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How to maximize three activities.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

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.

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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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Don’t waste your efforts by shortchanging your planning.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

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.

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I’m going to propose 10 key questions that you need to answer before embarking on your next marketing program.

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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There are five steps and you can’t skip ahead.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

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.

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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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Plus a quick quiz about your marketing.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

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.

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Here are the basics:

1. Creating opportunities to meet people

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The good news? You can do this yourself.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

Great marketing tactics can take time, money and a great deal of sweat to plan and execute. CPAs who appreciate the power of marketing are frequently anxious to jump right into the implementation process without doing any planning. But do they really know what the marketplace wants from them? Sometimes gut feelings are right, but few firms can afford to act on intuition alone.

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Investing marketing dollars with confidence requires a thorough understanding of your practice, its people, the marketplace and your competitors. An audit-based marketing plan lets you do just that. This article provides both the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to perform a marketing audit, then develop marketing objectives.
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