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Tackling the Clients That Are No Longer Right for your Business

Cover Image for Tackling the Clients That Are No Longer Right for your Business

| Des O'Neill

As an accounting business owner, it is important to understand that the clients you attract and work with will have a huge impact on the success of your business. Tackling these clients is an essential part of being a firm owner.

The first step in tackling clients that are no longer right for your business is to classify them. This means taking a look at your customer list and determining which clients are ideal and which are not. Ideal clients are those who are likely to be the ones you enjoy working with and your team enjoys working with. They are probably polite, courteous cooperative and probably profitable clients for your business profitable. Non-ideal clients, on the other hand, are those who are unlikely to be profitable, your team probably dreads working with them and they are draining time and energy from you, your team and your business.

Once you have identified the non-ideal clients, it is important to take steps to weed them out as soon as possible. This could involve raising prices or setting boundaries that make it difficult for these clients to do business with you. I call this a Price Rise or Termination Conversation. 


It is also important to invest time and resources into attracting more of your ideal clients. Imagine a business where you only worked with ideal clients. You need to create a system and a process of marketing and business development that target the right clients for you to work with. By doing this, you can ensure that your business is attracting the right type of clients and providing them with the best possible experience.

It is important to keep track of how your customer base is changing over time. As your business grows and evolves, so too will the types of clients you attract. It is important to stay on top of this and adjust your strategies accordingly.

By taking the time to classify, weed out, and attract the right type of clients, you can ensure that your business is profitable and sustainable. It is like pruning a tree, taking off the dead leaves and branches to make way for new growth.

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About the Author

Having worked for a number of years in practice, and with one of the profession’s regulatory and support institutes, Des co-founded OmniPro to develop tools, techniques, products and services that make accountancy more profitable and rewarding. Des is passionate about bringing innovation to the accountancy profession and enabling accountants to achieve what they want from their careers and business. His core belief is that when empowered to achieve their best, accountants can deliver transformative results for clients. Today, OmniPro has a multi-million-euro turnover, and its operations span the areas of practice support; practice development; company secretarial; tax and legal; corporate finance; continuing professional development and online information products. As managing director, Des’ focus is on strategic development and expansion of the group as an internationally recognised professional and personal development brand. ProfitPro is the newest company in the group, and Des has developed a practice management blueprint, designed to help principals and partners build less stressful, more profitable and more rewarding practices, aligned to their business and life goals. With unique insights on the accountancy profession, Des speaks regularly at national and international fora, on practice development, auditing, accounting, company law and regulation. He is a frequent commentator on the impact of new legalisation and technology on the work of accountants in practice. He holds qualifications from the ACCA Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, CPA Institute of Certified Public Accountants and ACIS Association of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.

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