After most accounting firm CEOs here the term “consultant,” all they see is wasted dollar signs. Consultants are often thought of in the same light as motivational speakers — failures who found they’re better at talking about success rather than achieving it!
Very unfair. It’s up to you to determine just how much expertise a consultant can offer by vetting them thoroughly prior to hiring them. Most who promise results, yet demand a big paycheck upfront can be lumped into the aforementioned category.
Most consultants get paid when they get results, or they come into your business with such irrefutable reputations, it leaves little doubt they’re going to make your business money. While growth hacking is a relatively new term, those who indulge on this career path know how to walk into a business and make it explode with growth!
Who is a growth hacker?
Growth hackers are equal parts marketing professional and data-driven tech geek. They understand what it takes to market most effectively to their fellow humans, while also being experts at reading data such as: email deliverability, results from lettermail campaigns, landing page performance, market potential (for your specific business), and how to read spreadsheets, graphs, and databases very quickly.
A true growth hacker is a business and marketing expert that knows how to “grow” the business as fast as possible by “hacking” the system using quantitative data. They’re usually successful entrepreneurs with their ear to the ground in areas like public relations, SEO, social media, everything “viral”, customer service, recruitment, and behavioral science.
Why hiring a growth hacker
Now, let’s take a look at 5 ways a qualified growth hacker can make your accounting firm grow to its potential in 2018.
1. Your firm has become overwhelmed with keeping up on the current marketing landscape
There’s an old saying that captures the lesson behind this message very effectively: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” That’s where most aged firms find themselves in 2018. There’s simply too much to keep up on, and rarely enough staff to execute on every viable platform effectively.
Growth hackers have honed their senses over years of experience in building businesses. An accounting firm growth hacking expert will understand how to quickly identify holes where money is leaking out. In addition to finding the most effective ways to find more clients, in order to grow the company in the fastest time frame possible.
2. Growth hackers don’t allow stubbornness or complacency to limit growth
Andrew Argue, the founder of Andrew Argue Consulting says, “The #1 problem of most accountants is that they think incredibly small, and by small I mean they literally can’t think outside the limits of the cubicle that they were born into.”
Indeed, accounting firms lack growth not because of their lack of competencies; often, it’s because of the stubbornness of the accountants. Reading through the success stories found in the Andrew Argue cpa review page can pretty much tell us some common issues faced by accountants, solved by having an open mind, accepting the fact that what worked for years may no longer work today.
The bottom line, accountants need help. Why?
Quite simply, they know how to balance payables and receivables. They’re not growth-oriented marketing experts! Chances are that if your firm isn’t growing as quickly as you’d like, upper level management is getting in the way with their aged beliefs or a lack of drive to reach higher.
A growth hacker will come in and shake things up. They know how to identify opportunities (such as releasing freemium software to draw in targeted leads), and articulate the viability of those ideas to even the most resistant managers and CEOs. Even if that CEO is you, you’ll find it hard to contradict the irrefutable data a growth hacking expert can offer!
3. Growth hackers understand the connection between “viral” and “profits”
Perhaps your firm is content with hanging out at the back of the herd of buffalo and picking off the weakest members? A growth consultant doesn’t see the few as the many. They understand that you need to broadcast to as wide an audience as possible — go viral — in order to pull in the numbers you need to grow to your accounting firm to its limitless potential.
Since you’re not growing currently, chances are you don’t get the importance of virality, or just as bad, don’t understand where/when/how to make it happen. Growth hackers have become the expert consultants they are because they’ve witnessed businesses reach their potential using a viral approach to marketing and growing the business.
4. Growth hackers won’t disrupt what’s working best currently
The biggest concern any CEO has when it comes to hiring a consultant of any kind is that they’ll come into the company with their proverbial bulldozer and upset everything that’s making the firm money right now. That’s the exact thing a smart growth hacker won’t do.
Elliot Shmukler is a legend when it comes to growth hacking, as he smartly grew LinkedIn from double-digits to 175 million users in a short timespan:
“When you have limited resources and therefore don’t have the time to work on everything you’d love to improve, it becomes very important to focus on the right things.”
Growth hackers are keen on growth in as short a time possible, not disrupting the very methods that are keeping your doors open. What they will do is identify what’s working and what’s not, and help you refine your processes, while also looking for the key puzzle pieces that are missing.
5. A growth hacker will help you firmly establish goals and objectives
I’ve said it already, but if you’re not growing as you’d like, you and your team are the likely culprit. Accounting is one of the top 10 most sought after college majors for a reason. It’s because there’s never any shortage of available work!
Consider the following as a sample goal you might have for your company:
- The firm will grow by $100,000 a year over the next five years.
Not a bad goal, but how do you measure against that goal when it takes you three years to grow your business by 100k? What went wrong? Most businesses have no clue.
Growth hackers only focus on what can be measured accurately. They’ll look at your current business model, measure that against your closest competitors and most distant competition. They’ll assess the market and come up with a timely, achievable plan to grow to your potential (not fairytale fantasy) in as short a time possible.
Is your accounting firm ready for positive growth in 2018?