Sales

Transform Your Marketing with CRM

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The right system can streamline client communications and simplify prospecting leads. Streamline sales and marketing with the right CRM.

By Sandi Leyva
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Tax & Accounting Firms

A CRM is a system that helps you centralize marketing and customer communications with clients and prospects. It stands for customer relationship management, and most of these systems are now in the cloud as web apps.

MORE: Nine Thoughts on Self-Marketing for the Introvert | Don’t Let Prospects Fall through the Cracks | Five Kinds of Small Thinking | Three Questions for the New Year | 13 Reasons to Master Consumption Marketing | When to Talk About Fees | Take a Moment for Appreciation | Beyond Compliance: What More You Can Provide  | Boost Your Cross-Selling in Two Easy Steps
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What CRMs Do
It’s amazing what CRMs can do these days. As client contact points have grown over the last few decades beyond phone and fax, so have CRMs’ capabilities to unify client messaging. At the core level, all CRMs typically allow you to store customer and prospect contact data, such as name, address, company name, titles and so forth. Most of them allow you to create custom fields to store things like type of entity, marriage or filing status, and what accounting software they use.

Here’s where it starts to get fun.

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Why Do We Accept Poor New Business Results?

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5 critical steps to turn things around.

By Domenick J. Esposito
8 Steps to Great

The question to ask is why do so many firms accept poor performance from so many of their partners relative to growth and generating revenue?

MORE ON STRATEGIC PLANNING: Is It Time to Manage Your Receivables Like a Real Business? | Profitability Requires Discipline | Pitching Vs. Pursuing | The Top 11 Reasons CPA Firm Mergers Fail | Growth: The Difference between the Disruptor and the Disrupted? | M&A: Sometimes Bigger Is Better | What a Value Proposition Truly Is (and Isn’t)
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There isn’t a firm in existence that does not depend on constant growth to be successful and to generate enough profit to pay its staff and partners well.  Yet, so many firms accept the old bell-shaped curve argument that they are winning if just 20 percent of their partners are good at generating business.
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First, You Need Clients

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Small potted plant fertilized with coinsApply systems to your sales funnel.

By Jassen Bowman
Tax Resolution Systems

If your experience is primarily in the tax return preparation arena, then you are most likely used to the service being what is referred to as a “lay down” sale, meaning you really don’t have to sell.

MORE: Tax Resolution: A Lucrative Opportunity | 4 Problems with the Tax Resolution Industry | When Tax Filing Season Is Over, What’s Next? | How to End the Tax Revenue Roller Coaster with a Four-Season Practice Model
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As an optional service that many people just aren’t familiar with as an option, tax resolution actually requires a little bit of sales skills. I think it’s important for you to have a handle on the key benefits that you bring to the table for potential clients.
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Sales Is Like Workflow Management

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Four colored arrows in an arc with shadows underneathThe 4 core steps to take.

By Rob Nixon

Most accountants have a workflow system of sorts. You get the information in, you check the information, you manipulate the information, you query it, and you then bind it up and lodge or file it.

MORE ON STRATEGY: 4 Sales Systems and Some Secret Sauce | 17 Killer Questions for Prospects | Growing Your Client Database | Niche Markets Are Your Best Buyers | 8 Questions for Product Creation | How to Deliver Wow! Every Day | Communicate Until It Hurts | Why a Virtual Team Makes Sense
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It’s a process (simplified, I know) that is like a manufacturing line. The raw materials come in and after a series of steps and people touching the item, a finished product is created and shipped to the customer.
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17 Killer Questions for Prospects

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Businessman looking at question mark sketch on the wallPlus 6 tips for HOW to ask them.

By Rob Nixon

I am blessed to be working with the accounting profession for 20+ years. I love the influence that you can make and the difference to a client’s financial position.

MORE ON STRATEGY: Sales Is about Trust | Marketing Must Generate Leads | Be an ‘Object of Interest’ | Marketing Must Be About Sales | Turn Your Knowledge Into Products | Why Clients Really Stay | 8 Ways to Build Team Engagement | How to Create 4 New Billable Hours per Day | Do You Know What Clients Want? | Is Your Business By Design or Default? | The World Is Flat
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

You are very loyal to your clients, your vendors and your team. You are sometimes obstinate on parting with money but that is not the most annoying thing. The most annoying thing in dealing with you is that you don’t ask enough questions. Sometimes none at all. It is so frustrating.
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