Golden opportunity - how to harness it

I have seen this exact opportunity open for so many of my clients over the years, and you are so right it is a fantastic chance for you to increase client acquisition. There are several things I would suggest you do. 

1) As you have already pointed out you need at physical presence, good signage is obvious! 

2) Local advertising is fine depending on what you do. A small ad at the back of your local paper just won't work! Typically, any advertising on this sort of level doesn't yield great results. Do you know anyone at your local paper? Whether you do or not, have you thought of asking the paper to do a piece on you and your business? Perhaps do something for a local charity to get so good exposure through the paper?

3) Nothing says it like a phone call! I know a data supplier that will provide a list of clients of most Accountancy practices. I'm happy to provide you with some script suggestions also if you'd like.

4) A mail shot can be costly, but in cases like this very worthwhile with a great ROI. A well presented, well worded, personal letter, followed up (and this is crucial) with a phone call, can work wonders. And if you have purchased leads of the companies, you'll know who to send them too!   

5) What is your web presence like? Many of these disgruntled clients will go straight to Google and either search for "Accountant in" location, or "Accountant specialising in" whatever their industry maybe. Is your locational SEO up to scratch?

6) Do you use social media marketing? If you do use LinkedIn or Twitter for example, get following as many local businesses as you can and make yourself known! If you have a blog section on your website, be sure to tweet it every time you write one. Discuss local issues and just really get your name out there. You will be surprised at who is watching! 

7) Put a financial presentation together perhaps? There are bound to be local business groups (Chamber of Commerce, BNI, Business Link) who would be happy to have you as a guest speaker?

A few ideas of the top of my head. Hope they are handy. If you want more info on the leads etc send me an email, I'd be happy to help. 

Kind Regards 

David 

David Ellis Managing Director

T: 01604 211221

E: david@qualityimpactmarketing.com

W: www.qualityimpactmarketing.com

Can be very effective, and it doesn't have to be on your premises.

The 'banner' type signs are very reasonable costwise, and I don't think they need planning permission. Is there a visible area (a nice big bare wall?) near the other accountant whose owner will allow a banner for a small fee?

A bit cheeky I know, but if you specify 'small business' (which the accountants don't seem to want) they may not get too upset.

 I have been reading this thread with interest and had to let you know that today I got in contact with my local paper, I just phoned them up and told them I wanted to talk to someone about getting an article in their paper to help raise awareness of my business. The journalist I spoke to asked me about my practice, businesses I was interested in attracting and if there was anything I thought should be written in and it's now going in next weeks business pages.

Not saying, they'll all be that easy - it's the first time I've ever called a newspaper, but if it is as easy as just calling them up then why not do it? If you take a bit of time to structure it before you call you could come up with a wonderful PR piece!

When I called the paper yesterday I wasn't prepared at all, just completely off the cuff and looking for advice on how to get in the paper.

Last night I was mentioned on Twitter by a local business owner I know who included a link. The link was to the local papers website site. They had put an article on me in the local news section.

Obviously can't tell if this will have any luck or interest in my services but just goes to show you what can be achieved! What really tickled me was that a disgruntled local painter/decorator wanted to know how he could get an advert posted as an 'article' too.

It certainly put a smile on my face and spurred me on.

Hope you are successful with all your marketing.

I liked the point raised by David Ellis.  Direct mail is actually becoming more and more effective because we get less and less of it.  Direct mail is not costly unless you do it badly with no advice.  If you take good advice it is absolutely free.  Infact the only cost would be not doing it.

I am glad you recognise that you are not the best person to cold call somebody.  There are good professionals to do that too and you should find one and get them to assist in your direct mail campaign.  The best way to use them is start by getting them to clean the list.  Whatever list you buy some of it will be wrong.  If somebody calls the list first  they can make sure that the data is completely up to date.  Once they have all the right information they can also use the call as a first attempt at making an appointment.

