bonus: templates you can use today.
by hitendra patil
client accounting services: the definitive success guide
to expand and grow your client accounting services practice, you need a steady stream of new prospects. while referrals have been accountants’ #1 source of getting new clients, this method gives no predictability and control to accountants on which types of prospects come in their doors. you need the ability to attract cas-fit clients continuously. hence, your lead generation process needs to be adjusted accordingly.
more: how to market cas to existing clients | five methods to show your firm’s marketable value | how to set your firm’s cas pricing | craft an engagement letter for cas success | six ways that cas processes are different | the tech stack you need for cas | finding profits in cas
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the accounting profession’s largest cas survey revealed that along with the firm’s website, “proactively seek referrals” is the top marketing method for firms to get new cas clients. how do you proactively seek referrals without waiting for them?
marketing legend jay abraham recommended a genius method to generate several referrals quickly. (i strongly recommend jay’s many books, which are a real-life marketing university for several types of businesses. his website, abraham.com, gives out several marketing insights for free.) it involves requesting your existing clients (business owners) to let their customers and vendors know how good you are and why they should consider exploring working with you. how do you make it easier for your clients to actually do it? make them a hero!
get the ceo/owner of your client’s business to send out a letter/email to their customers/vendors/connections. ideally, print and mail a physical letter – your firm should pay for preparing/printing/mailing, etc. here is a template of such a marketing letter:
hi <first name>,
it’s rare for me to ever write to you in the first place, much less write to you about someone in another business. but i’m writing to tell you about my accountant, <your name here>, and tell you about some of the most important things he/she and his/her team have done for me.
<give a list of critical problems solved, cost savings, money-making impact your firm delivered, etc. – up to three to five bullet points>
because i appreciate the patronage you’ve given my business for so long, i was thinking about sending you a thank you card or a small gift, but i decided to do the noblest thing i could do for you, i.e., to buy you an hour of my accountant’s precious time (he/she charges x dollar per hour for such consultation and he generally has limited availability) – because i think you and your business will benefit from his/her expertise.
so, i’ve arranged to do that, and there’s no charge or obligation ever to use his/her services again. it’s not going to cost you anything, but you’ve got an hour with him/her to talk about any subject you want, whether it’s overviewing your business, financial planning, tax planning or whatever. i can’t recommend him/her enough.
here’s his/her number _______ and his/her email address _____________. just tell <your name here> that you’re the person i’ve bought the hour of time for.
sincerely,
-/signed
name of the ceo
on average, if each of your existing clients has just 25 vendors and 50 customers, imagine your “reach” for getting new referrals. at the most conservative estimate, even with just 10 percent success rate (only one out of 10 recipients of such letter reaches out to you), you will get several one-on-one discussions with business owners. and i am sure the success rate will be much higher because you are leveraging the existing relationship/trust that your clients enjoy with their vendors/customers/connections, and that helps you bypass the lengthy and costly path to gain the trust of new leads. this method can be the most economical marketing method you will ever deploy.
if you noticed, this method is based upon two fundamental human behavior drivers – social proof and reciprocation. if you talk about your value, it is advertising. if someone else talks about your value, it is a testimonial; it is social proof of your value. if you have done some exceptional work for your clients, they will want to return the favor, i.e., reciprocate, even if they may not even know they want to do so. jay abraham calls it “the relational capital,” which is the most powerful of different types of capital you can have (financial capital, human capital, knowledge capital, experience capital, etc.).
the same principles of social proof and reciprocation can drive another method of lead generation for you: getting google reviews (and other online testimonials) from your clients. if you haven’t already done, get your free business listing on google. then ask your happy clients to post google reviews. it is not necessary to have only 5-star reviews. some recent studies showed that an average of 3.5 to 4.5 is more believable than a perfect 5-star average. when your prospects search for the keyphrases that relate to the services you offer, if you have more reviews, your listing will show up on top of the search results. and because google’s algorithms treat every business listing as a local business, you are competing for localized search result rankings, and your listing can more easily reach the top few results shown. i know of many firms that regularly get new clients who find those firms via google search. for many such firms, it is their largest source of getting new clients!
here is a template of a letter/email that you can send to your happy clients to request such reviews. but, before sending out this letter/email, make sure you have identified that the client is pleased with your services.
subject: can you please do me a favor?
hi <first name>,
i was thrilled to hear you’re delighted with my firm’s services. it brought tears of joy to my eyes. we live to make clients’ lives better, and there is no better feeling when we see clients are happy.
i was wondering if you could share your experience of working with my firm. can you please do me a favor and give me a quote/review on google, something like:
“<your firm’s name> has been the secret of sustained growth of our business. <your name>, the owner of the firm, got associated with us when we were struggling with <a top challenge your firm helps overcome, e.g., cash flow challenges>. not only did they figure out what we were doing wrong, but they also gave us deep advice on multiple ways of corrective actions we could take. this help has been worth way beyond the fees we pay, and if i have to guess, i can safely say that we save at least $x thousand a year on overdraft interest costs due to the techniques <your firm’s name> helped us implement.”
