Eye on Platinum #9: The race to the finish line
When Charles Klvana, founder of Eye on Books, offered to lend his perspective on his journey towards achieving platinum partner status, we jumped at the chance.
In this ten-part series, Charles takes us all down memory lane and throws in some great advice for potential partners looking to follow in similar footsteps.
In part nine of this series, Eye on Books has its eye on reaching platinum partner status – a goal that is looking increasingly likely by this stage.
Date: January 2016
Client count: 360 clients on Xero
With a growing client cohort and ten staff on board, I could see our next goal in sight – platinum partner. We developed a poster to help the office track our progress toward “The Road to Platinum”.
To help us get there, we started promoting Xero non-GST ledgers for personal purposes. Many clients joined the program, and so did some of our staff. It really is an easy and simple way to track your personal budget. The interest in this offer reflects a need in the marketplace that currently only non-GST ledgers can meet.
The countdown had begun…
By September 2016, and with 395 clients on Xero, Xerocon 2016 had arrived. Yet for us it had come with some disappointment.
At the beginning of 2016 we had set the goal to reach platinum by Xerocon, but we were a fair bit off. Perhaps getting 150 points in six months was a bit much to ask after all.
Despite this, it was, without a doubt, the best Xerocon to date, even though it had a different feel from the intimate Xerocon of 2011.
By now, although Eye on Books was the largest independent bookkeeping firm in Australia, we were still not platinum Xero partners. Two other bookkeeping partners had already achieved it. Zerobooks and Carbon Bookkeeping.
At Eye on Books we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we were independent from any accounting firms, and had grown organically without purchasing other businesses.
But had we missed the point? Was consolidation the true way forward? The answer came to us around November 2016 when we switched to a new system that measured partnership status in points.
The new target was now 1000 points and our fancy poster was no longer any use. We found ourselves with 910 points on the new system. This meant we only needed a total of 80 points. Which could mean just shy of 30 clients with payroll or a phenomenal 90 cashbook clients.
The race was on!
The background to this is that through mid-2016, a rumour arose. A change to the Xero partner program was coming. Would this mean that, after twelve months of hard work towards reaching our target, platinum wouldn’t exist anymore? Or would several bookkeeping firms reach it at once, negating our achievement?
It turned out that the new partner program put emphasis on organisations with payroll, and less emphasis on those cashbooks that we had provided earlier for personal use.
By January 2017 we had 950 points. Being at the start of a new year, we were so close to that sweet goal that everyone in the office could taste it. Every sales lead that came in got us excited and then incredibly frustrated if we didn’t win them over. Quite a few updates in Xero started flowing through at this time. This kept us busy helping existing clients make the most of the new functionalities.
Stay tuned for the final instalment next week!
Click here to read last week’s article.
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Source: Xero Blog
