10 “Low-Hanging Fruit” Ways to Work Less, Make More, and Serve Clients Better

Peach hanging on a tree

Tip #1: Email Signature

Craft your email signature in your email software to look nice and professional with 2 marketing adds:  your tag line and a request for referrals.

Here’s a sample:

Sandi Smith Leyva, President, Sandra L. Leyva, Inc., Plano, TX 

972-985-9129 

Biz Growth Strategies for Accountants, QuickBooks consultants and Tax experts

http://www.AccountantsAccelerator.com 

We are grateful for your referrals!

Tip #6: Top Clients

Run a Sales by Customer Summary report for the last 12 months of revenues, and then sort the report in descending order by amount.  This will give you your top revenue-producing clients.

Take the top 20% (more or less, you be the judge) of your clients and take them to an unbilled lunch to thank them and find out more about their businesses in an unstructured setting.  Ask them what their current successes and issues are, but don’t turn it into a sales call.  Your primary goal is simply showing gratitude.    You will get business from this.

Tip #7: Top Referrers

Take the report you produced in #6 and export it into Excel.  Add a column labeled “Source” and drop in how each client found out about you.  Re-sort the report by the Source column and produce totals by Source, then sort it again in descending order by revenue amount by source.

These are your top sources of business.  If they are names of people, take the top 20% (more or less, you be the judge) of your referrals sources to lunch to thank them.

If they are marketing channels, plan to do more in that channel for next year.

Tip #10: Expanding Your Referral Sources – IT Consultants

Take the report you produced in #6 and export it into Excel.  Add a column labeled “IT Consultant,” and ask your clients who their IT people are and if they would feel comfortable having you meet them.   Email each one and introduce yourself, saying you have a client in common.  Set up coffee or a lunch and explore how you might work together to send each other business.

Tip #23:  Format Your Title Tags for Higher Search Engine Placement

Essential for good search engine rankings, format the title tags on your website as follows:

[your top 1-2 cities, ST] [your top 1-2 services] help [your name or your company name] [webpage name]

Example:  Plano, TX bookkeeping help ABC Bookkeeping Co. | Home

If you do taxes, use a phrase [tax return preparation].  Also use tax buzzwords like ObamaCare, FBAR, FATCA, Tax problems, tax penalties, etc.

Use all but the page name on all your online profiles and in your social media pages for great results.

Tip #28:  Claim Your Google Places

For prime search engine juice, list your business on Google.  It’s free:

https://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/

Tip #33:  Courses as a Marketing Channel

Teach a course on QuickBooks, accounting, or tax laws for small businesses at your local community college, adult education center, or the SBDC (Small Business Development Center). Ask around to find out where small business owners go for business advice and teach there.

Prospects say they want more events from accountants before they do business with us.

Tip #51: Testimonials

Liberally post testimonials on your website, in social media, and other marketing materials.  Have an entire page dedicated to them.  Also put at least three on each service page, preferably to reinforce something you just said about your services.  Third-party credibility builds trust faster.

Tip #65: Know Your Client’s Pain Points

Find out what your client is really buying from you and position your marketing to let prospects know you can relieve their “pain.”

Tip #70: Choice of Yesses

When you submit a proposal to a new prospect, provide them with three levels of service, basic, deluxe, and premium, so that they are thinking “Which one will I do?” versus yes or no.

Tip #75: Get Paid Twice

Look for ways you can re-purpose portions of your services.  If you find yourself saying the same thing over and over again, make a video or audio, send it to the client and handle questions and exceptions only.  Or delegate this repetitive thing to your staff because you’ve made a template they can follow.

Once you have recorded anything – in a report, CD, video, etc – you’re getting paid for creating it once and selling it over and over again.  That’s how you leverage your time and profits.

Tip #97:  Calls to Action

Make sure every piece of marketing material has a call to action on it.  Ask clients to call you, get your free report, or schedule a consult.  You’ll get a 25% pickup in action when you tell people what the next step in working with you is

They should be on every page of your website.  A “Get Started” page isn’t a bad idea either.

Tip #110:  Your Hourly Worth

Take your annual revenue and divide it by 2000 working hours in a year.  This is what you’re worth per hour.  To grow your practice, you must delegate everything that is below the hourly rate you want to get and start doing things worth more than your current hourly rate.

Implement your favorite of these 10 tips in your business, and let us know how it goes.