<your client’s first name>, of course, you can edit/change this entirely as you like. if for any reason you are not comfortable doing this, i will totally understand.
thanks,
<your name>
this template has a few human behavior science-driven techniques built into it. let me explain:
- asking a favor: most people want to help others, especially when asked for.
- thrilled, delighted, tears of joy, happy: emotion words evoke relevant emotions. using positive emotion words evokes positive emotions.
- i was wondering: politely suggesting an action rather than demanding it reduces the pressure on the reader’s mind.
- providing a suggested draft: not many people are great at writing. many feel pressure when they are asked to think about writing something they may not have expected. providing a suggested draft relieves this pressure immediately and gives them ideas about what they can write about.
- problem>solution>measurable impact: the crux of the review must be useful and relevant to those who read the review, i.e., to your prospects. wishy-washy praise gives no insight to any prospect. you want to get different clients to provide you with reviews that mention a different challenge/value you can deliver. the aim of reviews is not to let prospects view your clients patting your back (praising you) but reveal “why” they are patting your back. your aim is to attract prospects who have problems/challenges/ambitions that your firm helps with. the reader should feel “ah … that is the exact challenge i have” or “wow … this is what i wanted to achieve,” and so on. each review should ideally include only one, at the most a couple of key issues because the attention span of people when they are on the internet is very limited. also, when clients write their real experience, they get that good feeling that they are not lying just to help you.
- giving them an “out”: despite all of the above, there is always a possibility that the client is not really fully happy with your services, and some aspects of your services may have been somewhat of a dampener. giving an out relieves the clients from doing something they don’t really want to do. if they decline to give the review or don’t give the review (they may be simply busy so don’t assume they are not happy, just remind them after a week or two), you have an opportunity to identify the reasons and remedy them so that your clients fully experience the worth of your services.
more lead generation methods
accounting firms have been using several lead generation methods. many of the “traditional” methods have been modernized, but their fundamentals remain more or less the same. and more new-age lead generation methods have emerged and evolved with technological advances. given below is a list of some such methods, not in any particular order.
- advertisements
- direct mail – postcards/letters
- online/social media paid advertisements
- email marketing
- telemarketing
- website
- search engine optimization
- blogs
- webinars
- podcasts
- social media posts
- social media connections
- thought leadership
- networking
- special events/promotions
- brochures
- newsletters
- partnerships with non-competing businesses that sell to your prospects
- exhibitions/trade shows
- becoming a specialist/expert in certain niches/services
- specializations and certifications
- online groups like facebook groups/linkedin groups
- posting guest content on other publications/groups
- referrals/referral programs
- sales/lead generation agents
- using lead magnets (e.g., giving away valuable free ebooks in return of email/phone number)
- build leads list to nurture periodically
- posting content videos online
- testimonials/reviews
the real challenge in selecting and deploying some of these methods for your practice is the relative roi on your time and cost. without a measurement system in place to track the performance of each of the methods you deploy, you can get disillusioned very fast. some of the key metrics to track are cost per lead, cost per qualified lead, cost per new customer acquisition, ratio of marketing cost to first year’s revenue from each new client, etc.
even if your firm is relatively smaller, you can still develop basic systems, even in ms-excel, to track how your lead generation methods are performing. the key is to have some kind of a measurement system in place.
marketing cas to prospects
“qualified leads who are somewhat interested in what you sell” are your “prospects.” once you have prospects who are at different levels of interest in knowing about and buying your services, the next task for you is to keep nurturing such a list of prospects. fortunately, cas marketing is comparatively easier as it is a focused subject, and cas has many advantages/benefits that you can leverage in your marketing.
sharing your cas clients’ experiences is one of the best ways to get prospects more interested in your cas offering. as an example, share something like:
“some of our clients have a similar business volume to yours, and are in similar industries as yours – and we’re able to deliver them insights (provide a couple of examples) that help them either solve x kinds of problems or leverage y kinds of opportunities. what would be the impact on your business if you can overcome similar challenges, or what is the value you can uncover for your business with similar insights?”
whatever content you deliver to cas prospects, keep it in the realms of cas scope of work that you define in your engagement letters, i.e., don’t make it an outright sales pitch or too abstract. your cas content based on your cas clients’ experiences will resonate with businesses that can benefit from cas.
to remind, tell the “what,” show the “outcome” but don’t tell the “how.” your marketing content should make the prospect reach out to you to ask, “how do you do that?”
don’t expect immediate results from this nurturing. but do not be monotonous. break the sequence into a couple of emails that share content, followed by an invitation to attend your webinar or request to book a consultation call with you. share the “review” your cas clients gave you. make and share a case study on the most common business challenges your prospects can have and how you solved those for some of your cas clients.
use the “contrast” principle of advertising. it is not enough to show them only the “after” picture, i.e., the benefits of cas. contrast that with their current outcomes without cas. contrast what is the difference when they have your cas benefits versus when they don’t have those.