to actually map out what your process is. Sure, high level lead contacts you in some way, shape or form. Whether that and this is another reason to get a crm is to actually understand where your leads are coming from. So, even if, if you like, if you are looking to grow, it's always nice to actually track, you know, even if it is a referral, it's always lovely to send a thank you note to the person who referred. Thanks so much for that. Had a great chat with this person. Whether they convert or not, just thanks so much. Really appreciate the introduction. Keeps the woman fuzzy and usually typically keeps the leads actually being generated as well. So that's always a nice one. So, um, track where you're actually getting the lead from. That's the first step.
Speaker 2:Um, then it would be well, how, how did they actually? You know, what is the process of? You know, is it I then have a meeting with them? Is it a phone call first? Is it then a meeting? Is there any nice little emails that I send in between to say thanks for booking in a meeting, looking forward to chatting? Is there a form that you want them to fill out in, like in preparation? That kind of um gives you a bit more information around what they're looking for, what type of accountant you know, size of business that you know, just basic stuff, right? Um, once all that's happened, you have the meeting, what are the steps? Post that, do you send a proposal? Do you, uh, do you get him, you know? Do you take a look under their books before you do a proper scoping session, you know? I mean like the whole heap of different things. Um, you've done a hell of a lot more of this than I have jack is. Have I missed anything?
Speaker 1:no, I mean, I was just curious. I mean, I think that that makes sense, that step one would be to map out the process and have a bit of an idea and I think this goes for any piece of tech, right which is you know, what do they say? You know, the first thing that you want to do is eliminate tasks that don't need to be done at all. Then there's automate tasks that you know you do need to do but can't be eliminated. And then there's the third option, which is delegate, where, okay, I can't automate something, so you know it needs to be done. Should it be done by me? Maybe it can be done by someone else. So it's kind of like first things first. What's our process and which steps of these do we need to keep doing and which ones can be maybe automated or assisted with technology?
Speaker 3:You know, you know tracking leads emailing them, keeping them warm. You know seeing who's opening your emails versus who's ignoring the emails. I love that feature oh.
Speaker 1:I think for anyone who's not using a CRM at the moment I mean, I assume most of them do this, but HubSpot definitely does which is, when you send out an email, it actually shows you, if you've got the settings turned on, whether or not that email got opened, and I think that's just such a okay cool. I've contacted this person. They opened it three times, or they opened it eight times, sometimes 15 times, and without them responding, you've instantly got a bit of a gauge as to whether or not they're interested in this.
Speaker 2:I saw you've opened my email 15 times. Are you sure you don't want to have a chat?
Speaker 1:that's right, so like little things like that, uh, are really interesting and, um, you know, you obviously don't get that out of, out of just a practice management system, um, but yeah, so okay. So we've mapped out our process, we've decided that we we do have, you know, we do, we do have a desire to grow. We've mapped out our process. Now we want to go and look at implementing a CRM. The one that comes to mind for me first and foremost is HubSpot. I use it, I know you use it, and it's probably one of the I don't know how much people know about this stuff, but it's probably on the more expensive side. I guess it does have a free kind of starting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2:I'm going to jump in there because I actually recommend hubspot to a lot of accounting practices, um, as a starting point, because the free version of hubspot, yeah, actually really quite feature rich. So I actually think that it's a good starting point to get your head wrapped around the concept of a sales process because, as I say, a lot of accounting practices actually don't necessarily have the conceptually you get what a sales process is, but the actual experience and the knowledge around how things work. There is a lot to kind of work out in terms of what your sales process is and that's a good starting place to kind of work out. It's got integrated calendar links so you know, just like calendly.
Speaker 2:It's got an integrated platform so somebody books a meeting. You can embed that on your website. It's automatically connected to your crm plus reads your call it, your outlook so it can check your availability. That information auto goes into your crm off the back of a booked meeting, which means you can then assign a deal to it or you could assign sort of a nice, you know, a templated email. Some of these things you might have to manually trigger in the free version, but it's still a good process to sort of track everything up to the point where you're like, okay, they're now a client effectively. So actually, I actually really rate hubspot as far as a starting point for it, but there are so many of them out there.
Speaker 2:There's SugarCRM, there's ActiveCampaign there's Pipedrive there's a heap of them, and then there's a few that are actually accounting specific kind of Kind of kind of.
