client service

If You’re a ‘Best-Kept Secret’ Cut It Out!

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Big businessman crushing a small one in his fingersTry these 6 ideas to stop losing business to competitors.

By Sandi Smith Leyva

It’s rare that I lose business to competitors, and it’s also not an accident.

MORE: Stuck at Home Right Now? Here’s 100 Good Ideas to Relieve the Stress | How to Lead in a Crisis | How to Think Straight through the Coronavirus Crisis | 16 Tech Tools for Working through the Coronavirus | 7 Tips to Keep the Clients You Have | Do You Know Your Opportunity Number? | 7 Tips to Boost Your Firm’s Performance | 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Seeking New Clients

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If you are losing business to your competitors, here are some strategies you can use to “become a category of one,” as they say in marketing.
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6 Ways to Take a Client Beyond Tax Prep

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Ed Mendlowitz CPA The Practice Doctor Q and ASet an agenda; call a meeting.

By Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: I have many small business tax clients and seem to lose them as they grow. I provide good service, never have extensions and call the clients in July to see if I can update their books and in December if they want any year-end tax planning. What else can I do?

RESPONSE: Based on our conversation, you are their tax preparer and they do not think of you as their “accountant” or business advisor. And based on what you told me, you aren’t, although you obviously have the skills. READ MORE →

How Accountants Get New Clients

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Angry young woman, blowing steam coming out of earsWith client retention the top issue for firms, we go looking for the “secret sauce” for landing new business.
Join the survey; get the results

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines

If you want some real answers for how to avoid losing clients, just start asking CPAs how they’ve managed to pick up new clients.

That’s exactly what we’ve been doing lately. Some of the answers are startling. All of them are instructional. Most of the time, accountants can blame the CPA that their new clients were abandoned. READ MORE →

6 Ways to Know What You Don’t Know

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Ed Mendlowitz CPA The Practice Doctor Q and ABy Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: Occasionally I get a new client in an area I am unfamiliar with. How do I find out what I do not know?

RESPONSE: This happens to everyone and probably more often than we expect. Thankfully we will continue to get new business and getting clients in areas we are unfamiliar with enables us to grow.

MORE PRACTICE DOCTOR Q&A: 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Making Small Business Clients Happy | Client’s Difficult Daughter Balks at Bill | 6 Simple Steps to Impress a Prospect | 10 (Nearly) Painless Ways to Keep Up to Date with Technology | When a Staffer Stops Listening | 10 Ways to Get New 1040 Clients | Making Meetings More Productive | Tax Return Reviewer Ticking and Tying

Here is what I suggest: READ MORE →

10 Do’s and Don’ts for Making Small Business Clients Happy

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Ed Mendlowitz CPA The Practice Doctor Q and ABy Ed Mendlowitz
The CPA Trendlines Practice Doctor

QUESTION: Most of my clients are either tax returns or small business clients. The number of individual tax returns grows each year, but I seem to be standing still with business clients. For every new one I get, I lose one. Otherwise, I have about a 6 or 7 percent turnover. Is there anything I can do to keep them?

RESPONSE: I think small business clients need extra hand-holding from us because they are really alone.

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Readers Sound Off on Liberty, H&R Block Plans to Launch Bookkeeping Services

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Liberty Block logosNew strategic ally, or competitive threat?

Practitioners are actively debating the effects and impact of H&R Block and Liberty jumping into the bookkeeping business, as detailed by CPA Trendlines’ Hitendra Patil here.

“This is an opportunity to highlight quality,” says Wesley Middleton, head partner at Middleton Raines in Houston. “The only person who has something to worry about are those that are only focused on price.”

Not all practitioners agree in the discussion which began at CPA Trendlines and has spilled onto the 20,000-member CPA Trendlines Linkedin group. READ MORE →