Tax season is the perfect time to prospect because you have a captive audience. Selling doesn’t come naturally to most accountants. However, since my entire career has been in professional sales, here are a few key tricks of the trade that will result in productive meetings this season.
Rule #1 – it’s not about you.
Resist the urge to begin the conversation by talking about how long your firm has been in business and what you do. When you are meeting with a client, the conversation is about them and how you can serve or help them. Take time to research their business before you meet and prepare questions that will help you understand their pain as well as their aspirational identity. In other words, how do they feel before working with you (aka now), and how do they want to feel once their version of success is achieved?
Questions are everything.
Prepare, prepare, prepare. How do you know IF you are a fit or what you can do to help a client if you don’t have an in depth understanding of what they are trying to achieve? Here are some key high-level questions to get you started down the path to a productive conversation.
- Tell me about your business. What’s working?
- What are your two biggest business challenges right now?
- What is keeping you from growing the way you want to?
- Where are you trying to take your business in the next 5 years?
- What has you looking for a new CPA (if this is a new prospect)?
- What are you two biggest goals- professionally and personally?
Tell me more about that.
Don’t stop at the surface. If a client tells you their biggest challenge is getting their books in order, ok. But, what does that mean to them? More time to grow? Better data for making purchasing decisions? Do they need to purchase equipment? Acquire another business? Add people? Create a succession plan?
Next steps.
Never leave a meeting without scheduling the next step. Why? Because if you adjourn, shake hands, and walk away, the iron cools. Ever heard the saying, “time heals all wounds?” When you are selling something- in your case, professional services- time kills all deals.
I strongly recommend that every firm has a documented sales process. For example:
Initial prospecting meeting à schedule proposal meeting à email a thank you along with a valuable piece of content to remind them of your value (blog post, video, etc) à proposal meeting within a week from initial prospecting meeting à close the deal à onboard the client.
Why is this process so important? Because it weeds out the folks that call in kicking tires and just wanting to know what you charge for a tax return. You offer more value than just churning out commodity tax returns. If that is the business you want, so be it. But, with a process in place that you lead every prospect through, I can promise you higher value deals and longer term, stickier clients.
Be selective.
You don’t have to take every client. As a matter of fact, you should be choosy about who you want to bring on board to work with your team. Part of the beauty of a well-run prospecting meeting is the freedom to be honest at the end. If the client is not a fit, be up front and offer to refer them to a firm who can better serve them. Don’t waste your precious time with clients who a.) won’t follow your process, and b.) who don’t see your value.
Shameless plug.
You knew it was coming. Because, as I said, I am a career salesperson.
Fast forward. Your clients’ 1040s have been prepared, but now they need to be reviewed. Ugh. The pain. You’ve led some great prospect meetings and closed some exciting new deals. And, now you’re stuck reviewing returns?
There isn’t enough coffee to get through one more 9-page checklist or correct the same error for the 14th time. If your firm is using TaxExact™, not only does is take you a fraction of the time to look at the return, but you have a beautiful deliverable in layman’s terms to review with your client. Not to mention that you have assurance the 1040 is right.
Tax season is the time for TaxExact™. Schedule your demo, and start your free trial today
