Posts Tagged ‘Accounting firm marketing’

In my last blog post, I shared with you a four success strategies I picked up from re-reading an excellent book titled “The Sales Bible” by Jeffrey Gittomer. After I sent made that post, I recieved a ton of emails from CPA practitioners across the country thanking me for the information I shared. If I haven’t yet personally responded to you, I want to say here that I did appreciate your email and I do enjoy hearing from you.

Here are a few more strategies I feel you may want to pay special attention to so you become the “tiger” CPA practice in your market place:

5) Spend more time with figuring out solutions than whining about problems
This is a time to prepare and be your best, and you can’t do that if you’re whining. The good news is, most people will be whining. This leaves plenty of room for you to succeed.
QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF: What are you whining about? What solutions make you a winner?

6) Study attitude; don’t think you have a good one
Spend 15 minutes a day reading. The best time, in the morning, before you start your day. Read happy, positive thoughts, even if it’s a re-read of a Dr. Seuss book.
QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF: What are you reading every morning? Or are you just watching TV?

7) Create a REAL (and perceived) difference between you and everyone else
Work on differentiation in new ways. Change EVERYTHING ordinary to memorable. Greetings, literature, proposals, messages and you.
QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF: What is memorable about you? What is different about you?

Invest, don’t spend (in money, in time, in business, in anything you do)
Now is the time to guard your assets. It’s real easy to put your head in the sand and think that everything will return to the way it was. The reality is, dig in, but use your assets to build a fortress of positive thought, new information, strategic alliance, etc.
QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF: What is your time investment in yourself each day?

So there you go, between this blog and the prior one, you have in your possession eight important success strategies you can work on to create your dream CPA practice.

Maybe you’ve had the experience of being a patient of Dr. Richards, a doctor or dentist who’s quite technically competent, but has no people skills. Every time you go for an appointment, you waste an hour of your day in the waiting room, because they’re always backed up. The receptionist is talking loudly on the phone about personal matters and you have to listen to every word, while your mind is really on your own health concerns. The health care provider, when you finally get into the office, is rude and hurried and doesn’t want to listen to you; you feel like an interruption.

You leave with nothing on paper and when you get home to talk to your spouse, you realize you can’t remember exactly what you were told. Despite all this, the diagnoses always seem to be right, and the treatments work. Maybe you’ve stayed on as the patient of a doctor like this and maybe you haven’t, but you can be sure that most people would change their providers if they had the option.

You don’t want your practice to be the CPA version of Dr. Richards. You can be sure, though, that Dr. Richards thinks he’s doing what he needs to do, because he’s giving you good health care. The problem is, he’s not thinking about the patient’s experience from the patient’s point of view.

Have you thought about your clients’ experience from the client’s point of view?

Here’s a quick exercise to help you get started. Choose any one of your clients (or if you’re new in practice and don’t have a client yet, imagine what you expect the experience of your first client will be like). Think about the various contacts that client has had with you since becoming your client.

• How did the client learn about your service?
• When and where have they met with you?
• What modes of communication do you use to contact them, and how often?
• How many of the clients’ encounters with you are likely to have felt positive?
• How many probably felt negative? Why?

Now make a list of qualities you imagine your clients are likely to desire in their experience with your firm. Again, if you have employees, you might want to ask them to do the same exercise and see if their lists are similar to yours.

Going through this exercise will help you ensure your clients’ experiences at your CPA office are NOT like those at Dr. Richards office.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Of the biggest complains that small business owners have about their CPAs is that the CPA doesn’t stay in touch. There are dozens of ways to stay in touch like birthday cards, anniversary cards, newsletters, emails, etc. which I get in depth in my Genius CPA Marketing System.

In this blog post, I want to convey a very important idea. It is for you to get used to the idea that it’s your job to keep in touch with your clients, rather than waiting for them to call when they need services or advice.

I’ll ask you to think about this from a client’s point of view. A friend of mine recently hired a local mover to help her with an in-town move. Before the date on which the move was scheduled to occur, the mover phoned twice to make sure everything was still on schedule and to ask whether there was anything additional that she might need help with. After the move was completed, the mover sent my friend a hand-written note, thanking her for her business and wishing her well in her new job (which he remembered from his discussion with her). My friend has strongly recommended this mover to everyone since then, and the communication was a large part of what made her feel so positive about him.

What professionals have you worked with who kept in touch with you and made an impression?

What was it about that communication that made it special?

Make some notes for your own future reference, especially of any contact ideas that you think might work with your own clients.

In my accounting practice, we have created a touch plan that consists of 60 – to 70 touches per year, above and beyond the time when we service the client. The results are a high retention rate and a ton of referrals.

Share with the CPA community the number of touches you have in your CPA practice.

Testimonials are one of my favorite low-cost but high-impact client attraction tools. Getting testimonials from clients is an important thing to do and creates a powerful tool for acquiring new clients. They create believability, credibility, and a sense of security for your prospects. They help to break down the natural barriers and distrust that skeptical prospects may have towards you or your practice at the onset. If you watch any infomercial, you will see that they are loaded with testimonials. That’s because they work.

Testimonials are a must have. If you don’t have clients, meaning you are just starting out, then get them from freebie clients who you’ve helped.

The key thing to focus on when asking for a referral is for it to be specific and for it to have provided tangible results. It could be something like: “I had this problem, then I started working with you and now my situation looks like…..”

You can also design a handout asking for tangible results since your time together. Use the worksheet I have provided. It will give you an exact set of questions to ask. This is a really efficient way to do it. You may hand this to your clients towards the end of a project.

You can provide the best accounting and tax services but if are not able to attract qualified clients to your CPA practice, your practice will stagnate.

Here’s what’s important.

The mental shift from “doer of the task” (doing accounting work, preparing tax returns, performing the analysis, etc.) to “promoter of your practice” (marketing your services) is vital if you plan on taking your practice to the next level.

I would say that over 99% of CPA practitioners do not make this mental jump from “I provide accounting services for a living” to “I market my CPA practice for a living.”

The CPA practitioner “doer” sees his or her role of providing their accounting/tax services as their primary role. The “marketing minded” CPA practitioner sees acquiring clients, retaining them and maximizing their total client value as their primary role.

Once I realized this, I started paying more attention to it and I began to see significant changes.

Send me your comments.