client service

6 ways to know what you don’t know

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ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and aby ed mendlowitz
the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 practice doctor

question: occasionally i get a new client in an area i am unfamiliar with. how do i find out what i do not know?

response: this happens to everyone and probably more often than we expect. thankfully we will continue to get new business and getting clients in areas we are unfamiliar with enables us to grow.

more practice doctor q&a: 10 do’s and don’ts for making small business clients happy | client’s difficult daughter balks at bill | 6 simple steps to impress a prospect | 10 (nearly) painless ways to keep up to date with technology | when a staffer stops listening | 10 ways to get new 1040 clients | making meetings more productive | tax return reviewer ticking and tying

here is what i suggest: read more →

10 do’s and don’ts for making small business clients happy

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ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and aby ed mendlowitz
the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 practice doctor

question: most of my clients are either tax returns or small business clients. the number of individual tax returns grows each year, but i seem to be standing still with business clients. for every new one i get, i lose one. otherwise, i have about a 6 or 7 percent turnover. is there anything i can do to keep them?

response: i think small business clients need extra hand-holding from us because they are really alone.

read more →

readers sound off on liberty, h&r block plans to launch bookkeeping services

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liberty block logosnew strategic ally, or competitive threat?

practitioners are actively debating the effects and impact of h&r block and liberty jumping into the bookkeeping business, as detailed by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间’ hitendra patil here.

“this is an opportunity to highlight quality,” says wesley middleton, head partner at middleton raines in houston. “the only person who has something to worry about are those that are only focused on price.”

not all practitioners agree in the discussion which began at 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 and has spilled onto the 20,000-member 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 linkedin group. read more →

client’s difficult daughter balks at bill

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ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and ado you talk to the dad?

by ed mendlowitz
the 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 practice doctor

question: i have a very good client who pays us to prepare his daughter’s tax return. the daughter was going through a divorce and asked us to assist her and her attorney and she said she would pay us herself, and we shouldn’t ask her father to pay us and she also asked us not to tell her father what was going on. we did a lot of work and because of what we did she got a much better settlement than if we did not help her. additionally a lot of what we did was rush on-demand work and some of it was quite difficult. also, she was not the most pleasant to deal with on many occasions. read more →

6 ways to move beyond compliance services

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dollar concept, financial adviser or finance advisorybecoming a ‘trusted advisor.’

by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

here’s a question: what portion of your revenues are derived from compliance work – e.g., tax preparation and irs representation; bookkeeping; quickbooks setup, cleanup and training; payroll; and audit work – versus value-added work, e.g., revenue improvement, business consulting, profit margin analysis and workflow improvement projects?

if you answered 100 percent compliance work and no value-added services, you’re not alone.  there’s a lot of lip service about moving from compliance services to becoming a “trusted advisor.” there’s an equal amount of confusion in how to get started.

here are a few tips to help those of you who want to move in that direction. read more →

complaining client? no wonder!

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ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and a

question: i have had a client for 12 years and until recently he has been a pleasure. for the last year he seems to be overly complaining about the fees and has fallen behind in payments. he is not hurting for cash so it is not a money issue. what can i do to get the relationship back on track?

response: i spoke at great length with the cpa and it seems that the client has been taken for granted and the accountant has dropped the ball. calls and emails were no longer returned quickly, an extension was filed this tax season for the first time in years, a long-term staff person left so was replaced, and since client started to complain the partner hasn’t been so anxious to interact with him. also the cpa told me that the work has settled into a routine and nothing much has changed in years “so why should the client be upset now?” read more →

pricing, billing, costing: don’t blame clients

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communication negotiation pricing istock_000020509177how good communication habits can head off problems.

by ed mendlowitz
implementing fee increases

professional fees are typically billed based on time. yet, clients want outcomes and place a value on results, which doesn’t necessarily relate to time spent.

ingrained habits are hard to break away from. for ages, many professionals quoted jobs by providing hourly rates and possibly a range of expected hours. some projects are open-ended in the sense that no one knows where it will take them and what will be uncovered once work commences. this might include a forensic investigation, litigation where the discovery process becomes acrimonious, unraveling transactions in a complicated bankruptcy, a first-time audit of a multinational corporation or a tax audit for a reasonably sized business.

however, for most work, there is an understanding of what will need to be done and the approximate value to the client. this could include an annual audit, tax return, setting up a cost accounting or internal control system or a transfer price study. read more →

some clients just aren’t worth the ‘mishegoss’

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by ed mendlowitz

question: i have a client i really don’t like and want to drop, but i hesitate because of the long relationship i’ve had with her, and also i don’t want to lose the income. what should i do?

response: i’ve addressed this before, but i am taking a different approach this time.

dropping clients is never easy and i don’t think should be done lightly. however, there are some instances when it needs to be done. this particular client i was called about is extremely obnoxious. not the normal grade of obnoxious, but far more so.

in fact it was one of the rare clients that i dropped. the call was from the accountant who had the client since then. i had the client six years. she’s had the client eight years – so she is much more patient than i am.

when she told the client she was dropping her, the client started to cry and beg her not to, so she changed her mind. now she wants me to tell her what to do. for beginners, i have dropped very few clients. this client was one of the nastiest people i’ve ever dealt with. she was also very nasty to her husband, treating him like s – – t, and he has since passed on.

read more →

the five tech trends turning beancounters into business advisors

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as data-entry costs plummet, new opportunities for accountants open up.

by sandi smith leyva
accountant’s accelerator

after over 30 years in this profession, accounting has never been more promising and more exciting.  the main reason is technology is driving data entry costs so low that it’s just about to disappear.  that means we can finally focus on helping small businesses get more out of their accounting dollars through more analysis and better tools.

here are five areas that i believe are essential to serving clients best: read more →

the 5 first steps in targeting clients

by

ed mendlowitz cpa the practice doctor q and a

how to build a plan.

by ed mendlowitz
101 questions and answers for managing an accounting practice 

question: i want to start growing my practice but am having trouble defining my target client.  i tend to accept every client i can and seem to have clients all over the place. is there anything i can do to better target my “ideal” clients? 

answer: to have a target client means you have a target. the target is the result of a plan. so, what is your plan?  read more →

overcoming your clients’ worst fears

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how to help them take initiative and allow you to be proactive.

by hitendra patil
pransform inc.

neuroscience studies have shown that fear is a far bigger driver than we would ever care to admit. according to kevin hogan, author of the science of influence: how to get anyone to say “yes” in 8 minutes or less!, “most people react to the fear of loss and the threat of pain in a much more profound way than they do for gain. they overemphasize the importance of pain by about 2.5:1 in decision making.”

your customers and prospects fear that their actions or inactions will cause bad things to happen, or bad things can suddenly happen to them. it’s therefore important to ask yourself what sort of problems your potential clients are facing during current times. if you can identify their true fears and show them how you can remove the possibility of loss, you are one step ahead of your competitors. read more →