Peterborough-based firm AA Accountants only joined AVN at a Birmingham Proactivity event in May 2011 and became Full AVN members following the Masterclass in September 2011. The amount that they have accomplished in around 9 months is quite staggering and is testament to how the entire firm has wholly embraced the AVN approach.
Shazhad Nawaz – Managing Director of AA Accountants – has been instrumental in this ongoing success and has provided this hugely impressive account of their story so far:
“From the very outset we were keen to get fully behind the AVN idea that we’d been so impressed by when seeing Steve Pipe present at the Birmingham Proactivity event. In the first few months we were able to:
– Successfully implement Time’s Up! which increased GRF by £26,000 in 3 months;
– Sign up two clients both worth more than £5,000 each – we would have typically charged these clients between £1,500 to £2,000 without Time’s Up!;
– Take on a full time System Builder ‘champion’;
– Build a strong relationship with a few key introducers (quality leads are beginning to come through as a result).
Since then we have:
– Taken on Hilary – she will be organising events regularly, attend networking clubs and will use her business contacts to work with 5 key introducers.
– We have sold most of our small clients (with fees less than £1,000) to two team members for £90,000; hence freeing up our time and allowing us to work closer with our larger clients. Best of all, we’ve been paid £60,000 already and £30,000 will be paid by 31 Jan 2012, which is a massive cash flow boost. Having sold part of the practice, we even managed to agree that for any introductions we have made to clients we will get 20% of the value of their fees in year 1.
– We ran our first seminar (PMI) on 14 December and had a capacity attendance of 50 people. The seminar was a huge success, with Steve Pipe presenting and fantastic feedback from all who attended. As a result we’ve arranged a number of PMI meetings with interested clients and began to do tax strategies with them. This has led to a tax strategy seminar being held on 23 May to be run by Steve Bowerman from AVN Tax. We have also got a new client because of the seminar, which will generate us £12,000 in fees.
– As part of our relationship with B1G1 we made a contribution to the charity for everyone at the event and Steve also made a contribution after presenting. We also made a contribution on behalf of Steve for his involvement with the seminar.
– The seminar was so successful that, due to popular demand, we will be running it again on 26 September 2012. We are in talks with Barclays bank who are considering sponsoring the event, which was followed up from their attendance at the Steve Pipe seminar. Fingers crossed!
– We’re running a seminar with Paul Dunn of B1G1 on Tuesday 28 February 2012.
– We now don’t take on clients worth less than £2,400 in fees and will only work with businesses that we like and who want to grow and are serious about their business – no compromise on this stance irrespective of what the client is worth in fees as short term gains cannot be compromised over long term objectives.
– We have weekly team meetings on Wednesdays where the company pays for lunch, we watch an AVN video and discuss strategic objectives. We will have 2 away days a year where we work on team building. We have no more staff members – everyone is part of a team!
– We have ‘champions’ for the services we like offering, we have a System Builder champion, Incorporation & Remuneration Planner champion, PMI champion and I’m the OnePage Plan champion.
– We have a bespoke marketing strategy which we didn’t have before which is linked with our business OnePage Plan. The fruits of this will become apparent shortly.
– The team are involved with every decision the firm takes and everyone participates. An example of this is that we will only take on a new team member if all the existing team members like the candidate. This way the team buy-in and everyone feels involved.
– All this is thanks to AVN and the fantastic support they have provided. A big thank you to them and especially Jane Fletcher who has been pivotal to our success. Keep up the great work AVN!
To equate this into financial terms, we have achieved a £26,000 increase in GRF and a £90,000 increase in sale of fees. This is therefore a £116,000 increase since becoming AVN members in May 2011. The team have their heart set on becoming AVN Firm of the Year, so keep an eye out for us.”
The figures certainly speak for themselves and who would bet against AA Accountants achieving their Firm of the Year goal at some point in the future?