Speaker 1:I was going to actually say I don't think there's many that have gone, at least in Australia, but no doubt there would be in the US or something like that.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there are in the US. I think the ones that we've got in Australia are very light versions of, call it, lead management.
Speaker 2:I think that is a nicest way of saying it. So, again, they're not even true CRMs, because a true CRM is, you know, your full sales pipeline interconnected with your current client pipeline and relationships and things like that, and being able to send out newsletters and articles and blah, blah, blah, all the rest of that kind of stuff. Actually, that's one other thing that HubSpot free version does is, if you don't want to pay for the marketing component of HubSpot I know a lot of accounting firms out there that might have MailChimp, for example, to send out their newsletters and stuff you can actually connect it up via a free little web connector and it tracks your newsletters and stuff. You can actually connect it up via a free little web connector, um, and it tracks your newsletter. So you still send your newsletters out of MailChimp, but it can then track it back to your CRM. So there's a cool little. There's a few little cool little things.
Speaker 1:Basically oh, yeah, I think there's a lot, of, a lot of interesting things and, yeah, I don't know how. I mean we're doing a deep dive, so we might as well go into it and feel free to kind of call out those tools as well, if you think it's. Is there anyone that you want to kind of mention there from the accounting specific side?
Speaker 2:Well, you know what, maybe, before we do jump into that, maybe we hear a wonderful little word from our favourite sponsors.
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Speaker 4:That is nuts, and you know what's even cooler about it? This is like proper next level AI based stuff that they're building out as well. So this is doing things on a level that we can't even comprehend at times.
Speaker 3:Just for your practice management. It is the bomb.
Speaker 4:Right. It's going to safeguard your processes and it's going to ensure you look like a rock star with your clients and your team can get on doing the stuff that's most valuable.
Speaker 3:Expert. I love our sponsors.
Speaker 2:They're so good. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1:Thank you all.
Speaker 2:So we were talking about some of the apps that are out there that have built some functionality, that are more accounting specific, and it's more that these are apps that are that are already in the marketplace and they just happen to have, extent, you know, expanded on their current um repertoire of services, slash functionality. So you've got Seamless, which was originally built as an onboarding tool. They have now expanded that and they now have sort of a lead management component, basically, which is you can actually connect that through to Calendly as well. There's a zap connection. I have a funny feeling HubSpot actually connects to it as well, just as a complete side note. But there's a zap there which you know people. You know somebody books a meeting, the information ends up there and then you can actually track your leads before you get to a point where you send an engagement, which is kind of cool yep um, I know ignition is building out a leads dashboard, so watch this space.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's coming very soon from what I hear. I don't want to put times and dates on things because I feel like the dev team might hurt me. Um, not that I have that information specifically, but, um, but I know that it's it's coming very soon and it looks pretty cool as to what they're doing there. Um, there's another one that I saw recently which hasn't quite officially hit the market but I believe is oh so close as well Onboard Me, which is another onboarding tool which I believe also has a bit of a dashboard in terms of lead management too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's interesting. We started this conversation talking about lead management being kind of where things start to differentiate. I mean, a lot of CRMs that are built for purpose do go to that. You know ahead of that as well. You know that marketing component. You know you mentioned MailChimp, which a lot of people are using, but you know, for something like HubSpot it's embedded. You know you can do your email newsletters through something like that, but, yeah, I think you know you can do your email newsletters through something like that.
Speaker 1:But but yeah, I think you know, as soon as you've had contact with somebody at an event, you've met them somewhere, you've got an introduction and you add them to your crm. You know, yes, you can manage them as a lead, um, until when, at some point, they haven't engaged with you for a couple of months, then what kind of thing? And I think that's where a full CRM does help, because you know, yes, okay, cool, we touched base a couple of times. We didn't hear back. We don't want to completely forget about them and move on. You know they may still be interested. They haven't said they're not interested, they haven't. You know they might just be really busy. So we don't want to let them go. But maybe it doesn't make sense for one-on-one follow-ups on an ongoing basis every single month on, you know, for the rest of time.
Speaker 1:And that's where you know something like a HubSpot you just update their property, update the stage of their deal, whatever it is, close the deal, move them back, almost like transitioning them back to marketing and saying, look, this is someone who at some point in time showed interest in us.
