Eye on platinum #2: Making inroads and learning lessons

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 two of this series, we join Charles when his two Xero clients had grown to five. Plenty of benefits were kicking in!

Date: February 2011

Client count: 40 clients. Five clients on Xero.

In the months that followed the conversion of our first client to Xero, we discovered that Xero solved all the difficulties we had when it came to looking after our clients.

Solving what Difficulties?

Like what? Glad you asked.

•      Quick access to data – We didn’t have to book a time to see clients at their premises. We didn’t need them to email us their files (and have to make sure they didn’t change anything on their copy while we worked on ours).
•      Easy bank data – We didn’t have to wait for clients to fax or email their bank statements, and inevitably leave off the last page (which would then take another two weeks to get).
•      Better schedule – This meant that we could finally book in client work when it suited us. We didn’t have to wait for the client to send us data. As a bookkeeping business owner, I could finally trust that, when we slotted in work on a client on a particular day, we could do the work on that day.
•      Better service – When a client had an issue, we could simply log on to their financials and take care of it. We didn’t have to describe to them over the phone which buttons to press, or have them try to describe the issues.

We basically now looked like superheroes to our clients!

From 2 to 5

Then, in March 2011 Xero ran a promotion. Get three clients on Xero, and Wayne and Sally would do a free website and marketing evaluation on your practice. So we made a push and got three more clients on.

Now our Xero clients totalled seven and we felt so proud.

At the time Eye on Books had just leased its first commercial office premises. Wayne and Sally came out and went through some of our plans. I remember being so impressed that the general manager of this software company and his colleague, who I thought were both awesome, took the time to visit our new office and help us build our business. This was the kind of forward-thinking company I could identify with.

Eye on Books also had our first office function with clients. A sundowner that was a fourth birthday/office warming/brand relaunch function. A new WA Xero staff member was there to represent Xero. It was a guy called Andrew Whitelaw, on his first week with Xero. Seemed like a nice chap but he also seemed a bit overwhelmed at our function. Time would tell!

Stay tuned for next week’s installment: Hitting silver in our stride.

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Source: Xero Blog