The more I work with accountants the more obvious the sources of new clients become. It won’t be a shock to you to discover the top three sources of new clients are:

• referrals from existing clients
• referrals from introducers
• events

Having run more than a hundred events for accountants and many for business owners too, and having attended dozens of events by other organisations (good ones, bad ones and ugly ones) it’s crystal clear to me how valuable events are…

Yes events bring people together but for accountants in particular events can (and should) play an important role in increasing the number of clients you have.

But do events really work?

One of the firm’s we work with recently secured almost £70,000 of new fees from one event with 53 delegates attending – not surprisingly they ran an identical event 5 months later to repeat the process (and are currently predicting another £35,000 of new fees). Events do work.

Another firm we work with has generated dozens of leads over the last 12 months for high-value medical clients through their events plan. And yet another successfully uses their in-house events to support their conversion of prospects into clients.

And the problem is…

Events are hard work. Events consume chunks of valuable time. Events have no certainty of success.

So why should events play an important role in growing your firm?

1. Because events provide an opportunity for clients to bring along other business owners they know, and facilitate greater referrals from your clients

2. Because events allow introducers to come and see you in a different light – different is good because it’s memorable, worthy of notice – it gets introducers talking about your firm – it facilitates greater referrals from your introducers

3. Events give you another good reason to communicate with all the prospects in your sales pipeline and build their trust and faith in your firm

4. Events improve your conversion rate from prospect to client and can speed up your lead-conversion process too. Why? Because events allow prospective clients to come and have a look at you without committing to seeing you 1-on-1 – giving them an opportunity to easily check you out before they agree to a 1-on-1 meeting

5. Every event you run is an opportunity to communicate with every one of your clients proactively about something ‘more than’ just accounts work – running three events in a year means you’ll contact your clients three more times a year (at least) about something valuable

6. Every event is potentially newsworthy and might get you some valuable press coverage

7. Every event gives you an opportunity to update your website with news of your events

8. Every event gives you a highly leveraged opportunity to see several clients and prospects in a short time – rather than having to arrange several lengthy and speculative meetings

9. Every event gives you an extra opportunity to contact clients and prospects after the event for feedback, action planning and logical next steps – maybe even a 1-on-1 meeting!

Can you see how valuable events are? I’d argue they are an essential part of your firm’s marketing.

Are you making the most of events in your firm?

Got a question? Comment below and you’ll get my full attention and a reply too.

The next blog will be a short piece on the three steps about ‘How to make events work’