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Welcome! Finally a place for tax professionals and accountants to come to which is here to help you to create the business you have always dreamed of. For years, we suffered with the same client headaches, stress of deadlines, and the fear of a never-ending cash flow yo-yo (the riches of tax season versus the suffering of the fall-winter time). This blog is a place created for “YOU.”
Every week, we will offer you our thoughts, feelings and newest creative ideas to transform your business. We are tax professionals like you but, unlike you, we do not “NEED” to work year-round. Subscribe to our blog and hear “why.”
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Lyn Benkendorf & Michael Brier
TaxMarketingForYou.com
Planning marketing actions perpetually?
Written by Michael Brier
Sunday, 15 November 2009 12:37
Essentially, there are two ways of grappling any challenge in business.
One is to talk about it. The other is to do something about it.
Obviously, talking about something is PART of the preparation for doing something.
It is silly to do something without ANY planning whatsoever. Planning requires talking about the subject and drawing up some idea on what to do about some specific problem you want to solve or a goal you want to achieve.
But whether or not the plans ever get to the level of execution is the divider here.
...tell you they don't want to change CPAs or Tax Preparers!
Having had experience with Accounting or CPA service prospects, you know it isn't at all that simple to sign them on as new clients. No matter how many experts explain enthusiastically how EASY it is...
...you KNOW it isn't easy.
And you are RIGHT. It is silly to explain away the multitude of problems that you face with a new prospective client. In most cases, that's where the work BEGINS.
With REFERRALS, it can be different. A genuine referral is actively looking for a CPA and you have been highly recommended to him by someone he respects and trust. Usually that someone is already a client of yours.
But apart from these few cases a year, you have your work cut out for you with a basic prospective client.
Most new contacts have a tendency to over-react to a sales situation and pull back. You know, they talk to you for a few moments and then they want to finish the conversation... telling you they will "call you back" - and usually never do.
This withdrawal factor is so predominant in sales that an estimated 90% of contacts end very fast with the prospect pulling back after a question or two... with vague promises to "call back once he has thought about it."
It's a major barrier to your marketing and sales efforts. So, let's take a look at what it actually is and what's the cause of it.
Now, let us look at what making a decision is in this context. Your business owner faces a new possibility that both interests and worries him - he is tempted by the GOOD that it appears to promise but doesn't want to make a mistake, right?
Once this NEW POSSIBILITY has entered his life - he has become aware of it - it necessitates that he makes one out of FOUR decisions.
He can decide to GO FOR IT. In other words, to grab the opportunity when it presents itself and sign on. But the positive decision is the hardest one to make - it requires most... courage and LOTS of information to base the decision on.
Positive decision failing, he can decide to CONTINUE finding out about it. But this will also ensure his indecision continues and that's something he is liable to react to by RUSHING the decision. To KEEP him at this "finding out about it" phase you need to DO something active.
That failing, he can decide to DROP this new opportunity, decide "no" and just continue with his current CPA just like before. The negative decision is much easier to make - it takes a lot less courage and you don't really need much information to make the decision.
Finally, we get to the headline of this page - the strange thing that many prospects will listen to you quite a while and then suddenly blurt out they don't really want to change CPAs.
Well, part of it has to do with what was discussed above - it is a nice way to get rid of you at any moment. All the prospect has to say is that he is actually fully satisfied with his present CPA or Accountant... and you give up.
See, it is actually a very, very tempting weapon against you - so tempting that some prospects will just use it anyhow. It is so nice to get rid of people... especially those that have a good sales approach!
The more sales oriented your sales approach is, the more you get to hear this old song about your prospect being satisfied with his current CPA.
There are two separate points in time when you get to hear this. One is the beginning of the contact. The prospect is just scared.
The mistake of dismissing creativity in accounting
Creativity has a bad name within the accounting industry for obvious reasons.
"Creative accounting" brings to mind the various huge scandals of yesteryear that took down mighty firms.
In accounting, we want to CONFORM to the regulations and adhere to generally accepted accounting procedures.
And although a great accounting professional IS quite creative WITHIN the legal and ethical boundaries of his profession — for like it or not, tax planning and financial acumen alike IS creativity — we refrain from using the concept of "creativity" in our speech.
This is all very well, of course. The foundation of the profession lies in those legal rudiments and ethical principles, no doubt about that.
But perhaps we've taken this abhorrence of creativity a touch too far in our business planning...
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