Case Study - David Shackleton

This Case Study is of a mature practice, owned and managed by a sole-trader Chartered Accountant based at home.

The Starting Point
We first met David in 2007. Over 30 years he had built up an accountancy practice. Unfortunately, the practice had stagnated and David felt stuck in a rut, trying to grow the business. Frustratingly, David was not spending enough time with his clients delivering truly valuable advice. On an emotional level, his wife fell seriously ill and this experience made him realise just how vulnerable his situation was. Were he and is wife not able to be involved in the day to day running of the practice, it would slowly collapse.

As is often the case, Januarys had become a nightmare, with end of year accounts becoming a stressful slog. David wanted to work his way away from the grunt of the January scrum by streamlining the workflow. 

The Portfolio Marketing Solution
We introduced David to the MORE Marketing Programme. This would give him three key benefits:

1) He could give away bookkeeping software for free, differentiating his practice from his competition.

2) By installing and coaching the software with passion, he would create enormous good will and stimulate referrals (especially when he explained the benefits of great record-keeping to his new clients).

3) He would be educating his clients to be on top of their books and reconciling the bank. If clients do their books regularly and with lots of support, problems would be identified at the source, rather than at the year end. Well maintained books would leave David with a smooth, predictable January.

What happened next?
The MORE Marketing Programme proved to be a true slow-burner. David initially converted a number of his portfolio to MORE but progress in adding new clients was slow. 

David created a policy of putting all applicable new (appropriate) clients onto the software. He delivered a very hands-on installation and coaching service and tried whenever possible to answer all support issues. He wanted the software to be completely synonymous with his practice; when clients enjoyed and were impressed by the software, they immediately appropriated the praise to David and his team.

After this slow start, word began to get around and the referrals started to roll in. Dramatically!  In 2009, David received 20 referrals and his portfolio of MORE users rose to 60 out of his portfolio of 250.

In the first quarter of 2010, he already has received on average 2 referrals a week, and 7 this week alone.

Over the first 3 years of using MORE, his Januarys have become successively less frantic as the client base flourishes. In fact, the entire year has become more straightforward. Once time has been heavily invested in the new client at the start of the relationship, the bookkeeping soon becomes perfect, meaning that resources can be applied strategically in real time, not building up to the year end. 

David has been able to take a step back from his desk and now spends much of his time studying tax law in depth so he can offer the very best, most valuable advice to his clients, rather than being stuck behind his desk amending bookkeeping mistakes. He is also able to get away from his desk to meet strategic partners and open lucrative alliances.

David can now realistically plan for highly profitable growth of his practice and look to a time when he is running the business rather that it running him. His goal is to expand strategically around Manchester and move to 900 clients.

Portfolio believes he will achieve this as he has the right capability, the right systems and the right attitude.