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I set up my practice in September 2011 and to date I have done one piece of work for a friend!!
I advertise pretty much everywhere but still do not have any interest. Not a single phone call!!
I'm currently studying diploma in payroll management to add more services.
But, how long do I hold out until I decide that this isn't for me??!!
Or what am I doing wrong? If anything!!
from a disheartened Angela
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Hi Angela,
Are there any well establish bookkeeping companies local to you? It might be worth contacting them to see if they sub contract to other self employed bookkeepers and that way you can get experience and build up your confidence and also see how other practices work. I got my practice licence in September too and this is the approach I have taken. I work one and a half days per week for another bookkeeper so still have time to try to source my own clients whilst getting a little bit of reliable income!
I hope that helps and wish you lots of success.
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Hi Angela I have been up and running since March 2011 and have had very little work, at the minute I am doing a lot of networking to see it that helps. Maybe you should consider it. I did get a new client last week from yell.com.
All the best
Janet
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Thank you Suzanne and Janet.
I have spoken to a very busy bookkeeper near me and she does outsource work but for £8ph. She said she'd keep my details but I haven't heard anything from her.
I went to a BNI meeting one morning but they want £500 per year to be a member and I have to go every week at 6.30am to their meetings which is difficult as I have two children. I can't commit to that.
I have seen a couple of accountants who have said they will pass work over but again nothing to date.
It's a bit soul destroying when you really want something to work. I'm not the most patient of people either which doesn't help!!
I guess I'll keep trying
Thanks for your replies
Angela
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Have a look to see if there is a 4 networking in your area, it is normally from 8.am to 10.am but they are now introducing evening meetings or Women in Business who do lunch meetings. I know how hard it is I have 5 children and find it very hard. Your first year is going to be very hard as you need to get your name out there and get people to know you and trust you. If you ever need a chat you are more than welcome to contact me on Face book just type in Janet Brown and my pic is of a small dog
All the best
Janet
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Hi
I started in May last year. It is dificult to find clients, certainly to bvegin with. Luckely I have had some enquiries (from small sole traders) and one payroll client I currently do work for.
It may take a while to build up but I have found that my enquiries have come from free advertising on YELL.COM and local business directories (Free listings)
I think the main problem for those of us going completely independent is making people aware we are here and we can do work for them at a reasonable price.
For example sole traders do not want to go to anccount as the cost is so high so they more often than not atempt to do it themselves as they are not aware that there is something out there (US FOR EXAMPLE) that are better value for money.
I hope you find clients soon or are able to get some work passed down to you from other bookkeepers or accountants
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Hi Angela,
Sorry to hear that things are slow for you. Where are you advertising? What are the adverts like? Who are you targeting?
I'm not a marketing guru but I am certainly beginning to enjoy the practice management part of my work more than the bookkeeping now. Marketing, advertising, selling my services, meeting new clients etc.
I am happy to have a look at your advertising materials, letters, marketing plan, or whatever you have an offer some advice.
If you want to send anything to me you can at kris@kmbookkeeping.co.uk
Regards
Kris
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kjmccullochsaid:
“Hi Angela,
Sorry to hear that things are slow for you. Where are you advertising? What are the adverts like? Who are you targeting?
I'm not a marketing guru but I am certainly beginning to enjoy the practice management part of my work more than the bookkeeping now. Marketing, advertising, selling my services, meeting new clients etc.
I am happy to have a look at your advertising materials, letters, marketing plan, or whatever you have an offer some advice.
If you want to send anything to me you can at kris@kmbookkeeping.co.uk
Regards
Kris ”
Thanks Kris
That would be great. I'm advertising on Yell.com for the free listings and am paying for a medium load advert too which covers my area and surrounding towns. I have a website (not as grand as your though) and have my business cards pretty much everywhere. I have contacted local accountants letting them know I'm available for work.
I have also advertised on freeindex and gumtree.
I can't justify spending anymore cash on advertising as i;'m not earning enough yet but will put more into the budget when I can.
