When growth slows, it's tempting to start with marketing: a new website, a round of paid ads, or a push on social media. Those have their place. But the next great client is often much closer than that — someone who already works with you, or someone who trusts a person who does.
Dillon Business Advisors (DBA), a remote client accounting and advisory firm, saw this play out in 2026. In November 2025, DBA's leadership team set a goal of 15 new monthly clients for the coming year. By the end of June, the firm had signed 20, at an average fee of about $1,965 a month, and 85% of them came through relationships the firm already had.
None of the five practices below requires an advertising budget, and each one starts with a conversation you may already be having.
Trust is hard to build from scratch, which is why referrals and existing clients tend to convert faster than almost any other source. A Hinge Research Institute study of professional services firms found that 81.5% of firms had received referrals from people they had never worked with. Visible expertise was the most common reason someone made a referral. The same study found that more than half of referred prospects ruled a firm out before ever reaching out. So even a strong referral still needs a credible website and online presence behind it.
DBA's numbers follow the same pattern. Of its 20 new clients, half were existing clients adding a new business or entity, and another 35% were referrals from clients and partners. The remaining three came from a website search and two personal connections. Search and AI tools brought in roughly three times as many prospects as the firm converted, but only one of those prospects signed. Those channels helped people find DBA, and relationships did most of the work of turning prospects into clients.
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This is the simplest step. Clients often assume a good firm is already full, so they never think to mention the second business they just started or the friend who's unhappy with their current accountant. When you tell your clients that you have room, and describe the kind of client you serve best, you give them permission to bring you that work.
Marcus Dillon, CPA, who leads DBA and co-founded Collective by DBA, puts it plainly: “Serve your clients well and make sure they know that you're available to do more work.”
Expansion work was the single biggest source of DBA's growth. The client already trusts you, you already understand their finances, and a new entity usually fits right into the service you're providing.
The simplest way to find these opportunities is to ask. Build a question into your regular check-ins and planning meetings about whether the client is starting, buying, or winding down any businesses in the next year. You'll often hear about a new entity months before the paperwork shows up.
Referral partners like attorneys, bankers, and financial advisors can only send you the right clients if they know who those clients are. Be specific about the industries you serve, the size of business that fits your team, and the kind of help you provide. Make sure you give partners a sentence or two they can use in conversations.
Your personal network counts, too. DBA traced two of its new clients to casual conversations at car meetups and hobby groups, where the firm's leaders simply talked about how proud they were of their team. People notice when you enjoy the work you do and the people you do it with, and they remember it when a friend needs an accountant.
Annual tax clients can look like an easy source of growth, but they don't all have the same path forward. It helps to sort them into two groups before you start having conversations.
The first group is annual business tax clients, who come to you once a year for a business return and not much else. Moving them to monthly accounting, tax, and advisory service is a much bigger change than it sounds, both in the level of service and in what they pay — few of them want to make that jump based on price alone. Many firms often refer or sell these clients to a firm that's a better fit for annual-only work.
The second group is annual individual tax clients, and they often have a much more natural next step. A tax advisory plan pairs the annual return with planning throughout the year, so clients aren't waiting until April to find out what they owe. DBA's Tax Advisory Plan, for example, includes the annual return, two tax projections (one in June and one in October), and planning meetings throughout the year. For individuals whose situations are changing, such as individuals starting a new business, individual clients after a business sale, or anyone facing a big financial shift, the value of year-round planning is easy to see and explain.
Either way, keep the bigger picture in mind. A firm that relies too heavily on conversions can end up with a long list of tax clients and not enough year-round relationships to build a service team around. Save conversion conversations for clients who will benefit from ongoing support and put the rest of your energy into new monthly relationships.
You can only repeat what you measure. Record the source of every new client — whether it's expansion, a referral, your website, search, an event, or a personal connection — and review the list every few months. DBA's tracking is how the leadership team could see that relationships were driving results, and that insight now shapes where they put their time.
More clients only help if your team can serve them well, so before you start asking for referrals, get a clear picture of your capacity. DBA sized its 15-client goal so new work would spread evenly across its client service teams, built on the Team of 3 model. Each month, DBA's Director of Accounting and Advisory and Director of Operations review every team's workload, the sales pipeline, and any clients expected to leave, such as owners selling their businesses. Over the first half of 2026, the number of teams with room for new clients grew from about five to about seven.
The same team that will serve a client long-term also handles that client's onboarding, and most of DBA's new clients were fully onboarded within two weeks. The firm charges an onboarding fee for that work, which brought in $101,415 across the 20 new clients.
Growth doesn't have to mean overtime, either. DBA took on those 20 clients in the same six months that its team's time off rose 75% over the year before, after the firm moved to a flexible PTO policy with no blackout dates.
Every step here builds on work you're already doing, like serving clients well and staying in touch with the people who know your firm. The change is being deliberate about it. Pick one or two to start with, such as a capacity conversation with your top clients or a simple spreadsheet that tracks where new clients come from. Add the others as they become habits. Relationships build on each other over time, so the conversations you have this quarter can keep bringing in the right clients long after it ends.
If you're not sure how much capacity your team has, or which relationships are most likely to bring in your next great client, you don't have to figure it out alone. Collective by DBA's advisors work one-on-one with firm owners to build growth plans that fit their team, their pricing, and the kind of clients they want to serve.
Schedule a call with Collective by DBA to talk through where your next clients could come from.
If you'd rather start by learning alongside other firm owners, explore Collective by DBA membership. Members get access to a community of accounting firm leaders working through the same growth questions, plus templates, CPE-eligible webinars, and Streamlined OS to help them decide what to focus on first.