Here’s what you’re looking for: August J. Aquila

Four elements to consider in every selling situation.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

Selling professional services is not as difficult as some accountants and consultants believe. I like to define sales as solving a client’s problem. If you think in these terms, you’ll realize that this is what we do every day.

Sales is the lifeblood of every business out there. If we did not sell our services and products, we would not have a firm or business. So, don’t think of sales as something unprofessional. It’s an integral part of growing your practice.

MORE: Six Ways to Expand Your Client Services Checklist | Client Acquisition Never Stops | ‘Sales’ Is Not a Four-Letter Word | 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
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My goal is to make you feel more comfortable with the sales process. Here goes! Remember, you are selling solutions to problems – or, as I like to say, selling the sizzle and not the bacon. It’s not the service or product that you are selling, it’s the benefits to the clients. Clients and prospects aren’t buying the features of the system as much as what those features can do for them.
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It’s key to client retention.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

Let’s explore ways to provide additional services to existing clients. Here is a short checklist that will help you obtain additional services for your clients.

MORE: Client Acquisition Never Stops | Make Sure You Know What You Will Get from Your Marketing | Three Pillars Support a Successful Accounting Firm | Clients Have Six Reasons for Needing You | Six Ways to Market Your Technology Consulting Practice | Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try | The Four Steps of Your Personal Marketing Process | How Does Your Firm Measure Up? | Six Questions Before Asking for All the Referrals You Deserve
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1. Other than accounting and tax services, what additional services do you provide to this client? Create a spreadsheet listing the type of service, the fees, the year of service, the engagement leader and the client’s satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5. If your list of additional services is lengthy, you are providing good service to the client. If it is short, continue to the following questions.

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Six ways to draw people’s interest.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

A good marketing program never stops marketing the firm. You must always think about acquiring new clients to replace lost ones and to improve the quality of your client base. It’s a fact of life that some clients will move, go out of business, merge or even leave us for another firm.

MORE: Make Sure You Know What You Will Get from Your Marketing | Ten Questions to Refine Your Successful Marketing Plan | 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 Damage That Traditional Fee Methods Do
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Let’s look at some basic client acquisition activities that should be part of your marketing plan. You may be asking yourself, “Which ones work?” They all do. The secret of business development is to constantly be in the marketplace because you never know when a prospect is ready to buy from you or to move from their existing accounting firm.
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Are you spending your time effectively?

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

I once knew a firm that was spending a significant amount of money on marketing and was experiencing little or no growth. They could not understand what was going wrong. They tried all sorts of marketing activities. They presented webinars, sent out a client newsletter, did some advertising and public relations, and so on.

MORE: Ten Questions to Refine Your Successful Marketing Plan | ‘Sales’ Is Not a Four-Letter Word | 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
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

The problem was that this firm did not know what to expect from their marketing activities. Sometimes they wanted clients immediately, and when that did not happen, they then tried another marketing activity, never staying with an activity long enough to see results. The moral of the story is that marketing takes time to produce results, and if you are not patient, it can eat up your hard-earned dollars and time.
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Is the right message reaching the right audience?

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

The main reason most marketing programs don’t work is that not enough time is spent up front in the planning stage. Marketing, like anything else, takes careful planning as well as execution. I’m going to propose 10 key questions that you need to answer before embarking on your next marketing program.

MORE: ‘Sales’ Is Not a Four-Letter Word | Three Pillars Support a Successful Accounting Firm | Clients Have Six Reasons for Needing You | Six Ways to Market Your Technology Consulting Practice | Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try | The Four Steps of Your Personal Marketing Process | How Does Your Firm Measure Up? | Six Questions Before Asking for All the Referrals You Deserve | Five Rules for a Marketing Orientation | Ten Keys to Marketing Success
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

1. What one purpose do you want to accomplish? Too often, accountants begin a marketing program without really knowing what they want to accomplish. Sometimes there are so many things they want to do that it becomes unrealistic to achieve all of them. The result is confusion and dissatisfaction.

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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
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

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.
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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
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Here are the basics:

1. Creating opportunities to meet people
2. Developing good listening skills
3. Learning how to sell benefits rather than services/products
4. Knowing how to overcome objections
5. Providing client service that makes the client want to say, “Wow!”

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What segments and services offer you the most potential?

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

Let’s continue with our marketing audit discussion. Now that we have some firmwide objectives, we need to select strategies. There are many ways to accomplish something, and it is necessary to select how you are going to go about doing it.

MORE: Maybe What You Need Is a Marketing Audit | Clients Have Six Reasons for Needing You | Six Ways to Market Your Technology Consulting Practice | Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try | The Four Steps of Your Personal Marketing Process | How Does Your Firm Measure Up? | Six Questions Before Asking for All the Referrals You Deserve | Five Rules for a Marketing Orientation | Ten Keys to Marketing Success
Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Selecting Your Strategies

Let’s look at four different strategies.

1. Cost Reduction. As new forms of technology and artificial intelligence enter the workplace, it is increasingly possible to achieve a competitive advantage by using them to reduce the cost of service delivery. Tax processing software is a common example that firms have used over the last 20 years. AI could help firms reduce costs in multiple areas of the firm, from tax research to improving processes.

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