Accountants understand it's a matter of numbers and effective qualification. They are used to it with regard to taxes. For instance, to get a particular deduction, a taxpayer might have to incur costs that meet stated criteria and that often have to exceed a set percentage of their adjusted gross income. The accountant knows the criteria and examines the taxpayer's expenditures to see if they qualify. A couple of pointed questions usually can uncover expenditures that the taxpayer didn't mention which might qualify and get the taxpayer over that adjusted gross income hump.
In my mind, searching for a deduction is not much different from the marketing that many accounting firms are now doing in earnest. That too can be talked about in terms of qualification, numbers, and the payoff.
Many accountants realize the importance of regular and continuous marketing to develop a good number of prospects, knowing that all will not end up as clients, but a percentage will. Of course, to increase that percentage, the smart ones are using a qualification process to determine which of the prospects are the most likely to become clients. Rather than giving equal additional concentration to all they initially came in contact with, they focus on the ones that are most likely to buy the services that are being offered. Accountants also know for marketing to be effective, they have to close the sale and turn the prospect into a client.
Maybe I have been around accountants and marketers too long, and maybe accounting marketing is maturing, but to me it is easier if we all speak the same language; in this case it is numeric-based, not alphabetic-based.
