Discussion:Marketing an accounting and tax practice
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Discussion Forum Index --> Business Growth Community --> Marketing an accounting and tax practice
| 9 June 2007 | |
| I am contemplating starting an accounting and tax practice. I have been watching the usual resources for practice sales but realized that I may never happen upon a firm in my area at a price I could afford.I have begun looking for information on marketing my start up practice and have come upon several companies that provide marketing services to bring in new clients. One, by chance, is called New Clients, Inc. and a second is Build Your Firm, I think. Have any of you had any experiences with these companies or similiar type firms? The fees for their services are high, not as high as buying a practice, but steep never the less. Anyway, thanks in advance for your assistance. | |
Bottom Line (talk|edits) said: | 9 June 2007 |
| Never heard of these companies but have never looked. There are some threads here regarding starting/growing/expanding practices. Suggest you look there. Please complete your profile including your geographic area. May get some specific suggestions that way. I've grown my practice via word of mouth and am rarely taking new clients now due to "hours in the day" challenges. If you choose to advertise, do it selectively where you can monitor the response to determine if it pays for itself. I'm a QuickBooks Pro Advisor and have gotten good clients (training, bookkeeping, periodic review, and taxes) that way. | |
| 10 June 2007 | |
| Thanks BL. I have completed my profile and will search your suggested threads. | |
Bottom Line (talk|edits) said: | 10 June 2007 |
| Thanks Steve. I was in the commercial banking industry and started my bookkeeping practice working nights and weekends until it had grown enough that it could support me. I continued to work both for four years before I finally quit the banking biz. Should have quit a year earlier but was single at the time with some debt. Just didn't want to risk having a money problem. I suggest you have a year's living expenses in the bank and/or have another source of income while you grow your business. | |
| 11 June 2007 | |
| Bluz, come to NATP's conference in Las Vegas this July and attend my session on marketing for tax clients (Beyond 250). The link is on my profile page. Kevinh5 | |
Wkstaxprep (talk|edits) said: | 11 June 2007 |
| For now, don't waste too much money on marketing, i haven't seen anything or heard anything solid that works.
It seems referrals, word of mouth, and socializing, etc. are the best way to go. | |
| 12 June 2007 | |
| Word of mouth is the best, you usually don't have to sell yourself!
Any restrictions against going after clients on this website? | |
Wkstaxprep (talk|edits) said: | 13 June 2007 |
| You can have all my nonpaying clients :) | |
| 14 June 2007 | |
| Thank you all for your advise. I guess it's going to be financially painful early on. I hope I don't end up with to many of those nonpaying clients! Sorry I haven't been back to the site sooner. | |
| 14 August 2007 | |
| Hi "Bluzman,"
I'm new here, and was going to watch and learn a bit before I started spouting off, but your post was so related to my website, I thought I'd suggest you have a look at it ... http://instantpracticebuilder.com I'm just starting to market it and would love some feedback from you about it. I digitized all the stuff I used to build my business when I went into public practice many years ago (My wife has been urging me to throw the box away for almost twenty years). It combines the traditional needs of a new accounting practitioner with some nifty new technology. Let me know what you think. Kirk | |
| 14 August 2007 | |
| P.S. -
Steve, I'm familiar with both of the firms you asked about. Back in the 80's I took a seminar from one of them. They pitched a hard sell then ... it was a new thing then, cold-calling and telemarketing. I tried it, but it wasn't the best, the clients were usually less than desirable and didn't stick. I don't know if they are still touting that method or not. The traditional methods of building your reputation are the most successful. That's where networking and talking to people help. As an accountant and tax professional, that's your strongest tool. Kirk, again :-) | |
| 20 March 2008 | |
| I was a practicing CPA for 13 years. I purchased three different sole practitioner's firms. Each of the prior accountants were retiring. I thought I was paying a fair price at one times annual billing.
The prolem was the quality of the clients both in terms of how they were used to dealing with the prior owners and the fee schedule they were accustomed to. After dealing with the same basic problems on all three buy-outs, I decided not to do another. If I had spent the same time and money marketing my practice for new clients as I spent dealing with these entrenched clients, I would have been money ahead. There are some very inexpensive ways to gain exposure in your local market. One very effective and "no cost" method is speaking to local orgainzations. Spend a couple hours putting together a 20 minute lunch talk called "If the IRS calls." Enlighten your listeners with what to do if they are contacted by the IRS and what they might do when filing their tax returns to avoid being called by the IRS. Twenty minutes is as long as any lunch crowd will sit still for a speaker. And, this should leave you some time for questions and answers. It would be very helpful if you had a brief brochure with additional information as will as your contact information. I know this works well. I gained some very good long-telrm clients from speaking engagements. Once you have your speech ready, write a brief note to the president of each of the local groups you are willing to speak to. Tell them that you are available on "short notice" and at "no charge" to speak to their group. Send the same notice out every three months or so. Many of these groups have no formal tracking system and need the reminder post card. If you are in a city of any size, you should be eating free lunch at least once a week or more. Think of it as a way to have lunch with several prospectice clients at one time. My partner and I have been helping local size firms market their services for the past 30 years. I invite you to have a look at our site and to email me with any and all marketing questions..............at no charge. www.mostad.com Arvid | |
| 20 March 2008 | |
| I actually get the fliers from Arvid, and I know of firms that have used Mostad. I actually plan on incorporating some of the things he recommends. I bought my firm basically as a way of buying a job, but growth will be based on marketing and utilizing a professional firm that specializes in what we need is critical.
