This year, Reckon recognised our partner Graham Boast for his massive sales count, taking out the most valuable partner award.
We caught up with him to chat about achieving success as a business consultant, how he serves his clients and how he reaches his audience. So what made Graham so successful as a business consultant in 2017?

Why was Graham able to sell so much in 2017?

  • His website! https://reckonhelp.com.au/. Grahams’ website forms his primary marketing tool, built on WordPress with no website or marketing experience. He simply googled how to use it! So no excuses to the uninitiated. Graham figured it out. Be like Graham.
  • Graham placed an big focus on client enablement, offering a service behind all product sales – ensuring a complete solution is delivered or clients.
  • With an emphasis on client enablement, Graham spends time writing comprehensive and high quality how-to guides, tips and blogs. As he says, “If you provide people advice, they will keep you in mind and buy from you later.”
  • He focuses on consultations.  After the initial product sales about 20% also get their consultation service from him.
  • Graham’s ‘Help Pages’ are very clear on what products / services are offered, destroying ambiguity and providing a clear path to sales.
  • He importantly includes e-commerce in his self built website, where he directly sells the product online instead of just to his consultation clients. This captures passive, independent buyers and not just those more interested in a full consultation service. This is an important distinction – you need to anticipate several preferred buying modes in your customers and provide a multitude of sales options to increase your market share and general allure.
  • He also includes something local on his website to help attract local customers – for him, it’s imagery of cattle, a familiar image to his rural customers in Shepparton . This familiar imagery is important in being seen as a local who understands their world… which he does!
  • Graham has a genuine desire to help at the end of the day, so he started the website to provide really good info on how to use the product – not to sell (hence the URL name ‘reckon help’) then it organically became a bigger product / service page as visitors, trust and engagement increased.

Who are his clients?

Many of Graham’s clients find him through the Reckon Partner Search site, Reckon Community, word of mouth, and Google search.

  • Clients are not only local – they are national and he even has some in NZ too. It’s easy to work remotely as his job doesn’t depend on being face-to-face. He loves the challenge of visiting clients and relishes the need to think on his feet to find an immediate on-the-spot  solution. TIP: With experience you know the questions they will ask and it’s good to determine what their challenges and goals are beforehand.
  • His clients generally already have the software and are set up to use it – then when things go wrong or they want to get more out of their solution they find Graham. He works mainly on Reckon desktop and hosted – on top of providing business advice. They just ask!
  • A client example: A particular client of Graham’s couldn’t get their product working and called Graham after spending 2 hours with their accountant. So he drove an hour to visit the client and showed her the ‘Num Lock’ off key! He only charged one way travel and petrol.

A little about Graham Boast

Graham was a public servant and worked for the federal government for 20 years. After a change of location he decided to started his own consulting business. In 1997 he started Shepparton Computer Solutions, and in 1999 he joined the Accredited Partner program because his accountant recommended that he should and it can help him grow his business.

Why does Graham love his job? He loves the diversity of the interesting businesses that he gets to work with from a botox company to portable houses to cattle artificial insemination. That certainly keeps you on your toes!

If you would like to get in touch with Graham, you can find him here on our advisor page: https://partnersearch.reckon.com/listings/shepparton-computer-solutions-accredited-consultant/