Businesses are under increasing pressure to leverage the most effective apps to ensure operational efficiency, and those with legacy systems and processes will get left behind. This is particularly crucial in finance and accounting, where inefficient tech stacks can lead to issues such as:
- Limited visibility over the company’s financial performance
- Time wasted on manual processes and higher operational costs
- Barriers to business growth and missed opportunities
- Increased data security concerns and risks of financial compliance breaches
- Less agility to react and apart to market changes
This is where system integrators and accounting firms have an opportunity to offer valuable advisory services that help companies enhance their tech stacks.
So, how do you identify suitable prospects?
Many firms aren’t making the most of tech advisory due to limited visibility and insights around the solutions prospects are using. There’s lots of untapped potential, especially from your existing client base, but you need a solid framework to identify and acquire good-fit clients effectively.
We discuss 5 key ways to find and sell to the right clients for your tech advisory services.
1. Define your target client base
Firstly, determine what the ideal tech advisory client looks like – their key characteristics, goals, pain points, etc. Before sourcing new prospects, you must define your buyer personas (ideal clients) and the predetermined criteria for qualification.
Building your ideal client profile
Start building tech advisory buyer persona profiles, including considerations such as:
- Typical job roles and responsibilities
- Business size, type and vertical
- Operational needs and challenges
- Pain points at each stage of the buyer’s journey
- Typical budgets and decision-making criteria
Speak to your teams to learn which projects have been profitable in the past, arrange collaborative discovery sessions with key stakeholders from marketing, sales, operations and service functions, and use market/competitor analysis to get a clear picture of who you’re selling to and why.
SMEs in sectors like finance, ecommerce, and manufacturing are prime candidates for tech advisory services, as they’re often looking to implement new solutions to improve operational efficiency.
Enterprise clients have complex infrastructure needs, requiring bespoke advisory and implementation processes. If you have numerous SME clients with similar tech stacks you can deliver a repeatable framework to build hugely profitable advisory services.
However, your target client base will ultimately depend on your firm’s circumstances.
2. Methods for finding tech advisory clients
Once you’ve defined your ideal clients, the next step is finding them. There are various methods, such as industry conferences, networking events, online communities, social networks and marketing channels. Also, explore opportunities from your current client pool.
Identifying candidates for tech advisory from your existing client base
Take advantage of quick wins from existing customers. They can continue to drive revenue for your firm through tech advisory, which will reveal new integration needs.
Here are just some of the ways you can identify which companies from your current client base are a good fit for tech advisory services:
- Review the client list in your CRM or practice management tools to judge suitability
- Explore Xero HQ for basic insights into which apps clients have connected to Xero
- Liaise with different team members and departments to reveal potential opportunities
- Complete an internal audit on all your firm’s clients to identify what apps they use, how much they spend on each solution and how well they’re using them
However, many of these methods are largely manual and time-consuming. The good news? New solutions are emerging to automate these processes to help you quickly identify client tech stacks and analyze app spending and usage.
AppVentory is a new, automation-powered auditing tool that integrates into your clients’ tech stack to provide insights about what they’re using, so you can identify companies to reach out to, and quote and scope with ease.
Driving new opportunities for selling your tech advisory services
Use the insights gained from your tech advisory buyer persona profile building and collaborative sessions in combination with the data gathered from your existing client base to steer new lead gen strategies. You can run campaigns to specific client types in your portfolio, armed with these audience insights and good-fit client identifiers and trial referral programs with existing clients and partners.
Also, expand your website’s service pages to drive new client opportunities organically. Or create a dedicated hub for your tech advisory services, showcasing their value, and build SEO-friendly thought leadership content covering key persona needs and pain points.
3. How to identify and sell to the right clients
What’s previously held back the tech advisory space is a lack of tools for advisors to get visibility over client tech stacks. However, AppVentory offers auditing capabilities to uncover what apps prospects use and how they use them. This allows you to identify the ideal clients for tech advisory services and enables efficient and scalable processes to make services more profitable.
Customer Gauge’s recent State of B2B Account Experience Report revealed the average churn rate for professional services was 27%, so driving added value from existing clients and generating a healthy pipeline of new clients is vital.
Selling tech advisory services to your prospects and qualifying them
Operating a slick process for qualifying tech advisory clients is crucial. It helps you determine good-fit clients, budget needs and pricing.
While identifying suitable clients, consider the following criteria:
- Company type, size and budget
- Stage of growth/readiness for tech advisory
- What apps are in their tech stack
- IT infrastructure complexity
Alongside a tool like AppVentory, you should conduct discovery calls and consultations to assess client suitability and communicate your service benefits.
Great tech advisory services start with great discovery. Our unified solution handles all the data collection and analysis so you can judge client suitability and scope out potential projects, simplifying the selling process.
You can segment prospects into different ‘app stacks’ according to industry/business type and typical app combinations, making it easy to build quotes, back proposals with data, and estimate budget needs.
4. Tips for scoping out potential clients
Knowing what apps prospective clients use is one thing, but drilling down into app usage, process flows, and bottlenecks informs your tech advisory client selection and lets you scope out business requirements for implementation projects.
Combine audit data with qualitative insights from key stakeholders, such as growth goals, user pain points, operational challenges, and digital transformation maturity.
Getting the full picture during discovery
AppVentory integrates with cloud accounting solutions like Xero and Quickbooks, and Google and Microsoft cloud workspaces to let you analyze client tech stacks. This offers discovery insights into:
- What apps are in the stack and how much is being spent – AppVentory gathers data on app subscriptions and expenditure
- How often apps are being used and by whom – you’ll be able to view usage details in a live dashboard
- Adoption gaps in the stack for new apps and integrations
- User satisfaction – you can send pulse surveys from our tool and get user feedback
5. Strategies to attract more of the right clientele
Operating efficient client identification and qualification enables firms to generate tech advisory project opportunities at pace and scale. However, to make your advisory arm sustainable you need a strategic approach to selling the services.
Consider these strategies for attracting tech advisory clients:
- Increase your online presence across channels with thought leadership content, such as articles, whitepapers, event speaking, etc – Edelman research found that 73% of B2B buyers consider thought leadership more trustworthy for judging a company’s capabilities than traditional marketing
- Build topic clusters around relevant content “pillars” to improve SEO
- Create inbound campaigns to address persona needs/pain points
- Use personalized outreach to target accounts
- Incorporate trust factors across your website and brand channels, such as testimonials/reviews, impact stats, and success stories to boost reputation
- Be part of the conversation – provide insights and answers in social media groups, at events, and in forums like Quora and Reddit
- Leverage partnerships, including collaborative content and hosted webinars
Summary: Attract and retain more tech advisory clients
Tech advisory can be a hugely profitable service line. You just need a streamlined propositionand a data-driven process for finding and selling to the right companies, underpinned by a solution like AppVentory. Enhance client identification and discovery and grasp opportunities for ongoing support and upsells throughout client lifecycles.
How AppVentory can simplify client acquisition for tech advisors
Our app auditing and health check software uses automation to help you identify the best-fit clients and effectively sell your advisory services to prospects from within and outside your existing client base.
Here are just some of AppVentory’s benefits:
- Get a full view of clients’ tech stacks in minutes rather than days
- Enjoy user-friendly dashboards
- Automate key steps in the tech advisory process
- Streamline insight gathering to simplify project planning and quoting
- Increase the scalability and profitability of your advisory services
We empower your firm to automate tech advisory, so you can quickly and easily help clients optimize their tech stacks.
Apply for early access to AppVentory to see our solution in action.
