10 Simple Revenue Boosters to Start Now
Published May 28, 2013 11:09 AM
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Updated May 28, 2013 7:55 PM
1 Min Read
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1. Let Your Fans Do the Talking
Too often, accountants assume that clients are satisfied and don’t ask why they are satisfied or what can be done better to serve them. But your competitors are always looking for ways to engage your customers. After an engagement, and at least once a year, discuss how you can better serve clients. Ask why they choose to stay with you. Promote those reasons through your marketing activities to engage new prospective clients.
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2. Imagine Your Ideal Match
Professional service audiences are often too broadly focused or ambiguous to assist firms in clearly qualifying leads, so unnecessary time and resources are devoted to chasing leads that aren’t ideally suited to your firm. A better tactic is to create detailed personas that embody your key audience or ideal audience, not only by revenue and industry, but also by title, work style, career goals, motivations and interests.
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3. Dress to Impress Online
Your image online is just as important as your first impression at a meeting. Make sure that the content you share is high quality. Proofread it to avoid grammatical mistakes. Employ elegant design. Share fresh and personalized information on a regular basis to prove you are still on top of your game—and in the game.
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4. Ditch the Tired Business Card
Out-of-the-ordinary materials add new energy to firm communications. Step out of your comfort zone of blue rectangles or cream stock paper and build a campaign that engages your audience in new ways. One recent campaign for a CPA firm invited potential referral sources to have some old-fashioned barbeque. The campaign felt like a personal invitation to a fun lunch. The CPA firm received calls right away.
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5. Rinse and Repeat
After you’ve spent time creating a wonderful presentation for a group of prospects or clients, what happens to it? Don’t just leave it on the firm server or you’re missing a huge opportunity to reach out to more people. Turn that presentation into an audio file. Write an article or blog based on the presentation. Add a tips sheet to the newsletter. Content should be used multiple times to maximize the nonbillable effort that went into it.
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6. Lead Them to Water
Once prospective clients visit your Web site, don’t let them go! If they leave after viewing your home page (based on your Web analytics), then you are losing an opportunity to differentiate your firm from the masses. Tell visitors what to do next and where to go on your Web site with calls to action, informative and client-focused content and interactive invitations to get them asking questions and checking out your firm’s professionals and resources.
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7. Market in Triplicate
When you send any communication to a prospective client, plan on reaching out at least three times. This can be a series of three emails, a postcard, a phone call and an invitation to coffee; three postcards; or an email, call and a hosted event. You get the idea. They are busy just like you. Reminders get them to act, especially if they are enticing reminders.
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8. Don’t Feed the Fish
Unfortunately, some prospects who seem well qualified are simply fishing to see if their current advisors are good. They could be checking out their current CPA’s fees. Ask a lot of questions and listen for qualifiers that clearly indicate a prospect isn’t committed to switching.
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9. Be a Joiner
Prospects like to work with people who share their interests and understand their needs. It is still important to be involved in the associations, think tanks and groups where your prospects congregate. Don’t just attend the trade shows. Get involved in the committees and leadership positions when possible.
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10. Break the Rules
If everyone is sharing information the same way, how do you stand out? You have to take a risk sometimes. We often hear that firms want to be “more visible,” meaning that they’ve seen their competitors in the newspaper or on the radio and it makes them crazy! Just know that those competitors have increased their visibility by allowing themselves to be potentially misquoted, by paying for air time, and by being at peace with some uncertainty. In short, they are willing to be a bit vulnerable and do things differently in order to reap bigger rewards (and bigger clients).
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