The Data Bullet
Got 10 minutes? That’s all it takes to sharpen your practice! In this episode of the Bissett Bullet podcast, Martin Bissett delivers two actionable insights to help you grow your firm without the overwhelm.
Is your firm actually using the client data it already has? In this episode of The Bissett Bullet, we explore how overlooked client intel can unlock competitive advantage, deeper relationships, and new revenue—without big spend or complex systems.
Part 1: The Missed Opportunity
Despite being a data-driven profession, most accounting firms collect very little meaningful client information. Basic intel—like client goals, demographics, or personal context is often missing. As a result, firms fail to spot risks, miss upsell opportunities, and struggle to show real value. Meanwhile, clients feel unseen and leave.
Part 2: How to Build a Simple Data Strategy
Start small. Appoint or repurpose someone in your firm as a Head of Client Intel. Use a simple CRM (or yes, a spreadsheet to start) and begin collecting useful, legally compliant data. Prioritise Grade A and B clients. From birthdays to business goals, this intel becomes a tool for retention, upsell, benchmarking, cross-referrals, and even winning dream clients on your radar.
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Ready to grow your firm with practical, no-nonsense advice? The Bissett Bullet podcast gives you bite-sized insights you can implement today.
Visit www.bissettbullets.com for more resources.
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4impactdata is an AI-powered platform that helps firms move beyond historical reporting by delivering clear, actionable next steps for your advisory team so that you can provide more value to clients without the guesswork of dashboards. To book a conversation or demo, or to join the 10X Advisory Cohort with resources from Martin, along with 10% off your first year’s subscription, visit 4impactdata.com
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ProNation is a global community for accountants and bookkeepers that gives you peer-to-peer support, expert guidance, and proven strategies to run a more profitable, efficient, and impactful firm. Led by Will Farnell, Lucy Cohen, and Martin Bissett, it helps practices of all sizes grow with confidence and better serve their clients.
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In association with CPA Trendlines
Transcript
Data, client data.
Speaker A:You got any?
Speaker A:Do you use it?
Speaker A:Do you know where it's stored?
Speaker A:Do you know if you're allowed to have it?
Speaker A:Client data is like the new oil in today's practice growth efforts.
Speaker A:I'll show you why on today's bullet for technically exact profession like accounting.
Speaker A:You would think that firms would be all over client data that they collect it meticulously, analyze it, come up with 20 different reports that can be pulled from it and so on.
Speaker A:But I find that's not generally the case.
Speaker A:I don't find accounting firms that have tremendous stores of clients intel.
Speaker A:When are the clients birthdays?
Speaker A:How old are the clients?
Speaker A:Do the clients have families?
Speaker A:If so, what kind of children do they have?
Speaker A:What ages are the children?
Speaker A:What are they going through?
Speaker A:Have they got a health problems?
Speaker A:Have they got a big house, small house?
Speaker A:Have they got a mortgage?
Speaker A:Do they want to get rid of the mortgage?
Speaker A:Yeah, and I find that those things aren't collected.
Speaker A:They could very easily be collected and you could hold them legally on file as well.
Speaker A:You could then use them for everything as trivial as happy birthday client through to hey Mr.
Speaker A:Client, Mrs.
Speaker A:Client, because you're 55, because you've got a history of, I don't know, heart disease and because that you are now looking to exit your business, now is the time to think about inheritance planning, you know, and that sort of thing.
Speaker A:So this could be used, this would be collected so easily maintained and used.
Speaker A:There could be for example a head of client intel in your firm where they collect information to benchmark and say hey, well you're one of our half million pound clients and or half million dollar clients or euro clients.
Speaker A:And if you look across all the other clients we've got that are currently have revenues of about half a million, you'll find that profitability is this, you'll find that and so on.
Speaker A:And you could provide insights, you could for your clients, you could provide insights for yourself, you could segment your client base.
Speaker A:So very proactive and I know that and that's not perhaps well suited to the profession as a whole.
Speaker A:But nevertheless, when your competition doesn't bother doing it, and it's very easy to do, why not do it to get competitive advantage?
Speaker A:Because you often tell me how you don't value your brand or your firm or what you do as being much different to anybody else.
Speaker A:But then you do complain at me for when you've got clients that are price sensitive and don't appreciate what you do.
Speaker A:Can't have it both ways.
Speaker A:So how about you take A little bit of time and a little bit of effort at very little cost to differentiate yourselves by knowing your clients inside out.
Speaker A:Now there are many different ways in which you could do this.
Speaker A:You will need a simple CRM system.
Speaker A:No doubt you'll go straight for a spreadsheet, but okay if you must.
Speaker A:But I wouldn't run the practice on spreadsheets, so I would look for a simple CRM system I don't have, particularly one that I want to recommend to you.
Speaker A:So take, take your pick.
Speaker A:But the insights that you can collect from your clients, whether you are simply asking them these questions at the onboarding stage, whether you are asking questions at the year end review meeting stage, or whether you're taking it very seriously and you're actually acquiring software, the benchmarks from your region or your county or whatever it may be, there's so many opportunities.
Speaker A:I just don't know if you're ambitious enough to want the opportunities.
Speaker A:But if you are, there are many awaiting you.
Speaker A:And the collecting of seemingly unconnected client data really gives you competitive advantage and makes your clients feel special.
Speaker A:Which is the name of the game if we want to improve retention or if we want to cross sell or upsell to our clients.
Speaker A:So how exactly can you go about building intel on the clients?