My next plan is to contact local businesses directly and let them know I'm here.
And after completing payroll, SA is my next move.
Have a look on my webpage and if you can give me any advice on how to change it to make it better then please do.
amsbookkeepingservices.com
I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks for your help.
Angela
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Hi Angela,
I had a quick look at your site. It's very clean and tidy. I think it would be worth looking at who the website it aimed at and the type of information they want or need to make a decision to pick up the phone.
This isn't just your site, I've looked at loads of bookkeepers websites where the only information on offer is the services they can deliver. Although this is required, I don't beleive it's the most important information. More important is why choose you? What do you offer that no one else does? Are you the friendly bookkeeper? Do you speak in language I'll understand? Do you know about businesses like mine? In short, what makes you special?
I think for a client to buy our services we need to recognise the issues they face, and show them that we not only understand, but have a solution.
If we're not special, we're the same. If we're all the same, then logically the only thing that sets us apart is price, thats not good. Then its just a race to the bottom.
If I were you I'd try to pretend you are a potential client and think what would you want to see from your website.
Have you spoken to local businesses? I found a great thing to do was pop into small, local shops and speak to the owner if I could, or the staff if the owner wasn't there. Just to introduce myself and leave a card, but mainly to get the owners name so that later I could send a personal letter at a later date. You may sell your services when you're there, but I find that quite daunting. I tried to speak to 10 local businesses a week.
I was in a similar position to you, I had no money to advertise so had to put a bit more thought into the cheap or free forms. Have you tried writing to your local papers with a press release, just saying who you are, what you do and how you got there?
Hope these help.
Kris
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kjmccullochsaid:
“Hi Angela,
Sorry to hear that things are slow for you. Where are you advertising? What are the adverts like? Who are you targeting?
I'm not a marketing guru but I am certainly beginning to enjoy the practice management part of my work more than the bookkeeping now. Marketing, advertising, selling my services, meeting new clients etc.
I am happy to have a look at your advertising materials, letters, marketing plan, or whatever you have an offer some advice.
If you want to send anything to me you can at kris@kmbookkeeping.co.uk
Regards
Kris ”
To Kris, Reading your thread above, I would state you are becoming a marketing guru.
Also I would like to say thanks for you help. Your quotation form has inspired me so much i decided to add it to my website with few additions.
Should the mentoring scheme get implemented, I think you should apply for the position regardless of how long you have been practising. You have skills and patience to mentor in my opinion. You have been so active in sharing vital information and helping a lot of us here and I truly appreciate it. Thanks for posting a thread regarding VoIP. This is a facility i am definetely opting for.
I will be e-mailing you more feedback at your e-mail when I have the chance to.
Kind Regards,
Nathaliexxx
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nckbookssaid:
“kjmccullochsaid:
“Hi Angela,
Sorry to hear that things are slow for you. Where are you advertising? What are the adverts like? Who are you targeting?
I'm not a marketing guru but I am certainly beginning to enjoy the practice management part of my work more than the bookkeeping now. Marketing, advertising, selling my services, meeting new clients etc.
I am happy to have a look at your advertising materials, letters, marketing plan, or whatever you have an offer some advice.
If you want to send anything to me you can at kris@kmbookkeeping.co.uk
Regards
Kris ”
To Kris,
Should the mentoring scheme get implemented, I think you should apply for the position regardless of how long you have been practising. You have skills and patience to mentor in my opinion. You have been so active in sharing vital information and helping a lot of us here and I truly appreciate it. Thanks for posting a thread regarding VoIP. This is a facility i am definetely opting for.
Kind Regards,
Nathaliexxx”
Never a truer word said! Kris has all the qualities of a FICB in my honest opinion (Regardless of exam status and length of service etc etc, I know this comes in to the equation), always lending a wise word and helping hand.