If I remember correct, Mostad has monthly and quarterly newsletters and even articles to reproduce and use. Just wanted to say that although Arvid is trying to sell his wares, in my opinion, he's not a shill but actually has a company that can provide a valuable service to us as opposed to us re-inventing the wheel. Now Arvid, about that free marketing plan for this endorsement? Lol. | |
RoyDaleOne (talk|edits) said: | 18 April 2008 |
| I don't know Illinois accountancy laws and rules, however, some states have prohibition about paying referral fees to non-CPA's, this is generally about attestation services. However, you would want to be sure. | |
| 19 April 2008 | |
| I used MOSTAD newsletters in the first 5 years of my 20 year old practice. Muy clients liked the colorful graphics and the easy to read articles. It worked for me. | |
| 22 April 2008 | |
| I am in the middle (and end!!) of using the New Clients Inc program. It's not working for me. I spent $30K on the Part 2 program where NCI promises to take care of the marketing. NCI's support has been close to non-existent. I had to get involved (during my busy tax season). I improved things a bit but not enough to justify the on-going costs. So, I am planning to kill the program in a week or so.
Purchasing practices has worked better for me. I have bought 2 so far. But as someone pointed out it does come with some problems -- low fee structure is the biggest problem. I was looking at another one last week but the average fee for an individual with schedules was only $250. And that is for a CPA (with more than 20 years of experience) in San Francisco. My averages are much higher. For the 2 practices I bought, I increased the fee 50% after the 1st year i.e. after they got to know me. Did not lose any. I did fire about 20% of the clients even before the fee increase -- these were the price shoppers. Seems to fit a 2:1 ratio model (for % increase in price Vs % decrease in number of clients) I have seen through other posts where folks double the price and lose half. I haven't gone that far. Has anyone tried to increase prices DURING transition i.e the first year of purchase? I'd rather have the seller take some risk instead of my taking all the risks of a price increase -- but can't imagine a seller going for it. | |
| 23 April 2008 | |
| I'm in the middle of purchasing another small practice as well. About 90 returns or so. The agreement he gave me to review allows for only a small price increase <10 to 20%> for the first year.
New Clients has been hounding me and I almost decided to try them, glad I didn't. My office manager will be spending the summer putting together our marketing/world domination plan and we will implement it ourselves. Kokomo, did you receive any new clients at all from the program? I figure for that much money, it would be more beneficial to hire a part time person year round to do marketing. The only reason I considered it was because of the lack of time to do it myself. But with capable hands off staff, we will do it ourselves. | |
Jonathan57 (talk|edits) said: | 24 April 2008 |
| Bluzman - for the love of God please don't use New Clients, Inc. They have totally screwed me over and I am so mad at them! It's 100% correct that their actual support is non-existent. The actual actions they took to build the practice and train an allegedly capable Client Services Rep (mine turned out to be utterly incompetent) included: 1. Showing up & 2. Leaving.
They'll talk to you all day about how great the marketing system is - once you pay, you'll find extreme difficulty in implementing the said system. Despite NCI's assurances that they will come in and set up the system for you - in reality they leave it all on your shoulders. | |
| 26 April 2008 | |
| I did receive clients from the NCI program but the costs far outweighed the revenue. My payroll for the program was $5K per month for 2 Telemarketers and 1 sales person (Customer Service Rep). I have spent about $50K in total to get 6 clients who bring in annual bookkeeping revenue of about $15K in total. Only 2 clients are good. The others have a lot of demands and not very organized and therefore, not very profitable. So, the revenue to cost ratio is pretty poor for me -- my experience with direct mail (for tax) and purchasing practices gave a better ratio.
In my opinion, the NCI system (Like all telemarketing programs I guess) could work in theory if you get a stellar CSR (sales person) who can run the program (including training and motivating Telemarketers, Closing the deals, Being on top of EVERYTHINIG etc). If you want to run the program then you'd better find someone else to do the accounting work because you will not have enough time to do both. | |
| 13 May 2008 | |
| I would say that purchasing a practice is probably about 2 & 1/2 times more expensive than building a practice. I have built my second practice of about $700,000 in 4 & 1/2 years. The key is having a system in place which will give you leads, having the time and ability to be able to close the clients to a profitable agreement and then being able to set up a system to service the clients and get referrals.
Since I find I enjoy the selling process much more than doing the work I have started teaching CPA's how to grow their practice. Check out my web site http://www.cpamarketingcoach.com | |
| 13 May 2008 | |
| Hmmmm, looky here, isn't it amazing how someone who preaches against buying a practice wishes us to pay him to teach us how to develop a practice.
As BE says - Spam spam spam spam spam spam | |
