2009 – The Summer of S.A.M?

Is this year going to see the Summer of SAM?

Of course, SAM is an acronym, not a Spike Lee murder movie; it stands for Successful Accountants Marketing!

Now the personal tax season is behind us, and most readers will be completing December 31 Corporate matters for clients, but when July comes, what are you going to do to make next year more successful?

Well, before we get into details, let’s talk about what ‘success’ means to you.

Does it mean:

a) Getting more clients, whatever their size, needs and budget?
b) Getting rid of some of your PITA (Pain In The Ass) clients and living an easier life?
c) Creating the time to spend with your bigger and better clients and getting closer to them?
d) Getting down to doing those lucrative re-orgs or estate plans for some of your clients?
e) Winning better quality business from better clients?
f) Creating time to spend with family and friends and even get the occasional round of golf in?

Or is it something else?

You see, as long as you’re not looking to achieve a) above, then you’re on the right track, in my opinion.

The most common mistake many practitioners make is to believe that they have no say in who their next new client is. Whoever calls them and wants to meet, or whoever walks in off the street is, in many practitioners’ eyes, their next client. WRONG!

In my many years working with public accounting firms, I find that the most successful practitioners are those who give some thought to what qualities their ideal client should have, and they have the strength of character to say ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ to inquirers who do not match that profile.

So, hopefully you have given some thought to what you want to achieve this summer and are keen to implement some marketing activities to help you get closer to reaching your goal.

Let’s look at a typical example.

Consider Gary, a 44 year-old CA who started his own practice 6 years ago. Through a strong referral network and some smart (but cheap!) marketing initiatives, Gary now has $400,000 in billings.

But something is bugging Gary. He has 3 clients who, combined, total $12,000 in fee income a year, who he really doesn’t like. In fact, he wishes he never took them on as clients.

So one day he takes a deep breath and fires these three clients. He didn’t enjoy doing it, but boy did he ever feel good afterwards!

So now, he has a $378,000 practice, and a chunk of time suddenly free to do with as he pleases.

He decides that he wants to find 3 new clients to replace the ones he just fired, but he wants the revenues these new client generate for him to exceed the $12,000 he’s just cut. In fact, he wants them to be double that at least.

Let’s assume that you, like Gary, want to find a small number of relatively large clients, who would want to work closely with you to reach their own business objectives. Good.

So where do you start?

Well, as the song goes, you start at the very beginning.

You need to set a strategy going forward. And as a result, there are some more questions to ask yourself:

a) What industries are you most knowledgeable about and thus most comfortable and happiest serving, or ‘Be The Best At’?
b) Other than the routine year-end stuff, what ‘Value-Added’ services are you happiest providing to clients?
c) What services can you make the most money at?

If you discover a service that you can be the best at, that adds value to your clients AND that is profitable for you to provide to clients, then this should be where you focus most – if not all – of your marketing effort this summer.

So, let’s go back to Gary.

He’s decided to focus on family owned and operated corporations who are growing rapidly and have two key elements to them:

a) They don’t have any in-house financial expertise(such as a CA, CGA or CMA on staff)
b) The existing owners are early baby-boomers who are now looking for an exit strategy

You’d be surprised just how many of these types of businesses are out there – once you start looking you’ll notice them all the time.

Gary decides to hold a seminar entitled ‘The Baby-Boomers’ Guide To Exiting The Family Business – How To Turn Those Days Of Blood, Sweat & Tears Into Tax-Free Cash’.

He drafts up the PowerPoint presentation and then goes to see his local friendly Bank Manager. He tells him/her what he’s planning to do, shows them an outline of the presentation and invites the bank to co-host it with him.

Now, the seminar is aimed at exactly the type of client the bank is looking for – those about to come into serious money – and they jump at the opportunity to get involved. “In fact” says the Bank Manager, “we have a budget for these types of seminars, maybe I can get the costs of staging this covered by my marketing team.”

Great news! A few days later the Bank have agreed to cover the entire cost of staging the event, so now Gary has this great seminar, a sponsor to cover the costs who will invite many additional potential clients for Gary from their own marketing database and existing customers, and he also gets the ‘perceived endorsement’ of a major bank for his seminar, his firm and even himself.

On the day, 89 people turn up to see Gary speak – may more than he originally anticipated – and his witty presentation style, neat tax strategies outlined, and a strong call to action, ended up with Gary having 16 prospective client inquiries within a week of the presentation, with another 9 showing interest for later in the year, all at virtually no cost!

Two months after the seminar, Gary has already signed up 5 new clients, with new fee income amounting to just under $100,000, and a growing number of inquiries that could generate substantially more.

So, you see, firing those problem clients created the time Gary needed to put together a seminar that generated almost $100,000 in revenues. Now does it make sense to fire your PITA clients? You bet!

Steve’s New DVD “Fire Those Pain In The Ass Clients & Start Working With Superstars Instead” is now available from his web site, www.mfagroup.com