You're probably used to reading blogs entitled "X ways to find MORE clients for your CPA firm", but if you've been a certified professional accountant long enough you have probably figured out that more clients aren't necessarily a good thing. Finding BETTER clients for your CPA firm, however, is where your business operations become more streamlined and your revenue streams begin to increase.
Get those Referrals
The number one way to find better clients for your CPA firm is to ask for referrals. The smartest account managers know that when you land a great client, it can be a segway into gaining even more great business through referrals. Asking for referrals shouldn't be viewed as a one-time thing either. Create a follow-up schedule to check in with your best clients periodically to ask if they have customers or business partners that could use your valuable accounting services.
Check Out Job Boards
A company that is willing to hire a full-time accountant is obviously serious about finding someone to fill a void at the organization. On some occasions, CPA firms can offer services at a better value than hiring someone in-house. Additionally, when you hire a CPA firm to do your accounting or bookkeeping you gain access to an entire staff of individuals versus just having one individual. For these reasons, finding new clients on job boards such as Monster, Indeed, and Dice can be a cinch.
Accounting Practice Management Solutions
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Write and Publish Informative Articles
Whether you are helping a reporter out or just posting to the blog section of your website, writing informative tax articles and providing those free of charge is a sure-fire way to increase the number of new business leads you have in the pipeline. Not only does writing tax and accounting related blogs hold the potential to drive more organic traffic to your website, it also helps show that you are an expert in the field and can truly help your new and existing clients. Publish these accounting and tax articles to other sites as well, such as LinkedIn, Medium, and Facebook to more effectively market both the content and your business. Additionally, do not forget to distribute that out to your email list if you have one, and if you don’t, try and get one in the near future. So, if you noticed, the title of this blog is how to find BETTER clients for your CPA firm, not just "how to find clients." It's often difficult to fully ascertain how two people or organizations will work together until it happens. With this mentioned, keep in mind that in numerous instances, finding better clients is a matter of "playing the numbers," and not being afraid to make mistakes with bringing on new clients or to take too long to fire them once it becomes obvious that they aren't going to work out.Fire Bad Clients
When you have a horrible client, it can ensure that your work is extraordinarily unenjoyable. While it seems simple that you should fire clients you do not enjoy working with, countless firms or independent CPAs fall into the money trap where they know they should drop a client but feel as if they can't afford to lose out on the client's money. Clients that are harshly critical, habitually unsatisfied, unresponsive, or late to meetings costs your firm money and should be dismissed to free up room for better clients. As a bonus, trimming the nightmare clients from your client roster can also help boost morale within your CPA firm.Keep Your Best Clients
By far, the best client relationships are the ones that have existed for a longer period. Both your CPA firm and the client have established trust, and this should be nurtured and protected at all cost. Keeping your client roster manageable can help in this area of advice as having an unmanageable list of clients may increase the chances of letting work "slip through the cracks'. If this happens enough, you'll run the even worse risk of losing your best clients to other CPAs or CPA firms. To summarize, do whatever it takes to keep your best clients, as it's a sale that you've already won.Try Customer Matching Sites
There are quite a few online services that will match customers with local professionals under a wide variety of categories including home improvement, lessons, and, you guessed it, booking keeping and accounting services. Some of these sites charge a subscription fee that allows you to set up a professional profile and for potential clients to contact you directly with an interest in your services. Some of the larger marketplaces include:- Thumbtack
- Bloomchase
- Localmind
- Zaarly
- Urgnt.ly
- Angie's List
- ProReferral
- WayUp
Accounting Pipeline Management
Your accounting practice should also have a firm procedure laid out about how you will track your pipeline of potential new business, ensuring that you or a staff member is responsible for lead management. For Cloud Practice Accounting customers, this process becomes simple with pipeline management already build into your in-house CMS system. Contact us today to learn more about CPA's capabilities and how it can transform your accounting practice.