Speaker 1:We weren't able to kind of properly engage with them and so back they go. You know they should still be getting contacted regarding new services we're offering or special events we're running or whatever else, because you never know, maybe they're not feeling the pain that day when you emailed them or gave them a phone call, but in three months' time they're having a really rough time with their existing accountant or they're. You know that just is the day they're having a really rough time with their existing accountant or they're. You know that just is the day they're doing the baths and they've realized I need some help with this kind of stuff. You do need that, that ongoing contact, and so I think you know having, yes, a lead management tool is important so that you know when someone does show interest, you don't just completely send them one email and forget about them or have to mentally track them all on, track them on a notepad somewhere, but also that once they, you know, kind of cool off, we don't completely just let them go.
Speaker 1:Uh, we keep them, we try and keep them as warm as we can um which you know I don't think that many tools uh in the industry are doing great job of. But I think it also then extends to and this is stuff I've, I'm only just learning. Now I'm kind of getting my head around hubspot. So anyone who's a hubspot guru listening is probably like this is amateur hour stuff, but for me now.
Speaker 1:I get it now there's great tools out there in the accounting industry, like an fyi, that can automate emails, um, and so you can set up things that will say hey, every month I would like to email this list of people and then then, when someone starts working with us, we'll take them off that list. But what you don't get with that is your. You know. Can I view how many clicks were on the email, how many meetings were booked? Can I run sequences that will run until someone books a meeting and then automatically stop? You know there's a lot of functionality and a lot of depth in something like a HubSpot that you know probably more tools than you're ever going to need. But it means that for every firm there's going to be a couple of these things that are quite interesting and unique for them.
Speaker 2:And I think that's probably where my challenge is for the accounting industry is do you have the capacity not just one person, but do you actually have a business development, slash, sales process in mind and planned out Like do you have human beings that will actually manage this and run this software? Because for the most part, accounting practices don't have the capacity to actually do this.
Speaker 2:They haven't necessarily, you know, taken on board A lot of the bigger firms, different sure, but I'm talking like you know your average public practice accountant. You know a couple of partners, maybe you know Absolutely 10 to 20 staff, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Most don't have the capacity to get through the level of compliance work that they have, let alone, you know, manage a sales, you know CRM type whole process, and whilst everything that you said then is so true and correct, most firms don't have the capacity to actually even think that, hey, I should probably reach out to that person again. You know, I haven't heard from them. Like you know, they didn't actually get in touch with us. Maybe I will reach out to them again. There's nothing, there's no kind of consideration around that, and I do think. I do wonder, though, like, whether this is actually more of a conditioning element of the industry that we are working towards, which is what I mentioned earlier around the accountants don't have to hustle.
Speaker 1:They've never had to hustle I know, but I think are we assuming that the people who have continued listening are the ones who do want to do, want to grow?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, of course, yes I agree with that, but therefore that speaks to the point. Yeah, if you do want to grow the firm and you are really committed to this, then you also have to commit resources you need to commit the manpower to actually manage it as well like you have to go down the path of. I am now in a revenue generating business. It's not just an accounting practice, it's actually a business and therefore I am trying to attract, nurture, keep particular leads, clients, etc.
Speaker 1:I mean this is a tangent, but related to what you're saying and I think interesting for people to be thinking about is as far as I'm aware, most firms hire accountants. Those accountants do the work this is at least the firms I've been part of and then they grow up, they become the managers. Then they grow up again and they become the partners, and now, somewhere in the manager-partner vicinity, they're now in charge of winning new work as well. But they haven't changed. They're still an accountant.
Speaker 1:They're still a technical person who understands accounting rules. Not necessarily. There are absolutely fantastic accountants who do a great job of selling and understand their value, but there's a lot who I think, probably struggle with that. It doesn't come naturally to them. But there's a lot who I think probably struggle with that. It doesn't come naturally to them. So if you are going down this road, speaking to the fact that resources are going to be key to properly executing any big, deep CRM implementation and properly using it and all those kinds of things you're wanting to grow substantially, potentially from the sounds of things, does it make sense to just take your existing accounting staff and say you are now also in charge of selling? Or, if we're increasing our team in our capacity, does it make sense to have somebody whose role is to sell? And I don't know what the answer is? I just thought I'd pose that.
Speaker 2:No, it's good I ask this question when I do a lot of the events and that I often ask the question are you an accountant who owns a business or a business owner of an accounting practice? Good question, yeah, because there's a very big difference between the two. I would say that 80% of the accountants out there who own businesses are actually accountants who own businesses. I reckon there is a much smaller percentage of business owners of an accounting practice, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So the entrepreneurially minded, correct Sales focused Yep, that's exactly it, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think the other challenge is for the non-entrepreneurial, like the 80%. The challenge that they face, even when they do want to grow, is they sit there and get really stuck in that that mentality of, well, it's business development. There's no, there's technically no chargeable hours here. Where do I put that time? Where do I put those chargeable hours? And I mean, we get asked that question all the time.
