Packages make the process easier.

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

While most accountants and consultants struggle with trying to sell their services to the next new client, there are two ways to get new and additional business without moving too far out of your comfort zone.

MORE: The Four Steps of Your Personal Marketing Process | 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 | Ten Keys to Marketing Success
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One way is cross-selling and the other is upselling. Cross-selling is persuading a client to buy other products or services to complement a purchase. Upselling encourages a buyer to purchase a higher-end, more expensive product or service.
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… but don’t. What they should know.

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.

There’s a wonderful cartoon in which a guy in a business suit is looking over the shoulder of an artist at his canvas. The caption, spoken by the artist, is “I used to dabble a bit in accounting, too.”

Then there’s the guy who said to me, “If you’re smart enough to be a lawyer, then you’re smart enough to do your own advertising.” To which I replied, “Yes that’s true. You’re also smart enough to be a nuclear physicist – but it doesn’t make you one.”

MORE: Internal Communications Are Underrated | Manage Knowledge as a Marketing Tool | Secret Marketing Formula: Get One Client at a Time | Marketing a Fixed Position in a Moving World | How to Build a Marketing Culture | Have You Planned How to Service Your New Revenue? | Why Is Change So Hard for Firms? | Why Value Pricing Works | Why Competition Matters Most
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There’s the guy who read a book about tightrope walking. He knew everything about tightrope walking – except how to do it.

The point is that while marketing may not be nuclear physics, it does have its craft, its artistry, its techniques, its experiences and its history. And if you’re not within the realm of all those things and more, you don’t know much about marketing. Marketing mythology doesn’t count for much.
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