Service pages and price signal
Whether a prospective client can tell who each service is for, what is in scope, and roughly what it costs — signals that can reduce avoidable scoping calls.
Accounting firms · growth teardown
An accounting firm growth teardown
A written review of the path from enquiry to engagement letter: what your intake qualifies, how the process behaves under seasonal load, and where partner time is being spent on work a form field should have filtered.
The path being reviewed
The path from search to recurring engagement
- 01Search or referralOften a specific situation, not "accountant"
- 02Service pageEntity type, complexity, and price signal
- 03EnquiryStructured enough to triage
- 04QualificationEntity, revenue band, complexity, deadline
- 05Scoping callOnly for enquiries worth partner time
- 06Engagement letterScope and fee agreed in writing
- 07OnboardingDocuments, access, deadlines
- 08ExpansionAdvisory and recurring work, on a schedule
Expansion is commonly less structured than acquisition. This map makes both visible so the audit can determine which one is constraining growth.
Usual findings
Potential failure points
Not every firm has all of these. The review tells you which apply to yours, and which of them is actually costing you the most.
- The site lists services without indicating who they are for, what they cost, or what complexity is in scope.
- One generic contact form for a bookkeeping enquiry and a complex corporate reorganisation.
- Partner time is spent on scoping calls that a form field would have disqualified.
- Filing-season enquiries queue behind delivery work, and response time can deteriorate under peak load.
- Deadlines and document collection are chased by hand, repeatedly, by someone senior.
- Candidates for advisory work are not surfaced consistently, so expansion is ad hoc.
Scope
What the teardown evaluates.
Qualification at the enquiry
Whether entity type, revenue band, bookkeeping state, and deadline pressure are captured before a partner spends time, or discovered on a call.
Response time, measured
I submit a genuine enquiry, identified as coming from Ariadne, and time the response. Where records allow, I compare that result with response times under seasonal load.
Document collection and onboarding
How much senior time goes into chasing documents and setting up new clients, how much of that is automatable, and whether it is a material recoverable cost for the practice.
Expansion and retention
Whether existing clients are systematically surfaced for advisory or recurring work when their circumstances change, or whether it depends on someone remembering.
Attribution to recurring revenue
Whether the firm can distinguish channels that produce one-off returns from channels that produce recurring engagements, so both volume and longer-term value inform the decision.
Deliverable
What you receive.
- A written review, four to six pages, for a partner rather than a marketer
- Your measured first-response time, with the timestamps
- The two or three highest-priority loss points, ranked by available evidence
- A costed plan you could execute with anyone, including an internal hire
- A 30-minute walkthrough call
This is a paid review at $950 CAD, credited in full if you go on to a build. It is not a sales call with a document attached.
No obligation of any kind. If the constraint is capacity rather than acquisition, that is what the review will say.
Requested outside filing season by preference, since a review during your busiest weeks is a review of a firm under abnormal load.
Request the teardown
Tell me where the path feels stuck.
Send your website and a sentence about what is not working. I will confirm scope and next steps within 2 business days, and invoice before any work starts.
No guaranteed rankings, no guaranteed leads, and no obligation to proceed. If a smaller fix will do, the review will say so.