In the calendar year 2014 we took on 110 new clients. In the same period, 22 "left". However, a breakdown of those 22 is:
- Seven people who closed down their limited company because they got a permanent job.
- One person who moved miles away from our patch (who would have used us remotely, but we recommended would be better off with someone locally who could do face-to-face meetings)
- Three businesses that failed, sadly.
- Six clients that we decided weren't a good match for us, so we asked them to find another home.
- Two sole traders who decided to do their own tax returns.
- One person who bought a new business and decided to consolidate all their work with the accountant of that new business. To be honest, in that situation the default would usually be to move the new business to their current accountant i.e. us - but we'd never felt we had a tremendous rapport with that particular business owner (although we did like them) and evidently they felt the same too!
- One business that moved to another accountant, who we suspect had sold them on a rather aggressive tax reduction scheme. Fair enough - what one accountant can think is appropriate and acceptable can vary very much from what another thinks. And maybe they didn't move for that reason anyway.
- One person who moved to another accountant, and we never found out why (which was quite unsettling, since seven days earlier they'd asked to set up a meeting about a new project!).
So overall it's only the last three that decided to go and have similar work done by another accountant. Which seems a pretty good result overall! Maybe in an ideal world, nobody would leave, ever, but I'm not convinced - people change over time, and want different things, so zero churn is unrealistic. We'll take 110 in and three out any time. Hopefully 2015 will be just as good.
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