Speaker 2:Where do we put, where do we put on our time sheets in xpm? Where do we put our um? You know the, the sales meetings that we have, like what? Yeah, well, you can't put it to a client, obviously, because they're not a client. You need to put it to, you know, put it to an internal time job, um, you know your um, capacity reducing, um, and it goes down to business development yeah, because that's what it is, and track it and see how much you know and actually track whether you business development, because that's what it is, and track it and see how much you know and actually track whether you're converting, and that's then we're getting back to the sales conversation. And why you should actually have a CRM is because you want to track and understand where your leads have come from and how many of them have converted into actual paid work?
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I wonder, of the 80% who are accountants running businesses, how many of those are putting their hand up and saying I want to grow this thing more and more?
Speaker 1:Or if most of them are saying I am here out of necessity, not because I wanted to be here, or I kind of fell into this, or I took over a firm that I was just part of. Um, whatever the case may be, um, you know, if you're sitting here and describing yourself as a I'm an accountant running a business, but you're also describing, saying I really want to grow this thing and I'm interested in how I can leverage technology in a CRM, and maybe you know hiring someone who's going to be more involved in sales technology and a CRM, and maybe you know hiring someone who's going to be more involved in sales, you know, maybe you are more of a business owner than you think you know, because that's the kind of stuff that a business owner is going to be thinking about, wanting to grow it versus maybe someone who's just like super technical and wants to just do a really good job and they are overwhelmed because they do a good job all the time.
Speaker 1:They get a lot of word of mouth.
Speaker 2:But it's not really part of the the plan, I guess yeah I think we've talked a lot more about people and process today, rather than tech jack, but I think the tech like. I think it's. The reason why, though, is because you know, crms are actually a bit of a beast of software, and the challenge that I see with accounting practices is there is a crossover and a confusion.
Speaker 2:Once the client becomes a client like once the lead becomes a client or the prospect becomes a client there's a confusion as to where the where the information is actually stored. Um, one thing that I do like and we managed to jerry-rig this just as a little side note from a technical perspective is the information that you might be emailing a client. Right, so you might be using FYI for your client work. Given that you use Microsoft, and if you actually have your you know sale like if you've got a number of your team member actually added into HubSpot as well, that is also linked to your Microsoft subscription. When you send an email to a client, obviously just be careful about what you're sending, but you can actually choose to have that email stored against the client automatically within HubSpot, which means that your CRM actually then does become a full history of from all the way, from the initial lead contact sales process all the way, and ongoing as well. So there is a way to kind of jerry-rig it to make it work together, um, but it is something to consider.
Speaker 2:As to, you know, like we've spoken about hubspot quite a bit today because I think it's actually a really good product. You mentioned earlier that it can be expensive and yes, I agree, be on the free once you start getting to the point where you're like, oh, I want extra features. It can definitely get xy. I think that at the moment it's definitely costing me nearly half a human, but it's worth it. It does so much for my business and we we baby stepped into that as well.
Speaker 1:I think it's yeah I I mean the cost of software and things like this. You know, know, I think we've had these conversations. But you know if it's getting you a client like if over the course of the year, it helps you get one or two new clients because you know this would have been a lead that just fell off the radar otherwise, but you managed to stay in touch and managed to keep on top of it. As a result, you know it generally, I think, pays for itself. That's kind of one of those softwares you know you're it generally, I think pays for itself. That's kind of one of those softwares You're dealing with prospects and leads and deals like new opportunities.
Speaker 1:This is literally a software that will, when you work to a degree that doesn't mean ignore other options, because there could be alternatives that are equivalent functionality for a lot less. So that's obviously something to consider. But HubSpot definitely has, I think, the broadest feature set that basically there probably won't be much else out there that does everything that HubSpot does. But if you found your little, this is exactly the process I need to follow and there's an app that does exactly that A to B to C to D and you don't need half the stuff that HubSpot offers, then for sure.
Speaker 2:What about Salesforce? Have you ever used Salesforce? That's another one.
Speaker 1:I haven't, but I would have thought that's like ERP level stuff, more custom build, even more expensive than HubSpot.
