15 reasons why accounting marketing isn’t like selling toothpaste

it’s not the product marketing they teach in college.

by bruce w. marcus
author of professional services marketing 3.0 

accountants have historically not been concerned with the market. they are concerned with being good accountants, and meeting their own personal needs for professionalism. they are concerned with merely getting clients. that was sufficient pre-bates, but not now, because it’s not a competitive approach in a seriously competitive environment.

as 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research by bay street group llc has pointed out, accountants too often know too little about how clients choose accounting firms, or even how clients perceive them.

the late corporate philosopher, peter drucker has often noted that the role of a corporation is to make a customer. cpas have the same ultimate responsibility – to generate a client – not merely to collect clients, but to build a viable practice. but the path to it is different from the role of marketing for products. those differences significantly affect the nature and practices of accounting firm marketing.

for example…

1. product marketing sells products. accounting firm marketing sells knowledge, capability and skills. a product is static and defined in each iteration. a matter is dynamic, and frequently unique to each client.
2. products have reliable consistency. the next tube of your brand of toothpaste is exactly the same as the last tube you bought. the human element in a product is subsumed by the product. accountants’ performances vary case by case and by individual professionals, and are the essence of professional services.
3. product manufacturers are able to generate customer need where none existed before. accountants are constrained in their ability to create a need for their services where none had existed before (except to educate people about rights they didn’t know they had, e.g. appealing a tax levy).
4. product marketing has greater flexibility to meet or shape the desires of the consumer. accountants have little flexibility to work outside the structure of the rules of accounting. a corporation can market test its product and the company can rapidly change it to adjust to customers’ tastes. accountants can’t change the tax rules or accounting principles to suit the needs of their clients, despite the opportunity to be creative within the boundaries of the principles.
5. there are flavors, emotional appeals, colors, and bells and whistles that product marketers can use to distinguish a product from its competitors. professionals are constrained by ethical strictures. the adjectives of product marketing find little hospitality in professional services marketing.
6. there may be a thousand people, and complex production processes, behind a product. the interface between these people and the consumer is the product itself. the interface between the cpa and the client is the cpa.
7. when a salesperson sells you a vacuum cleaner, the vacuum cleaner stays and the salesperson goes. when an accountant sells you his or her services, the accountant stays.
8. product marketing may specifically claim superiority over competitive products, but while one cpa may be smarter, more energetic, more reliable, and more imaginative than another, that accountant can hardly promote that difference. you can’t say, “we do better audits” this is both an ethical and practical constraint, because you can’t prove it.
9. the reputation of an accounting firm can rise or fall on the performance of one accountant and one client.
10. the product company is experienced, with a long tradition in understanding its market and the concept of competing. it knows that it must actively define, pursue and nurture the consumer. accountants know that most clients have no choice but to use their services (nobody ever woke up and said, “what i really need today is a good audit”). the word competing didn’t seriously enter the accountant’s lexicon until 1977 (bates). the product marketing tradition goes back centuries. there is virtually no active marketing or promotional tradition as we know it today for accountants prior to 1977.
11. product marketing can be measured by the number of products it sells. but accounting marketing can ultimately have only three significant results – (1) building name recognition and reputation, (2) projecting capabilities that contribute to choosing accountant over another when an accountant is needed, and (3) gaining access to a prospect that affords the accountant the opportunity to sell his or her services.
12. an ad campaign may drive a consumer to buy a product, but it can’t drive an individual or company to hire an accounting firm. in professional services, the sale must be done by the cpa, even when a non-cpa supplies the access to the prospect.
13. the product company understands that no matter what product it makes, it is really a marketing company that manufactures products to fill the channel opened by marketing activities. accountants too often see themselves, not their consumers (clients), at the center of their universe. too bad. when accountants begin to understand that basic marketing concept, the earth will shake, walls will crumble, and the practice of accounting will change. but it will still be ethical and the public will be better served.
14. ultimately, a product is an abstraction – a symbol. it can be changed or replaced at the manufacturer’s whim, in response to a changing customer’s whim. last year’s kewpie doll is replaceable by next year’s barbie doll – all in response to the market’s whim. the accounting principles are immutable. there may be flexible in application, or sometimes in imaginative approaches, but not at the whim or the client.
15. if you sell a product, you’re selling against competition. if you sell a process (such as an accounting solution), you’re selling against (or to) the customer’s needs.

 

bruce w. marcus is a pioneer in professional services marketing and coauthor of client at the core.this is adapted from his new book, professional services marketing 3.0, available for purchase here.

copyright 2011. used by permission.

posted on september 28, 2013