Whilst cleaning the data the person can also segment it.  By which I mean you may be able to find out other information which would be useful.  For example, what do they do, who do they do it for.  How many people do they employ etc. etc.  Then armed with lovely clean, up to date data and some key market segments you can now do direct mail targetted precisely at those segments rather than something general that appeals to nobody at all. That also means you can use genuine case studies.  For example 'a plumbing client had this problem and this was my easy solution'...'now they are saving £x per year'

By the way, please don't do any campaign unless you have a proper call to action.  By which I mean what are you prepared to give them for responding to you.  Everybody in the world tunes into the radio station WII-FM or 'What's in it for me'.  Please don't give discounts.  Nobody believes they are real.  They think you have put your prices up so you can discount them easily.  They can also devalue your service.  If you win people becasue of a discount you will find it harder to increase your fees when you need to.  You can also attract disloyal customers who will move as soon as the next person gives them a discount.

Your call to action needs to be something extra and personal that they can enjoy for some time to come.  If you can make it a talking point for them to tell all their friends and contacts about that is even better.  I would need to talk to you in more detail if you want some good ideas.

The next thing, as David Ellis said is please don't do a mailshot unless you can guarantee to do a follow up phone call.  For that reason it really is best to outsource the follow up to a telesales professional rather than trying to fit it in yourself.

You may need to change your mind set a little about standing on people's toes.  The other accountant would probably love to get rid of some of these small low fee clients.  You are not poaching, you are doing them a favour as they really can't look after them properly or make a profit from them.  That is bad for their repuation as at some point these small clients are going to say nasty things about them to somebody who could be their sort of client and that will damage their reputation.  Perhaps you could be brave and walk into the 'lion's den' and ask for a meeting with them.  You could offer them a small 'finders fee' reward for passing these smaller clients to you and at the same time you could offer to return the favour for any bigger one that don't suit you.  Even if no big ones come anywhere near you they won't know that.

I would definitely consider careful advertising on strategic sites near to their offices and in or around any car parks near to their offices.  These would be very short on words and long on sentiment with a strong call to action and easy contact details.  By the way, these days Quick Response (QR) codes are really useful.  These are the square bar codes that you start to see with lots of funny shapes inside them.  Many people have smart phones these days and these QR codes can be quickly read by their phone and take them straight to a web site or save contact details directly into their phone.  People should be using these frequently where they would like to deliver more detail but don't want to to clutter up their message.

Lastly, the obvious one for me for your small business market place is door drop post cards.  Get a professionally written post card and have it professionally designed too.  Then find a door drop company who uses GPS satellite tracking on all their deliverers so they can prove it has been delivered.  Test the water with say 5,000 in a good residential area where you already have other clients living.  Then roll it out slowly because the other danger is that if you attract too much new business all at once you may not be able to give the level of service you are promissing.  Then you will have spent money on marketing only to damage your reputation.

The newspaper and local magazine idea is good but again, can I suggest a slightly different mindset.  Please don't call the paper and say you want to build your bsuiness profile.  They will say 'great, please pay for this advert'.  I would recommend approaching them as a local expert in what you do.  For example, you could say, 'my clients tell me that my simple clear advice has saved them loads of money'.  One of them said 'you should have a collumn in the local paper'.  Then you say that you would happy to proivide an advice collumn weekly or monthly or whatever is appropriate.  However, you do need to be ready immediately if they say yes.  Please make sure you have a professionally taken photo of you and also three sample articles on different subjects.  If you can make them locally relevant all the better.  Obviously you could have these on a blog somewhere or you could take some PR advice to help you.  If they take you up on the idea please don't let them down.  After all, with all the information that accountants get every week it should be easy to find something interesting and relevant to say.

Good luck with whatever you do.  Remember you miss 100% of the shots you never take.

I LOVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM !!!!!  

I wish you were my client :-(  

David Ellis

Managing Director

T: 01604 211221 E: david@qualityimpactmarketing.com

W: www.qualityimpactmarketing.com

That is great.  By the way, I have another 'tip' for you.  Have you heard about google news alerts?  You set up a search phrase in Google news alerts and every time something new is indexed in Google that fits that phrase you will get an email from google with a link to that new item on the web.  It is kind of like a continuously running Google search but you only have to perform the search once.

What you can do is put your competitors name up as a news alert.  please put the double inverted commas around their name so you only get stuff which is exactly about them.  Then each time they do something on line you can see it and choose whether to react and you will know more about them.  By the way, this also works really well with your clients.  If you have news alerts for your clients then each time they get reprorted anywhere online you can pop them an email and say 'well done, I have just seen on xyz site that you have invested in....'.  Your client is going to be so impressed that you know this stuff.  I am sure you can think of many other applications.

