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MARKETING & SALES

Three Daily Habits of Rich Accountants

Businessman looking at calendar on tablet

Adopt them and they’ll soon be second nature.

By Martin Bissett
Winning Your First Client

You may be thinking right now, “Well, very good, Martin, but we have finite time. We’re very, very busy people and we need to get business in the door, and therefore creation of opportunity becomes the issue.”

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Regardless of whether we’ve got 20 opportunities on our plate today or none, when the next one comes along we can’t afford to be anything other than confident, comfortable, assured relationship builders who have tremendous value to offer. Because people will see that body language, those voice tones and hear those words and it will be attractive. They will want to get to know more – they’ll want to be able to look at options. They’ll want to know what you’ll charge, and they’ll want to know what they’ll get for what you charge.
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Bissett Bullet: Know When You’re Beaten … For Now

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “When should a lead be considered dead? Having invested time into a prospect, how do you know when to call it a day?”

By Martin Bissett

I would suggest that if someone has failed to come back to you on three occasions, over a legitimate period of time – let’s say a month or more – then that particular lead should be considered dead. You are expensive and your time, past a certain point, is far better spent arranging to meet with somebody who is more keen to work with you.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t ever convert them but for now, it’s time to file them under proposals you didn’t win and move on.

Today’s To-Do:

Who have you met with recently and subsequently been chasing? How many times have you made contact with no outcome? If it’s more than three, take the above advice. As a precaution, diarize one further follow-up, three or six months hence. If they have been legitimately waylaid, they will still have an interest in working with you.

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MARKETING & SALES

Attracting Clients vs. Selling to Them

Are you genuinely interested in your prospects?

By Martin Bissett
Winning Your First Client

It’s about time to realize that value is not about time.

When I look back on the research that has been conducted by various groups as to the biggest obstacles accounting firms cite to growing their practice,

  • 50 percent said creating opportunities,
  • 25 percent said knowing how to close deals
  • and the remainder said having self-confidence in presenting and then being able to positively differentiate from their competition.

Let’s not sell, let’s attract.

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Bissett Bullet: What Is the Return on Their Investment?

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Very few business owners highly value compliance work. It is often viewed as a necessary evil and as such, the decision to change accountants for this sort of work will, more often than not, be driven by price.”

By Martin Bissett

Quantify, in monetary terms, what they earned during the time you freed up for them by completing that compliance work, however, and compliance suddenly becomes valuable.

What sales have your clients made in the time that you have saved them over the last 12 months? Justify your fee in terms of their return on investment and help them to understand why they need to change to your firm as a matter of urgency.

Today’s To-Do:

Who are you meeting to discuss compliance work? Find a client of a similar size and have the figure that you saved them at the ready.

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MARKETING & SALES

Don’t Chase New Fees, Attract Them

Focus on your client’s concerns, not yours.

By Martin Bissett
Winning Your First Client

Let’s start with two simple definitions to avoid any confusion:

  1. The purpose of marketing is to create the opportunity.
  2. The purpose of business development (sales) is to convert that opportunity into a paying client.

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When we meet with prospective clients – and I say this as someone who has sat in on many hundreds of meetings of this nature – we rarely give potential clients a reason to buy from us that they care about.

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