Bissett Bullets

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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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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Today’s Bissett Bullet: “In accounting, our impact on businesses, lives and futures is substantial. We need to pull people into that knowledge to attract them.”

By Martin Bissett

If I were to visit your website today, how many stories would I find about how you helped businesses? Really? That many? That’s what I thought. We need to communicate the “why” of what we do far more than the “what” of what we do.

Today’s To-Do:

Take a look at your website today. How many client stories can be found on it? For many firms this is zero. Look to improve that by one, today.

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Today’s Bissett Bullet: “When marketing delivers us new prospect meetings, each interaction that prospect has with us influences them for or against using us.”

By Martin Bissett

New business meetings can be like gold dust given the amount of competition we are up against and they are too lightly treated by too many firms. Understand that the response that they get from us by email, the response that a prospect gets from us when they call us, the response they get from us when they see us, all influence their decision-making process. We need to ensure that every “touch” we have with a potential prospect is a positive one that puts another weight on our side of the scales.

Today’s To-Do:

Today review the number of interactions that we have with a new potential client from the first time they inquire to when we sign them up. Is there anything more that we can do to make them feel welcomed into the practice?

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