On Wednesday September 25th, Mole Street’s Principal and Co-Founder, Brendan Walsh, joined a live panel discussion at the UNLOCK 2024 Aiwyn User Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Brendan and the panelists engaged in a fascinating discussion about the growing importance of customer relationship management systems (CRMs) in the accounting industry. Discover why CPA firms must leverage CRM platforms to strengthen client relationships, streamline operations, and accelerate long-term growth.
Panel Overview
Why CRMS Are Crucial For CPA Firms
In its purest sense, a CRM is a system that manages all your interactions between clients and prospects. They’re important because relationships between clients and prospects change all the time.
A slight change in circumstances requires a slight change in approach to fulfill their needs. Powerful marketing involves mirroring the movements of clients and prospects.
When a prospect downloads a whitepaper, you can be sure that they are somewhat interested in your services. Your CRM will capture this information, allowing you to execute the necessary steps to facilitate a conversion.
However, the CRM has evolved from a simple tracking tool into a powerful platform that drives engagement, automates processes, and provides actionable insights.
The panel explored how tools like HubSpot are enabling firms to unify their tech stacks, improve sales processes, and deliver exceptional client experiences.
“A CRM can mean different things to different people, but it’s important to move beyond thinking of it as just a repository for contacts—like a static list you revisit once a year, almost like an Excel file. The way HubSpot describes itself is that it’s a unified customer platform." – Brendan Walsh, Principal and Co-Founder, Mole Street
Key Takeaways from the Aiwyn Unlock Panel
The panelists touched upon several key topics from the Aiwyn Unlock conference that are worth noting. These include the following:
1. Unifying the Tech Stack
A consolidated digital infrastructure is a launchpad for growth, especially given the sheer complexity of the modern-day tech stack. Brendan Walsh highlighted how CRMs like HubSpot can unify tools and reduce inefficiencies by creating – Leon Grassi, Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Business Development, SAX LLP a single source of truth for all client interactions and internal processes.
Brendan Walsh articulated this notion by highlighting how different tasks can be centralized within the HubSpot CRM instead of jumping between tools.
With HubSpot, you can channel all your responsibilities through this single platform instead of juggling multiple disconnected tools. This consolidation not only saves time and reduces errors but also enhances team collaboration by providing a unified view of all activities.
2. Improving Sales and Client Relationships
Leon Grassi shared a real-world example of how SAX LLP leveraged HubSpot to enhance sales processes and create more personalized client engagement. Before adopting HubSpot, SAX relied on a custom SharePoint system that required significant manual input and lacked intelligence.
However with HubSpot, they could trace every single action the prospect took, mapping out the entire journey from the moment they landed on the website to their final conversion.
"He went to the website. He filled out a form. They went back to the website. He looked at three pages. And then they could see that he registered to attend an AI event that the firm hosted, and he came to that. And then he received 10 emails over the course of the last two months.
These are the ones that he opened.” – Leon Grassi, Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Business Development, SAX LLP
With this information, SAX could engage prospects with targeted messaging that reflected their lifecycle stage, allowing the firm to nurture leads more effectively and convert them into long-term clients.
3. Data as the Foundation for Success
Clean data is powerful data. Leon Grassi highlighted its critical role in ensuring the success of a CRM system. He explained that without clean, accurate data, even the most sophisticated technologies cannot deliver meaningful results.
"It's not going to work without having a solid foundation of the data. So if you're considering a move to a new CRM, dedicate the time to cleaning up the data first. Use tools like Zoom Info to fill in holes, and they have a really great tool, which integrates, by the way, into HubSpot that can fill in those missing holes.” – Leon Grassi, Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Business Development, SAX LLP
As Leon Grassi suggested, clean data is the foundation of a successful tech stack. Without it, even the most advanced CRM systems cannot deliver the insights and efficiencies they promise.
4. Overcoming Resistance To Change
Adopting a CRM often requires cultural shifts within a firm. This is especially true in the accounting industry where change is notoriously slow and often met with resistance. Leon Grassi emphasized the importance of strong leadership in driving CRM adoption, explaining that firm leaders must take a decisive stance to ensure successful implementation.