Kerry
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Guys, thank you. I'm just happy to help. I remember when I was starting and the surprise of not having clients beating a path to my door. I got my qualifications, practice licence. I had my computer, desk and phone and waited for these new clients. And waited. And waited. Then I thought I'd really need to do something about it.
Like many others I started with some redundancy money in hand looking to retrain in something I could do from home while letting me have more quality time with my boys. Enter stage left, the guy from Home Learning College telling me how if I give him all my money, and then some I'd be earning £40 an hour, and I'd have more clients than I knew what to do with. So I gave him my money. Then I realised it's not like that.
I didn't know where to turn, I kept trying and failing. I just think if I can help others avoid the holes I fell into all the better, becuase there comes a time when I need help too and thats the purpose of this forum and others.
Having said that, if you'd been in my office today you wouldn't be saying these nice things. I've been in a blind panic over a new client, and how to handle them for the best. I'm really just like a swan. Calm on top and a mad panic just below the surface.
ICB have loads of people who would make great mentors, but I don't think I'm one of them. I don't have enough real life bookkeeping experience, but I love the marketing side of the business and I'm always more than happy to offer advice. I've actually said recently if I could take on an employee to do the bookkeeping I'd love to spend all of my time on marketing and finding new clients, but unfortunately that time isn't here just yet.
Kris
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kjmccullochsaid:
“Hi Angela,
I had a quick look at your site. It's very clean and tidy. I think it would be worth looking at who the website it aimed at and the type of information they want or need to make a decision to pick up the phone.
This isn't just your site, I've looked at loads of bookkeepers websites where the only information on offer is the services they can deliver. Although this is required, I don't beleive it's the most important information. More important is why choose you? What do you offer that no one else does? Are you the friendly bookkeeper? Do you speak in language I'll understand? Do you know about businesses like mine? In short, what makes you special?
I think for a client to buy our services we need to recognise the issues they face, and show them that we not only understand, but have a solution.
If we're not special, we're the same. If we're all the same, then logically the only thing that sets us apart is price, thats not good. Then its just a race to the bottom.
If I were you I'd try to pretend you are a potential client and think what would you want to see from your website.
Have you spoken to local businesses? I found a great thing to do was pop into small, local shops and speak to the owner if I could, or the staff if the owner wasn't there. Just to introduce myself and leave a card, but mainly to get the owners name so that later I could send a personal letter at a later date. You may sell your services when you're there, but I find that quite daunting. I tried to speak to 10 local businesses a week.
I was in a similar position to you, I had no money to advertise so had to put a bit more thought into the cheap or free forms. Have you tried writing to your local papers with a press release, just saying who you are, what you do and how you got there?
Hope these help.
Kris
”
Thanks for your advice Kris. I'll have a think about what I can do to make it better. I hadn't thought about press release and that does sound excellent. I'll look into that too.
I really appreciate your help and advice and looking at others comments, they do too.
This forum is a great place to get advice and reassurance.
Thanks again
Angela
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Angela,
Don't know if you'll find this helpful, but this is the press release I had done in June 2010 when I started:
http://www.ayrshirepost.net/ayrshire-news/local-news-ayrshire/ayr-news/2010/06/18/lisa-boyle-s-business-bulletin-102545-26657202/
It starts about halfway down. My local paper normally prints a couple a week for small businesses. In fact David, the guy at the top of the page, was my first client.
Kris
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Kris,
Can you have a look at my site www.dillonbookkeeping.co.uk it is written using Microsoft Publisher as I gave up using an html editor so I can't put a contact form in it. I am not sure if it is worth struggling on trying to use an editor to replace the site or if keeping it the way it is and adding to the useful links page is the way to go.
I also have a Facebook page for the business where I stick possible intersting bits of finance and HMRC news - if you are a facebook member check it out as well and let me know if you have any tips for it - again udner dillon bookkeeping.
Thanks
Pamela
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Hi Pamela,
The site gets the information you need across. Software like publisher is good enough to get a quick online presence if you're not happy with other more complex editors or playing around with code.
