Bissett Bullet: What Does It Cost to Undertake?
Today’s Bissett Bullet: “It is important to know the cost price of any given job.”
By Martin Bissett
MARKETING & SALES
Five Questions for Grading Prospects
Remember, a list is not a pipeline.
By Martin Bissett
Business Development on a Budget
So you’ve done all the work to get yourself composed and prepared to go out and generate new opportunities, find new business and new clients. Now what? How will you know who to contact for the first step?
Answer: your pipeline.
MORE: Be Clear About Your ROI Proposition | Keep Business Development Going During Busy Season | Walk the Commitment Walk | Two Steps Toward Mastering Selling | Thirteen Ways to Show Commitment | Clients Can’t Grow without You | Seven Mistakes in Winning New Fees | How to Develop Your Communication Abilities | Five Questions for Measuring Partner Potential | Five Ways to Rally Your Firm to Its Culture | When Would-Be Partners Aren’t Candidates | Make Your Expertise a New-Client Magnet | Don’t Think of It as Selling
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.
Many partners think they have a pipeline, but they don’t. What they actually have is just a list of prospects they’ve
- met with,
- would like to meet with or
- have worked with in the past.
‘Sales’ Is Not a Four-Letter Word
The five steps of the sales cycle and what you need to know.
By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services
For a long time, the word “sales” was not an accepted word in accounting firms. Unfortunately, too many accountants associated sales work with some type of unprofessional and even unethical activity. Fortunately, those days are long gone.
MORE: Three Pillars Support a Successful Accounting Firm | Four Questions for Choosing Your Marketing Audit Strategies | Four Steps to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign | Five Reasons to Implement Change Orders | Make Your Practice Better | Eleven Marketing Strategies for Smaller Firms | Five Questions for Developing Your Marketing Plan | You Only Have Four Strategies
The word “sales” is not a four-letter word; it is a professional activity. People who sell make a promise of some future deliverable: “I will do this and this for you.” In turbulent times, selling is a skill that accountants must learn to be successful. Here is my definition of selling: “Selling is problem solving.” Nothing more and nothing less. It’s what you do every time you help a client with a problem. If you have been a successful new business developer, then you have been a successful salesperson.
READ MORE →
Bissett Bullet: Who are Your Centers of Influence?
Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Who is sending new business your way and who isn’t but really ought to be?”
By Martin Bissett
A “center of influence” is someone who is well known and respected within their community or industry and as a result is a valued and trusted source of referral.
This may be a restaurant owner who knows everybody in the local area because they come through their door on a regular basis, or the head of your local chamber of commerce or networking group.
Today’s To-Do:
List two or three people who are influential in your local area that you don’t have a relationship with but you should, and get to know them. Identify a mutual contact who could make an introduction or a local networking event where you might have an opportunity to speak with them.
See more Bissett Bullets here
Create a Bad Website in Ten Easy Steps
You have eight seconds to make a first impression. What kind do you want it to be?
By Sandi Leyva
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Tax & Accounting Firms
You can indeed get more business, more clients and more profits from your website. But not if you make these common mistakes!
MORE: Eight Steps to Getting Started with AI: A Guide for Tax Professionals | How to Weather Any Economic Storm | Ten Ways to Have More Energy This Tax Season | Seven Steps to Keeping Your Clients Forever | Give to Receive, and Eight More Ways to Boost Sales | Five Things That Clients Don’t Know about Accountants | Five Ways to Wow Your Clients | You’re Missing 60% of Your Revenue | Make the Most of CPE Conferences | Beyond Compliance: Six Tips for Adding Value
Whether creating a new site or updating your existing site, here are some common pitfalls to avoid.
Be Clear About Your ROI Proposition
Consider what the next generation of practice leaders faces.
By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership
The Passport to Partnership study collated a number of responses in a conversational style. The need for professionals who can remain calm in the storm is showcased below and was repeated many times in various different ways.
MORE: Keep Business Development Going During Busy Season | Health, Wealth, Stealth: Challenges on the Path to Partnership | Don’t Let Recurring Fees Kill Your Practice | Rate Your Personal Purpose | Five Ways to Make Selling Easier | Six Keys to Getting a Proposal Accepted | Tell the World Your Worth | Four Surprising Keys to Communication | Culture Can’t Be Ignored
The expert council
What is going to be the single biggest challenge for the next generation of practice leaders?
READ MORE →
Three Pillars Support a Successful Accounting Firm
Yes, you need all three.
By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services
Some firms go from one marketing activity to another without much success. The firms that are successful do the basics very well. Like any athlete in spring training, accountants and consultants need to practice the basics of building their practices.
MORE: Four Questions for Choosing Your Marketing Audit Strategies | Maybe What You Need Is a Marketing Audit | Three Types of Marketing Message, and Which Is Best | Why You Need Progress Billing | Five Tips for Cross-Selling and Upselling | Five Keys to Successful Marketing | Twelve Fundamentals of Planning | One Question to Guide Your Growth Plans | Four Ways to Prepare for New Business Development
Here are the basics:
- Creating opportunities to meet people
- Developing good listening skills
- Learning how to sell benefits rather than services/products
- Knowing how to overcome objections
- Providing client service that makes the client want to say, “Wow!”
When There’s a Leak in Your Firm
Never mind who – why?
By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0
EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.
OK, somebody talked to the press, and leaked information that shouldn’t have been leaked. That’s three problems, not one.
Primary, of course, is how do we control the damage caused by the leak?
MORE: Creating the Perfect Ad | Ten Keys to Crafting Ads | Four Things to Know About Social Media | Internal Communications Are Underrated | Four Things Better Than a Company Song | Let’s Lose the Word ‘Image’ | The Risk In Not Understanding Risk | What Your Marketing Program Can and Can’t Do | Nine Reasons That Prospects Say Yes | How Marketing Evolved to 3.0
Then we worry about who did it.
READ MORE →