“The reality is you just have to take a really, really hard stance. It's got to start at the top. Someone has to have a vision. That's just how it's going to be. You can't use this anymore because it's a risk to the firm. It's not something we can manage at the IT level. And that's just it. "– Leon Grassi, Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Business Development, SAX LLP
Undeniably, we live in a fast-paced digital environment where technology is evolving at an astronomical rate. Change is not a necessity, it’s mandatory, placing further significance on accounting firms to embrace technological advancements.
The Strategic Value of CRMs
Thus far the panel explored some of the common themes surrounding the utility of CRMs in the accounting industry. But what strategic value do they offer? Here are three main topics that were covered.
Building Enterprise Value
A sophisticated CRM system plays a crucial role in enhancing enterprise value, particularly in preparing firms for M&A opportunities. They provide structured sales pipelines and accurate forecasts, giving leadership clear visibility into future revenue and growth potential. This transparency makes it easier to demonstrate a firm’s financial health and scalability to potential buyers or investors.
Firms that use CRMs to centralize their sales and client data are better equipped to present a cohesive picture of their operations during due diligence processes. Below, the panel discussed how a CRM can facilitate this.
Pat: “How do you play the long game of maximizing the enterprise value of their firm?”
Leon Grassi: "You should operate your business so that you should always be prepared for a sale. This way, everything is clean, everything is organized.”
Leon went on to share an anecdote about how disorganized their tech ecosystem was without a CRM, and how this could have been detrimental during a transaction or due diligence process.
"So it's really important to consolidate, to conserve, to identify ways to operate more efficiently from a technology perspective for a number of reasons.”– Leon Grassi, Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Business Development, SAX LLP
Harnessing AI to Future-Proof Your Business
AI may be hot on everybody’s lips but it is for good reason. It’s not just a buzzword when talking about CRMs. AI capabilities must be taken seriously. This is because they can streamline repetitive and time-consuming tasks, freeing up valuable time for staff to focus on high-value activities.
Tasks like data entry, lead scoring, and workflow automation can be handled seamlessly by AI, reducing errors and ensuring consistent processes across the firm. Nicholas stressed the importance of AI, emphasizing that it’s becoming even more crucial to adopt this technology to gain a competitive advantage.
Nurturing Client Relationships and Driving Growth
Client relationships determine the trajectory of your business. Healthy ones level you up while those that are unhealthy whittle you down. CRMs help you cultivate the former and avoid the latter through their ability to provide you with a bird’s eye perspective of each client’s journey.
Firms can track every interaction, from initial outreach to ongoing engagements, ensuring that no opportunity is overlooked. It gives you a complete understanding of your clients’ needs, allowing you to pull the right levers to further strengthen your relationships. Here’s what Leon Grassi had to say when describing his experience monitoring the customer journey with HubSpot:
"So the fact that we were able to start connecting those dots and attributing real ROI led us towards business development opportunities. That's the use case where it really hammered home for us. I can go on with 20 other examples of how it's a valuable tool.” Leon Grassi, Chief Marketing Officer & Head of Business Development, SAX LLP.
Final Thoughts
The Aiwyn Unlock User Conference delivered immense value, bringing together diverse perspectives from across the CPA industry to explore how CRMs are shaping the way businesses manage customer relationships.
So what’s the general consensus?
A CRM like HubSpot is an indispensable asset for facilitating growth, especially in the accounting industry. Why? Well, any niche that deals with people’s money makes it an inherently more personal service – your expertise directly determines their financial future, security, and to some extent, their happiness.
As the panelists touched upon, CRMs are no longer depositories where you simply store client information. There’s so much more to it now. They centralize data and integrate with tools within a complex tech ecosystem, enabling businesses to gain a bird’s eye perspective on performance across different departments.
With this vantage point, decision-makers can identify opportunities to deepen client relationships, address potential challenges, and personalize their services to meet client needs more effectively.
Adopting a CRM like HubSpot is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity for CPA firms looking to thrive and survive in today’s competitive landscape.