The benefit you would get from recoding the site is that it can become more uniform. For example each page change moves the logo slightly. By using a combination of HTML and CSS this would be in a fixed location. The same with the font size as it changes lightly from page to page and the font face of the menu likewise.
With regards to the contact form, there is no reason that a form couldn't be added into the current site fairly simply even with the Publisher design. It's simply a case of adding some code into the HTML which can be done without expensive software (in fact all the sites I do are designed in a free software which is just like Notepad that comes with windows) and putting in some back end code that takes the information from the form and does something with it. This can be that it sends you the email, or adds the form to a database or similar.
Content is king though. I'd rather have an ok looking site with loads of useful content, than a flashy professional site with nothing on it.
The social media bandwagon is a good one to jump on right now. I have started using facebook, linkedin and twitter a lot more recently and seem to be getting some good results so far. It's well worth the time, but it's not something to do if you can't devote the time to making at least a post a week. They start to take over your life actually.
Hope this helps a bit.
Kris
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Hi All,
Im in the process of starting up as well. I have just started advertising this past week. Im on Yell.com and Gumtree. I have a photographer from my local paper coming out today as they are going to do a small press release on my new business. I've had flyers produced, ones aimed at sole traders and others aimed at larger companies. These have been emailed out to various businesses. I've also contacted business gateway who are including my flyers in some of their promotional material.
I've yet to do a postal mail shot and I'm also going to do a leaflet drop around houses that have commercial vans in the drive. I still have to set up a website yet, but I'm hoping to do that soon.
Regards
Paula
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Sounds good Paula,
Can we have a look at your leaflets, it may give others ideas. Also, you'll need to let us all see the press release when it's done.
Great stuff.
Kris
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kjmccullochsaid:
“Sounds good Paula,
Can we have a look at your leaflets, it may give others ideas. Also, you'll need to let us all see the press release when it's done.
Great stuff.
Kris ”
Hi Kris,
Of course I will let people see the leaflets. I will email copy to you as I have your email. Anyone else who would like to see can get in touch at paula2202@aol.com
The press release is very small as it is being done free. Nothing quite as grand as yours. You gave quite a lot of very well worded quotes. Nothing like that in mine. The paper is out tomorrow, I will get a link for it and post it on the forum
Kind Regards
Paula
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Paula,
Just had a look at your flyers, I think they're quite impressive. I especially like the right hand side word bubble that looks a bit like the map of Scotland.
I'm sure you'll do will with them.
Kris
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kjmccullochsaid:
“Paula,
Just had a look at your flyers, I think they're quite impressive. I especially like the right hand side word bubble that looks a bit like the map of Scotland.
I'm sure you'll do will with them.
Kris ”
Many thanks Kris :) Fingers crossed
Paula
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Ami @ ICBsaid:
“Hello Angela,
Can I convince you to attend the Kent Branch meeting in March? It's in Rainham so I know it's a bit of an epic journey but it would be a great chance to meet your fellow members and some of them are even as helpful as Kris (who I hope to meet at the Scottish Conference on 28th March).
Hi Angela,
I am setting up the Kent branch meeting. it would be lovely to see you there. I used to work not too far away from you at the Pfizer site in Sandwich, and I know a few other people who are looking at training to be bookkeepers (although not through the ICB), and I know a few people who have set up businesses as sole traders in east Kent after the pfizer site shutdown who I could possibly introduce to you/ask them to look at your website (although I don't know whether they would already have bookkeepers/accountants of their own yet, but it is worth a try).
Thanks Ami for pointing out Angela was from Kent, I hadn't picked up on that!
Cheryl
Edited at 22 Feb 2012 09:42 AM GMT
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Hi
I am in a similar position with regard to clients but am having to look at the potential market differently as my job is raising and collecting business rate and sundry debt for a local authority - i am therefore ensuring that there is no conflict with my job, so am restricted in what i can do.
