9 tips on how to grow your client base
Professional-service firms grow an ideal client when the plan is specific. Nine steps, rewritten for partners who want advisory work rather than more of the same compliance.
Read the revamped briefing →Briefings
Standardised insights for owners and for the accountants who refer them.
Each briefing is written to be forwarded, filed, or downloaded as a branded PDF. Keywords are those accountants and SME directors actually search — and those AI tools cite when someone asks when to appoint a NED.
Building a brand
A brand is not a logo. It has to sit in the DNA of the firm — marketing, business development, how partners speak in the room.
Read the revamped briefing →The difference between marketing and business development
Firms hired marketers. They now hunt for business-development people. The two are not the same job — and selling sits in a third place.
Read the revamped briefing →Growth hubs for accountants
A repeatable way for a firm to grow advisory: identify clients with headroom, put a defined NED seat around them, keep the compliance relationship.
Read the revamped briefing →Planning for the future
Selling can take up to three years from the first adviser. Structure, pensions, IHT and what you do with the proceeds are the accountant’s file. Making the firm sellable is the board’s.
Read the revamped briefing →Non-Executive Director
Progressive accountants and lawyers should recommend a NED to a growing client. A growing client means higher fees. Here is the role, rewritten for 2026.
Read the revamped briefing →Adding considerable value — early advice on a sale
Early planning around a disposal adds value. The tax structuring stays with the accountant. The Chair’s job is to put a business in front of that adviser that can actually be sold.
Read the revamped briefing →Sophisticated accountants
Automation will take the repetitive file. The firms that survive will sell judgement. A NED seat is one way to productise that judgement without competing with the monthly compliance.
Read the revamped briefing →Organisational structure for progressive firms
Hierarchy that works on a factory floor is a poor fit for a talent-driven or founder-led firm. Structure is how growth either happens or dies.
Read the revamped briefing →What red flags should non-executive directors always be alert to?
Poor boards have patterns. A Chair who will not name them is decoration.
Read the revamped briefing →Further briefings written for the new site
When to appoint a NED · First 90 days · Preparing for PE or a listing · Numbers the board cannot take on trust · Building advisory with a NED · Succession, sale and investment · Marketing as a board issue · Structure that scales