Speaker 2:It can be, yeah, I believe there is an off-the-shelf version these days of Salesforce, as far as I understand. Okay, honestly, the reason why I didn't go down the path of it was because, uh, uh, I I really loved the integrated book a meeting and then it automatically goes into my crm, mainly because when I first started clarity street, that was my sales process, like book a meeting, so I can start tracking you from day one effectively. Um, and nothing else actually out there does that has that full, clean integration from my perspective. Unless you have a zap in between, start tracking it from day one effectively and nothing else actually out there does.
Speaker 1:That has that full, clean integration from my perspective, unless you have a zap in between. Yes, yeah, correct, yeah, I mean I think yeah, you're right. If you're happy to kind of, you know jerry-rig a few things together, you can definitely get away with something that costs probably a lot less once you extend it outside the free plan.
Speaker 1:Like there's a couple others out there I'm happy to mention.
Speaker 1:Atio is one that we used to use Newer, less focused on the marketing side of things, more focused on the CRM like database side of things. So if you're not doing much marketing but you just want to track all of your leads and that's pretty nice and easy and not too expensive. And Pipedrive is another one of those like more lead management, deal closing kind of tools, um, that then you know, once a lead has converted, you can manage them inside your practice management tools, um. So a couple others and we mentioned you mentioned active campaign, uh, and then, yeah, from that marketing side of things, you've got your mail chimps of the world, which are which are pretty commonly used. There's a boma as well out there, which is more of an accounting specific marketing tool, for you know they provide content and marketing to emails and socials and things as well. So you know, I think if you went down the HubSpot road fully like long-term, you're saying I want to own my. You know I'm going to have someone in my team who's a marketer.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have someone in my team who or maybe multiple people who are really in charge of BD and winning new work and that's going to be something that I have they can kind of structure correctly and manage and monitor and maintain because, yeah, it can become a beast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it definitely can. One other thing, actually, just as part of your little sales pipeline, which some of them do as well, is uh forms. Not to get to not to open up a can of worms here with forms, but something that I quite like about some of the applications especially hubspot does it is uh, you can send sort of pre-qualifying forms to your potential leads. Um, I know we use it heavily at clarity street like we'll send a really long detailed. What software, what's your current tech stack? Basically, why are you contacting us? What problem are you trying to solve? How do you think we can help? How big are you like? Team size, revenue, those kinds of questions, right, and the theory behind that.
Speaker 2:From our perspective, and depending on you know your firm as well, this could actually be really quite valuable information. It does two things. It a gives you a lot of information about who you're potentially meeting with, so you can already sort of go all right, I sort of know what their problem is going to be. Um, I know I can look at the form now and I'm like, yep, I already know what your problems are. Basically, 99.9 of the time.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty much spot on these days. Granted, I've been doing it for a while, but um. The other thing that it does, though, is that it will qualify people either in or out very quickly, because if they are comfortable with, you know, filling out that form, they are much more likely to turn up to the meeting because they're actually serious about wanting some help, which also means that you are training them from the word go. If they are going to be a potential new client for you, you're training them from the word go about what expectations you're going to do to. You know, set the scene around how you're going to work with them, and I think, in today's day and age, especially from an accounting firm's perspective, starting them down that path from the word go is a very important um step to having and ensuring that you've got well-trained, good quality clients.
Speaker 2:So that's another thought process as part of the whole sales and onboarding process and CRMs and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it feels like maybe there's another episode in this. But I think for now, maybe we stop there. Hopefully we've left you with a few things to think about. You know, are you on a journey to grow? Potentially grow at a rapid rate, or a lot, over the course of the next few years? You know, are you willing to invest in the necessary resources?
Speaker 1:and find the necessary capacity to properly set this thing up, maintain it and use it. If you're not looking to do all of those things, then maybe there's some simple tools out there that we've mentioned, like not a HubSpot, but something simpler that'll give you what you need just to track leads and make sure that nobody gets forgotten about after your initial conversations. That's a really good chat Jack.
Speaker 2:Are you feeling less overwhelmed now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am Thanks, amy, Appreciate it. Appreciate you feeling less overwhelmed now. Yeah, I am thanks, amy, appreciate it, appreciate you. All right, don't cut your buddy, catch you next time.
Speaker 3:bye hey team. It's ali 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 4:Oh, stunning. As always, the two of them are brilliant minds and are brilliant communicators. 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 podcast or social media remember to share it around my friends.
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