My approach is to try to attract a niche market - i am concentrating on home based and mobile businesses (businesses that have no premises subject to business rates) and am starting to put together as much information as possible on these businesses - the idea is that the more knowledge that you have of a business type eg common terms , the more confident you will be when speaking to these potential clients - i suppose it is the same as when you go for an interview, you would be expected to have background knowledge of the firm that you are applying to.
I am trying direct marketing to potential customers.
Other things i am trying:-
Lamppost advertising
T shirt advertising
Like Angela i am trying to add services as well - which has got to be good.
On a positive note, i come into contact with businesses every day and there is definitely a market for bookkeepers, it is just a matter of reaching them - and despite the recession, there is new business out there.
It is great to see all the support on the forum and the advice is great
Can i add that if there is anybody that needs any assistance with any business rates queries, claiming reliefs etc i am only too happy to help - my phone number is 07531703240
Regards
Acorn
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Brilliant thread.
Thanks for all your valuable advice Kris.
I'm in the same position as Angela - wanting to get my business off the ground, but struggling to find that elusive first client.
They're out there somewhere!
Best regards,
Stuart
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Acorn2oaksaid:
“Other things i am trying:-
Lamppost advertising
T shirt advertising”
How did you get permission for that? I thought about it, but none of the local authorities here will allow it. The next best thing is banner adverts on private land, but it's finding places where it will be allowed.
Kris
Edited at 24 Feb 2012 06:10 PM GMT
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Hi Angela,
Do stick with it, it will happen but it does take a lot of effort.You really do need to try a wide mixture of things.
I set up my practice in July last year and am only now starting to build up a nice little collection of clients. Each client I have has come to me from a different place - another school mum, someone that goes to the same beautician as me, from google Adwords, from local chamber of commerce, a couple from networking events and (thank you ICB) one who found me from the ICB website.
If it's any reassurance to you, I spent a few evenings leaflet dropping at local businesses in July last year and have just today had a phone call from an accountant who I dropped a leaflet in to. He had kept my details all this time until he had a client who needed a bookkeeper.
That's a lesson that sometimes things don't happen to your timescale but it's always worth persevering.
I did also spend a big chunk of money on Yell.com and have not had a single enquiry via them.....I certainly won't be spending out on that next year!
Keep at it......in a few months time I'm sure you will at least be in the position that you know it's worthwhile sticking at things.
Gina
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Hi
I started my business at the end of 2011 and have made sure I have some part time employment to keep me going until I find more than the one client I had to start with. I have had some enquiries regarding payroll which hopefully may come to something in April but the bookkeeping seems to be going nowhere.
I have never found paid advertising is worth in other businesses I've worked in it so I'm trying to make the most of the internet the free. I have found a very useful book - internet marketing bible for accountants by Nick Pendrell - as it guides you into making the most of the internet for little or no cost. The only downside is the same day or the day after you take out the free ads you are inundated by people trying to sell you advertising - just bear with it , they give up quickly.
I guess if it was easy everyone would be self employed!!
Good Luck to all new bookkeepers.
Tanya
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Wish me luck!!
I'm meeting with a potential client tomorrow!
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Angela_83asaid:
“Wish me luck!!
I'm meeting with a potential client tomorrow!
”
That's brilliant Angela, the patience is paying off ! 
Good luck !!
Best Regards
Kerry
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Hi Angela,
I hope it goes OK today, let us know what happens!
Cheryl
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Yippee!!!
Meeting went really well and I'm now waiting for start date!!
Let this be the first of many!!
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Very many CONGRATULATIONS !
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I am pleased to say that I start on Wednesday with my first regular client. He has also spoken to a friend of his who is also looking for a bookkeeper and is passing my details to him!!
I am going to be putting my clients accounts onto Sage with effect from 1st July 2011 and get him up to date. Which I think is pretty straight forward (I hope).
I am now getting slightly nervous!!
Anyone got any pearls of wisdom they would like to pass on??
Thanks
Angela
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I'm assuming it's natural to feel a little anxious??
Edited at 25 Mar 2012 07:23 PM GMT
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