I also use google news alerts for my own name and my company name so I can see where I am indexing and for what reason.  That can be quite useful if you want to join a conversation somewhere in social media.

Sorry to give you something else to think about. 

Blimey you get on with things.  Please do remember to do all google news alerts as exact phrase searches with the double inverted commas around them.  Otherwise you will get swamped.  I did forget to say thay you can also set each one to just give you one summary a day or to send it to you immedaitely.  I actually use immeidately because then I get one at a time and it is easily to deal with them.  I do knwo that others like once a day because they don't want loads of emails.

Please let me know how you get on. 

Fantastic that so much has come out in this thread rather than just a couple of suggestions :) 

First off it sounds like you are doing really well so congrats! 

There's a couple of things that haven't been mentioned yet so in bullett point style I am just going to rattle off what's going through my head:

*  Referral schemes with clients to make the most of your new clients telling others about their fabulous new accountant and why they moved. 

*  Cold calling can be gentle ( I wrote this article a year ago and it's still one of my most popular articles). I mention this as market research calls and surveys can be brilliant.  

*  Market Research - I think this could potentially be very useful for you as it will give you info that you can use in future marketing materials, stuff for newspapers, signs, direct mail, tweets, blog articles, etc. At the moment you know that the personal touch as been lost but I would try to understand the next level of detail and some practical examples of that. For example I know one firm of accountants who lost clients purely because they moved slightly up the road but had less car parking! Another firm were hot on their heels to promote their free convenient car parking and won a load of clients that way (amazing huh?).  Perhaps you could use a survey for your recent clients who have moved from this firm and then extend that out to potential prospects. (survey monkeys is a great free tool). Online surveys can be tweeted, and posted on forums, facebook, linkedin etc as well as regional forums and online communities. 

*  Personalised one-off emails (and could be good to use on the back of Mark's google alert suggestion). You can then ask people to contact for free consultation, or sign up to newsletter, or direct to a relevant landing page such as a blog article.

*  You mention plumbers so along this theme other ideas crop up such as handing out a few leaflets outside plumbers merchants, screwfix, or business cards at burger vans. What I am getting at here is to understand these little sub-markets and where they hang out and then connect in the most appropriate way. Remember also that plumbers and trades in general still do a lot by fax so a few faxes as an experiment might be worthwhile (but don't overdo it as people get cross with too many or irrelevant faxes)

*  Blog articles can be great for small little niche trades. I've used the plumber example but building on this might be a few plumber-accounting stories, tips, advice, etc. If you type "hmrc plumbers" into google you will see a whole list of accountants blog articles where they are doing this kind of thng. It's great content for newsletters too. 

*  Following on from what you have said about twitter and forums you may also want to look at a small amount of automation with apps such as buffer so that you have a consistent presence and can make more the time that you dip in and out in an organised way. 

Finally I do think that Mark is right about mindset with treading on peoples toes. You probably are doing the other firm a favour. Some firms start off by taking any clients they can and then have a strategy of profit improvement which means focusing on the more profitable clients and letting the others trickle away. If this is the case then these low value clients will already be feeling dissatisfied and if you don't market in a way that says "I want you" then they will start looking around anyway.

Good luck

Max

-- www.maxxy.co.uk www.find-me-an-accountant.com Twitter:@maxinemaxxy

I personally have found a one-page mailshot followed up by a personal phone call to be my most effective marketing tool.  Firstly, by defintion you are targetting people who you want as clients - as opposed to people who come to you via other marketing who may or may not be a good fit for you.

This is not a hard sell phone call.  If they already have a decent accountant, end of call.  If there is some element of doubt, I then discuss their overall business strategy and not their finance.  Often this leads into a really good discussion about their sector, the challenges and opportunities they have, etc.  Even if they end up not being your client you are building decent rapprt and gaining useful knowledge about your local market.

Once I've discussed the overall strategy, the "accountancy needs" part of the call is usually pretty swift.  It should follow on closely from the earlier part of the call.  I often give a main quote like for like with their current accountant, with options in a separate section.  For example, if we think they could do their own payroll no problem this would be a minus option.  If they expressed a desire for quarterly accounts this would be a plus option.

I get a 75% conversion rate on quotes from this.  Most business people have never had a discussion with an accountant about how to get their accountancy costs down which was initiated by the accountant! 

