five ways to find the sweet spot for your target client.
by sandi leyva
the complete guide to marketing for tax & accounting firms
many accountants serve clients with extremely small businesses that gross six figures a year or even less. these clients are prone to being price-sensitive and often struggle with budgets and cash flow. if you’re serving these clients, you’re definitely meeting an important need in the marketplace, but you may also start to question your own prices, or worse, underprice your services.
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the good news is that, on average, the higher revenues a company earns, the more likely they are to be a higher-quality client for you. owners with larger companies, on average, are less price-sensitive and less emotional about running their businesses. the sweet spot for many small cpa firms and bookkeeping companies is to attract clients from $1 million to $3 million all the way up to about $10 million to $20 million in annual revenues. so how do you get to these higher-quality clients? here are five ideas:
1. uplevel your proposal writing skills.
with larger companies comes a longer sales process and a more formal one. they often will get three bids. you’ll need to be ready with a nice-looking proposal and recommendations for what the client needs and how you can help them. you’ll need to know how to sell your culture, your team and your solution.
2. jazz up your marketing materials.
your website will need to be attractive to larger companies. a starter site or a cookie-cutter site won’t do. you’ll need a great design and a great message that clearly communicates what you and your team have to offer prospects.
you’ll also need to develop a really nice-looking prospect kit. the quality of your marketing materials is strongly correlated with the quality of the client you can attract.
3. boost your selling skills.
at this level of client, you’ll have more competition from other cpa firms and consulting companies. although you may be able to do the job perfectly, if you can’t articulate your benefits in a sales presentation, you’ll probably get the rejection hook. learning the basics of selling professional accounting services is essential to attracting larger clients.
4. know who you’re going after.
do some market or industry research to find out more about the type of companies you want to target. write up a persona, or marketing description of your ideal high-quality client. what are their demographics? psychographics? socialgraphics? timeographics? when you can describe your client, you’ll know where you can look for them as well as how to write the type of marketing message they will pay attention to.
5. refresh your marketing skills.
it may take different marketing channels to find larger clients compared to ones that have been successful for you finding smaller clients. go back to class in marketing so you’ll know where to look without driving up your marketing costs too much.
attracting higher-quality clients is very attainable, but as you might imagine, it can be a longer sales cycle and a bit of a learning curve for some accountants. if your goal is to build a solid business, you’ll want to achieve a nice mix of clients at all revenue levels. the smaller clients might be easier to close business, but the larger clients will bring more opportunities and more financial rewards.