Before you add multiple clients to Relay, we recommend trying it out for your firm to gain firsthand experience of what your clients need to know when getting started on Relay. Once you've tested Relay for your firm and developed your own workflow, you'll be ready to start bringing on your clients. But which clients should you start with?
Even if you hope to add all of your clients to Relay (and make it part of your firm’s standardized technology stack), we recommend rolling out Relay in cohorts, especially if you have a large volume of clients.
You might already have a few clients in mind; however, here are some criteria to consider when selecting your first few clients to add to Relay.
You might first consider clients who are dealing with:
- Poor technology: traditional banks have hard-to-use software with limited bill pay features and bank feeds that break. It’s also not easy to collaborate with their team, safely and securely.
- Manual processes for bill pay: SMBs spend meaningful amounts of time gathering their bills, doing data entry to enter payment details, and keeping track of which bills are paid.
- Limited visibility into employee spending: Team members spend company funds and submit receipts for reimbursement at the end of the month, causing cashflow surprises.
- Poor customer service: Small business owners are tired of half-solutions to their problems and having to talk to multiple departments or visit a branch to complete basic banking tasks.
- Charged for using their money: Monthly fees and minimum balance requirements.
- Difficult to manage cash. Businesses are not able to move funds easily between multiple checking accounts for tax withholding, upcoming expenses, or setting aside specific budgets. As an example, businesses utilizing the Profit First method find Relay particularly useful.
Relay works with lots of different business industries, including:
- Non-profits
- eCommerce
- Consultants & Freelancers
- Real Estate
- Health & Fitness
- and much more!
Businesses that don't work well with Relay
- Businesses who need a local branch to frequently deposit large sums of cash.
- Businesses who need a local branch to deposit checks in bulk on a regular basis.
- Businesses dealing with cannabis, CBD, cryptocurrency, money order checks, or that fall under any of these industries.
Our recommended approach
Start with clients who are actively looking for a switch. Upgrading banks is more often top of mind for small businesses than we realize. In 2019, the most common reasons for a switch were poor customer service and fees. There's a good chance a few of your customers are tired of those issues.
For clients who may be on the fence, we recommend starting with a single use case:
- Improve expense management and financial visibility with Relay debit cards.
- Centralize bill pay in Relay with an audit trail and robust approval workflows. No need for 3rd party software.
- Manage cash more easily with Relay as the hub for your finances. Open up to 20 checking accounts, and up to 2 savings accounts, all with no monthly fees or minimum balances. Relay is the perfect complement to existing banking that helps increase financial visibility.
Additional resources
Need help communicating the value of Relay to your clients? Check out this article for more information: Communicating the value of Relay.
Ready to invite your first client? Find detailed instructions here: Inviting clients to Relay.