I admit I've never used the services of a telesales operation.  But I doubt very much whether such people can do much more than ask someone what accountancy services they need.  The main aim of my calls is to demonstrate that by moving to me they'll get good quality advice on business strategy thrown as well as the "day job" accountancy.

Well done Mr. Mischief, a 75% success rate is fantastic, unless of course you mean that you have only had time to ring 4 people and 3 of them said yes.  If that is the case find time to ring more.  Obviously if your numbers are low and you need to demonstrate your personality then telesales cannot do that for you.  If your numbers were higher and you would like to show your personality in a face ot face meeting then telesales could work.  Please also remember that telesales can be used to create an opportunity for you to make a follow up call just to confirm something.

If you are sending out letters please please make sure that your headed stationery is as high quality as you are. These days everybody is using less and less letterheads which means you can afford to make them look and feel far better than the old rough thin paper that you used to use.  I recommend at least 120gsm and we actually use 160gsm for our own paper.  I also recommend that you pick one of the very smooth and very bright white papers that are now widely available because it prints very well and really shows off your attitude towards quality.  That letter may be the first thing your client sees from you so you may as well make it look and feel as good as it possibly can.

The other thing I would say is please insert something else in your letter that the recipient is far more likely to want to keep.  In your case it could be a card with your 'top ten tips' or your 'seven simple secrets' which again demonstrates that you care more than other accountants they have come across or that you know more or that you are willing to give away your knowledge without the meter running.  It will also porvide some great talking points for the phone call and could even be an aide memoire for you.

@mr michief - With respect the comment about Telesales not being about to talk about accountancy services is complete twaddle.  But,  I appreciate that if you don't have any experience of using outsourced telemarketing then it may be your perception.

Any telemarketing resource that operates in the the accountancy sector would not survive long if they just took the approach of "do you wish to change accountants?...No?.. ok, goodbye" :)

Doing it day in and day out provides experience of best ways to open up discussions about business strategy, opportunities, pressures, where they want to focus their efforts and have a consultative approach to accountancy services. It also means that telemarketers who specialise in accountancy are up to date on hot topics, trends etc. 

Quite often outsourced telemarketers will do it better than inhouse staff or accountants themselves...Not all the time.. but often ;) 

And often people like me will be able to help and advise on different kinds of approaches that have worked well for other accountants or different niches based on experiences. 

:)

-- www.maxxy.co.uk www.find-me-an-accountant.com Twitter:@maxinemaxxy

Hello Maxxy, telemarketing has been for quite some time the highest return on investment of any form of marketing.   By the way, direct mail is still second.  However, I think if someone has decided that he likes to get up close and personla with all his clients and is prepared to limit the number of new clients because of this time consuming approach that is fine.  Maybe he could handle the higher number of good leads and appointments that professional telesales would bring to his door.  That is even worse.  Paying money to get new clients and then not having the time to follow up properly.

One size doesn't fit all.

Totally agree! To be honest it's refreshing to hear from someone who does it themselves. That can give enormous benefits in terms of hearing feedback directly from the horses mouth that people can use for ongoing marketing improvements, especially in comparison to the ever popular pay-per-appointment where all of that opportunity is completely missed. 

I just wanted to have a little wave and say hang on a min.. such people in telemarketing/telesales are actually good at talking about accountancy services :) 

Max

-- www.maxxy.co.uk www.find-me-an-accountant.com Twitter:@maxinemaxxy

I use quality letterhead and include some sample graphs, which I do as a standard part of my accounts service but no-one else around here seems to.

The business strategy discussion is very much focussed on the local market.  So for example if the guy has a a major customer at Sellafield, where I used to work, I will ask him which specific plants he is working on, how things are going on the project, his role on the project and whether it brings IR35 problems.

If the business is tourist-focussed on the Lake District, I'll ask if they had a bumper Easter.  They should have had!  (If not this is a warning sign.)  I'll ask how June trading was, as the weather has been pants - if June has been decent for them, that is a great sign!

If it's retail in Cockermouth or Keswick, we'll discuss how they dealt with the floods, whether they've had an insurance payout and if so how well they've spent the cash.

A recent new client was about to embark on a £100k bid as a sub-contractor.  The discussion focussed on ensuring he was drafting things correctly so that if the borehole drilling dub-contractor messed up, the client did not become the meat in the sandwich.  And also that he should submit a strictly compliant basic bid, and add in lots of extra technical stuff on alternative strategies in an Appendix.  And that if he wins the job he'll legally have to register in the CIS as a Contractor for tax.