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Speaker A:Find them at four that's the number four fourimpactdata.com that's fourimpactdata.com thank you so much to those of you who support this show and watch and Listen to us on various platforms and to our sponsors for making it possible to produce in the first place.
Speaker A:We are always grateful.
Speaker A:And I always send you across to the Martin Recommends page, which you'll find in the show notes here on the show and probably on screen by the time we finish producing this as well.
Speaker A:And go there to find out all of the organizations that I work with and the offers that they provide to you guys via this show as a thank you for being a listener and subscriber.
Speaker A:Now back to client data.
Speaker A:Here's what I want you to do.
Speaker A:I want you to consider whether or not you should have a data department.
Speaker A:The data department might be staffed by only one person and they would be responsible for running a CRM system, a customer relationship management system, or a client relationship management system.
Speaker A:And that would have everyone who's ever inquired about the firm and never ended up working with you, everybody who currently works with you, everybody who used to work with you in case you ever want them back.
Speaker A:And you would have an entire view of just how many opportunities past, present and future exist within the firm, just how big you could grow.
Speaker A:Then you might go a stage further and you might collect information on basic demographics.
Speaker A:Where are they based, what industries are they in, what are the ages of the owners, how many people are in their organization, what's the revenues, that sort of thing.
Speaker A:You could then decide to go further and go into specific details such as what are they trying to achieve, what services would they benefit from, from us, what are their ages, what are their ambitions, that kind of thing.
Speaker A:And slowly, by surely you just build it out.
Speaker A:Slowly but surely build it out.
Speaker A:Because guess what, your competitors aren't doing this.
Speaker A:They're not collecting the data.
Speaker A:They're probably not even listening to the show.
Speaker A:They're not collecting the data.
Speaker A:So they're not looking for ways to grow organically without huge spend.
Speaker A:By the way, this doesn't have to be a new person that you hire for your head of intel.
Speaker A:You could repurpose somebody who's not working out in tax for you right now, for example.
Speaker A:You could increase the role of somebody who's showing promise in the practice right now to give them something interesting to do, to build an entire picture.
Speaker A:Now, I said I didn't have anything to recommend to you, and I don't.
Speaker A:But I currently use a CRM that collates all of my opportunities and divides them up into people, companies, prospects, and pipeline.
Speaker A:And yes, there is a difference between each of those.
Speaker A:But it shows me that this morning, for example, when I looked at it.
Speaker A:I'm currently in active conversations with maybe 22, 23 different organizations at this moment in time, but my total pool of people I could be talking to is tens of thousands.
Speaker A:Genuinely people who have opted in, subscribed, bought something from, in the past, bought something from me currently, today, yesterday, recently, you know, and all of that is opportunity.
Speaker A:All of that is indication what they're interested in, how I can best serve them.
Speaker A:What have I got in what I've produced in my intellectual property and the things I've got to sell?
Speaker A:What have I got that I could offer to them?
Speaker A:These are easy steps for you to take should you want them.
Speaker A:So let's break it down to the absolute bullets.
Speaker A:1.
Speaker A:Consider the possibility of expanding someone's role in the practice or repurposing someone in the practice to being ahead of Intel.
Speaker A:Give them a CRM system to use, ask them to start building legally correct data that you can hold, and ask them to start then using research tools such as web searches and ChatGPT to expand their knowledge on certain things.
Speaker A:We want to know what sector is this client in?
Speaker A:How many others are there, you know, in that sector?
Speaker A:And so on.
Speaker A:Then beyond that, ask them to then to populate.
Speaker A:Maybe they're actually speaking to the client as a little customer service angle, as we talked about in a previous episode.
Speaker A:Maybe they're making that little call to your client, say, hi, how you doing?
Speaker A:Courtesy call to make sure everything's okay.
Speaker A:While you're here, can I ask and get information from them from Companies House in the UK or Hoover's in the us you can get their information on their date of birth, for example, and you can build an entire picture of your clients.
Speaker A:Maybe you start with the grade A's and the Grade B's only so you don't waste your time on clients where there isn't a huge amount of opportunity to expand your scope in them.
Speaker A:But if you started with grade A's and Grade V's, imagine what you can do with that.
Speaker A:Imagine the picture you can build of just what this client is, just what this client needs.
Speaker A:Third parties you can refer them to if you want to, and pick up a fee from that without doing any work.
Speaker A:Opportunities for you to develop that financial services company, part of your firm that you always wanted to get moving.
Speaker A:Yeah, you get the idea.
Speaker A:You're catching the vision of this.
Speaker A:A data person in the firm will pay for themselves very, very quickly if they're used effectively, especially if all they're doing is expanding their role on something they're already doing for the firm.
Speaker A:And it can be done without a huge amount of tech, a huge amount of infrastructure, a huge amount of time, and a huge amount of money being spent.
Speaker A:That's got to be right.
Speaker A:That's like a bullet to give you a little advantage, isn't it?
Speaker A:And then once you've done that, then you use it to your advantage, because as I say, your competitors don't have it.
Speaker A:And therefore you can also collect information on firms and organizations that you don't currently act for.
Speaker A:And allows you to put together a clever, well thought through approach for when you want to win a specific client that you might have on your wish list.
Speaker A:For example.
Speaker A:See, this practice building thing isn't too difficult after all, once you break it down to tiny little bullets.
Speaker A:I'll have more for you on the next episode.
Speaker A:Bye for now.
