Business Development

Productive Pipelines: Tips and Tools for Building an Effective Lead Funnel

Lead generation and management is essential for practice growth at any accounting firm, and marketing professionals play key roles as doers or facilitators to ensure leads move effectively through the firm’s internal funnel.

Marketers usually assume a little of both roles, taking personal responsibility for some tasks while collaborating with in-house business development leads who vet and nurture opportunities. Additionally, since the first contact a lead has often is through a phone or web inquiry, front-line team members also must be mobilized, a responsibility that typically falls to the marketer. In other words, marketing professionals must wear several hats. So, what else is new?

The lead management process also has evolved amid a whirlwind of new technologies which provide robust information, automation and real-time dashboard reporting. This has the potential to shift team priorities from manual data entry to management-level analysis. While not every firm has made the investment in such technologies yet, the digital revolution has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic so the conversation about this next step in lead management is familiar to most accounting marketers.

Team Structure

An effective lead development system requires intentional and well-coordinated participation. Jack Kolmansberger of Reading, PA-based Herbein & Co. shies away from the term “lead funnel,” preferring to refer to a “lead pipeline.”

“A funnel implies gravity as a force that naturally draws leads to their goal,” Kolmansberger said. “Whereas a pipeline requires hands-on work to bring leads to conversion.”

A similar level of intention motivates Nicole Sterling, director of communications at Montreal-based RSA. Niche leaders at RSA develop and manage opportunities that come in through referrals and industry partnerships while Sterling manages leads coming in through website, social media and other channels including phone queries. She developed a new client information sheet for front-line staff to record prospect details when queries come in. Sterling records the details in her pipeline report to add to the list of current opportunities.

Technologies

While intentional behaviors can effectively move leads through a firm’s funnel, new technologies such as CRM and data aggregators have taken on growing importance. By automating time-consuming, administrative processes otherwise driven by team members, these technologies can synthesize data from internal and external sources into organized and reliable profiles of current and prospective clients and provide a real-time glimpse into the firm’s sales pipeline via top-level dashboards. Technologies also can help distribute responsibilities so multiple team members can contribute new or updated data, thus removing the burden of maintaining the firm’s funnel from a single person and making the business development process truly a firm effort.

Before adopting CRM within the past three years, Heather Santiago-MacDonald at Crowe Soberman in Toronto said pipeline meetings were often spent making updates and corrections to existing lead data, and her team struggled to prioritize the strategic and forward-thinking elements of landing new opportunities. Crowe Soberman’s ultimate shift to CRM was accompanied by an investment in the data aggregator Introhive which integrates with the firm’s CRM, as well as a new finance and operations system, and a new human resources system.

“We also made a huge investment in communication and training,” Santiago-MacDonald said. “We understood CRM adoption could be challenging and we wanted to do everything we could to manage it effectively.”

Megan Hiles, chief growth officer of Corrigan Krause in Cleveland works closely with her team of 15 industry and service leaders (she calls them “business developers” because their role is more than simply technical) to ensure all leads are entered into their CRM. Corrigan Krause uses ABLE, a CRM developed by The Growth Partnership for accounting firms, to record leads that come into the funnel through the website and other marketing channels, as well as from her team of business developers.

“You can grow into the technology,” she said. “Our team does a good job of entering their lead data and they have gotten to the point where they recognize they are not even using all the features available to them. Once you have gotten to where you are using CRM to manage basic lead data, you begin to see the opportunities for more advanced reporting based on additional features.”

Firms that have not yet invested in CRM should not despair. As Sterling demonstrates, a well-managed Excel spreadsheet can still organize and track leads quite well. Sterling reviews the firm’s client intake forms and passes the information along to a partner or person in charge of a particular niche for them to follow up.

The data then gets entered into a large pipeline worksheet and includes information such as the lead source, contact information, primary and secondary work, potential billings, original date, whether the lead was qualified and if it will lead to a proposal.

“We’re looking at CRM but right now an Excel spreadsheet is doing the work well enough,” Sterling said. Her Excel-based system is robust enough to manage inconsistencies between actual leads and less qualified opportunities that make it into the spreadsheet.

“Occasionally, proposals generated by our marketing team do not match opportunities recorded in the firm’s pipeline report,” she said. “When that happens, we review where the communication breakdown took place and ensure the report is as up-to-date and accurate as possible.”

Communication and Reporting

Communicating a firm’s leads is another essential step in a well-managed sales funnel. Before a lead advances through the funnel at Crowe Soberman, details about any new opportunity are announced via a firm-wide email to ensure no conflict exists for team members or existing clients. Assuming no such conflict exists, the managing partner will assign the lead pursuit to a team member.

Leads recorded in Herbein’s pipeline report are formally reviewed once a month. The firm’s marcomm team manages three such regional pipeline meetings, Kolmansberger said attendance by partners and managers isn’t quite as important as having something to report.

“I’m not as interested in checking off a box to make sure someone is there. I’m more interested in ensuring the next step in the sales process has been taken to advance a lead to the next stage.”

Santiago-MacDonald echoes the importance of keeping an eye on leads that appear to stagnate. Crowe Soberman’s CRM provides a realtime dashboard that shows not only the owners of opportunities and a forecasted revenue value, but also which leads haven’t moved in the funnel recently.

Since CRM allows updates to be made at any time, the formality of a pipeline meeting can serve simply as a reminder to a business development team that lead pursuit is an essential part of growth.

Pipeline Meetings

Monthly pipeline meetings at Sterling’s firm occur late in the afternoon when client calls and other demands have ebbed, so her management team can more easily focus on tracking lead flow. Pipeline reporting at Santiago-MacDonald’s firm includes incoming work as recurring or non-recurring, a data point relevant for setting revenue goals in future years (i.e., new work will ultimately need to replace nonrecurring work).

During Corrigan Krause’s pipeline meetings, Hiles invests time providing business development and sales education on topics such as effective social media marketing or strategic sales conversation — areas with which accountants may not feel skillful or comfortable.

“Sales is not always the most natural instinct for accountants and coaching support from the firm’s marketing or growth leader can facilitate the movement of leads through the sales funnel,” she said.

Kolmansberger points out another benefit of pipeline meetings — providing a glimpse into the state of the market.

“This past summer, business valuations trended upward,” he said. “The impending new tax legislation has led to several owners valuing their business for potential sales.”

With insight gained in pipeline meetings, Herbein’s marcomm team and valuation specialist worked together to develop website communications detailing the process and timeline to conduct a valuation in support of future queries.

Conclusion

Facilitating lead flow to improve conversion rates is a responsibility every marketer must take seriously. A firm should ensure sufficient leads are filling the funnel to attain desired growth goals and maintain a healthy practice.

Regardless of the size of your accounting firm or which technologies are in place, everything from streamlining the lead intake process to managing effective pipeline meetings, and from tracking the right metrics to sharing marketing knowledge, is crucial.

Joe Kovacs, APR, director of marketing and business development, Councilor, Buchanan & Mitchell (CBM) CPAs. Contact at JKovacs@cbmcpa.com