And so it goes on.  We're having a nitty gritty disucssion about specific local issues and how the business has been dealing with them.  Nine times out of ten the potential client is now thinking "Why do I never have discusssions like this with my current accountant?"  (I know this is true because it is the main reason given for changing.)

If there is a telemarketer out there who can cover all of these bases feel free to call me up!

I was told that the word FEAR stands for False Emotions Appearing Real.  Because we have all experienced bad 'cold calls' we assume that our own calls will be received in the same way.  If I call someone I know that I am trying to help them so I feel good about it because people should like to be helped.  If somebody doesn't appreciate my help that is fine too because it will give me more time to help somebody else who does.

A friend and client of mine who is an employment lawyer had huge problems with what he perceived as cold calling. Sadly, I couldn't persuade him to outsource the problem.  He really did want to overcome his fear.  I put him in touch with the best telesales person I know in Milton Keynes and asked her if she would coach him for her usual hourly rate so he could learn to be better at it.  I am very pleased to say that he has learnt a lot and now actually enjoys the challenge of calling people to help them.  He is now reaping the rewards.

Good luck with your telesales.

@mrmichief - I think that's a grand approach to use your local knowledge to get into conversations in this way. Superb to demonstrate your awareness, expertise, and offer help and advice early on before attending a consultation.  I'm not surprised that this is working well for you :)

There is a difference with local knowledge and business strategy. Even better if you can use the two as you are. 

We focus our efforts on opening up conversations, listening to what the current situation is, probing with questions and eventually this drills down to a set of information that accountants can then use for their call back or for prep for their appointments. This is a skill and it doesn't have to be content based to get to a good conclusion. Sometimes we have to bite our lips actually as it would be dangerous for us to make any recommendations or lead conversations beyond a certain point as those conversations may not be in line with what that particular accountant would say or recommend.

I'm sure we are not that unique to other telemarketing agencies who work with accountants where the accountants prepare a list of who to contact and a brief of how they want to approach them. This is particularly relevant to for say where accountants have taken over from another accountant or mergers and acquisitions. I guess it depends on how much effort the accountant wants to put in at the beginning of their call. 

@Monsoon - I bet you do it at a consultation? Think about your examples with cake makers and wedding companies. You already know what challenges they face and what value you bring. But if you think this is a lot of pressure to put on yourself from a cold calling perspective then just a gentle script/opening followed by a very relevant email might be a good compromise :)

@MarkAOrr - "Warm Helping" = love it :)

-- www.maxxy.co.uk www.find-me-an-accountant.com Twitter:@maxinemaxxy

Let me just declare an interest from the get-go – I run a communications company that works in the professional services/growing business space.

I think that you may be under-selling your expertise and what you can actually offer to the editor of your local paper and, looking further afield, the specialist publications you mention...

You are quite right to say that getting a reporter to simply profile your firm might be a tall order, although not altogether impossible. However, more importantly (and you said this yourself) you have got your finger on the pulse of small, local businesses, you know their challenges and you know ways to potentially save them money. You saved a local businessman a thousand pounds in tax – THAT is going to be of interest. How? Why? Who else could benefit? You don’t need to name names but the point is that the reporter will perceive you as an authority, as someone worth knowing when it comes to local business news.

If you approached a local and/or regional publication that is read by companies you want to be exposed to, and said: “Look, I can produce an article/top-tips feature every week/month that looks at issues affecting the business community”, you could be in with a shout. By taking the themes that all businesses should be concerned with (cashflow, borrowing money, business plans etc) and mixing them up with local interest (perhaps there is a strong manufacturing or technology or even farming industry where you are) you would be producing something that people really want to read, that’s relevant and means something to them. And with it would come your name and your firm’s name.

Finally, let’s say you didn’t get any of this into the press but you did put those articles on your website and maybe even used them as the basis of newsletters. What have you lost? Your website will be light years ahead of those using general, template news and your visitors will get something valuable out of it.

It takes some careful thinking, preparation, presentation and commitment (although you can always get help) but the potential benefits are pretty significant. Give me a shout if you want any more ideas.

Ben

http://www.enterprise-wire.co.uk