A proven method of increasing your recurring revenue and growing your firm is to upsell your services to existing clients. But upselling, as the name suggests, requires an element of selling. And if you are like most other accountants, this may not come naturally to you. To give your upselling strategy a boost, we asked James Ashford to share his top three upselling tips.

James is founder of GoProposal, author of Selling to Serve and Director of My Accountancy Place—a thriving UK accounting practice that increased their revenue by 10% in the first quarter of 2017 through upselling alone. In this video, he shares three of the most effective techniques his practice used to achieve this.

#1. Stop using the word, ‘sell’

According to James, the word ‘selling’ provokes negative imagery for many people. His advice to help overcome this is to stop using the term ‘upselling’ and instead, start using ‘up-serving’.

James says to reframe your thinking in terms of what selling actually is. Stop using the word, ‘sell’, and start using the word, ‘serve’.

Even with the most sophisticated strategies to upsell your services and grow your accounting firm, if the mindset of your team will implement this doesn’t align with your strategy, it will never work.

#2. Leverage your entire team

James says that there is no point being the only person in your firm—or one of only a few—responsible for upselling (or up-serving). If this is you now, you’re not leveraging your greatest asset—your team.

He says that everybody on your team who is responsible for serving clients should always be thinking about how they can maximize the lifetime value of every client—in terms of the value your firm is providing to them, and the value your firm is receiving from them.

At My Accountancy Place, every single member of staff is responsible for selling services to the clients they already serve. James says anyone in the team can be in a conversation with a client and will be equipped to offer expert advice about how they can serve them better.

#3. Stand shoulder to shoulder with your clients

James’ final tip is to stop thinking of your client and your firm as ‘them and us’ and remember that you are in it together. Get on the same side of the table and look down the road together. Plan the journey that you will go on together, looking at what they need right now and what they will need further on.