Last week, my good friend James Orr (creator of the Real Estate Financial Planner software) invited me to speak at his weekly real estate investor club meeting.

My 2-hour presentation had absolutely nothing to do with taxes. Rather, I was speaking about the impact of credit scores on your ability to invest in real estate, and how to improve your credit score.

Again, absolutely nothing to do with taxes.

In fact, I emphatically stated at both the beginning and end of the presentation that I wasn’t there to answer there tax questions. But, of course, in my introduction I did mention my IRS Collections background.

And guess what?

After the two hour presentation, as people were leaving, I had one person approach me for a brief discussion of their tax issue, and they asked what my rates were.

There were about 40 people in the room, and despite my request that they don’t, one person asked if I could help them. I told them I was no longer actively taking tax clients, but could refer them to somebody in my network.

If I had wanted to, I could have picked up a tax client that night, when I wasn’t even speaking about a tax topic.

This is what happens when you give presentations. It’s a natural, inevitable occurrence.

That’s why you should be doing public speaking. Out of the top 3 marketing strategies working most effectively right now for independent tax professionals to attract new IRS Collections clients, this strategy is #2 in effectiveness. And quite frankly, it’s very close to, and interacts highly with, #1 (referrals from other tax professionals).

To start generating leads from your own public speaking engagements, pick up the Tax Resolution Public Speaking Marketing Toolkit today.… Continue reading

Toastmasters.

That’s it. That’s the tip.

Toastmasters is an international, non-profit, public speaking training organization. They have no agenda, members come from every imaginable walk of life, and they have over 15,000 clubs worldwide.

Yes, over 15,000. I guarantee that one exists near you.

What do you do at a Toastmasters meeting?

You practice public speaking, communication, and small group leadership skills.

You give prepared talks on various topics. You improvise via super short, off the cuff talks. You run meetings.

It’s not business focused, and it’s not a leads group or networking meeting (although, in reality, you will pick up clients from it).

Oh, and most clubs are only about $40-$50 per year to be a member.

Seriously, go to http://www.toastmasters.org/ and find a club near you.

Obtain your Certified Toastmaster (CTM), at a minimum.

Then, combine that new public speaking confidence with my Tax Resolution Public Speaking Marketing Toolkit, and you’re ready to rock and roll.

Grab the toolkit here:

https://cart.tmhq.io/public-speaking/… Continue reading

Yesterday, I discussed why you should be doing “Tax Talks” in order to help you get clients.

Today, I want to answer the obvious follow up question: Where to speak?

First, in order for public speaking to work properly as a lead generation channel, you need to be speaking in front of groups that have a higher occurrence of IRS and state (never forget about state!) tax Collections issues than the average bird.

If you’re speaking in front of a group of people that don’t have tax problems, then you’re obviously not going to set appointments from that group for tax problem resolution. It’s the wrong target market.

So you need to be thinking about industries, professions, and shared-interest groups that, collectively, have a higher chance of having tax problems.

Take some to think about this. Who has tax resolution issues? Brainstorm a list of the kind of people that need to be making estimated tax payments or federal tax deposits, but aren’t. Think about the the type of W-2’d professionals that underwithhold. Think about the kind of situations where somebody would experience any sort of windfall, and fail to set aside a portion to pay the tax. These are your future tax resolution clients.

Second, in order for public speaking to actually work, you need to find the intersection between the first parameter above and those folks that will assemble themselves into a room to be spoken to. If that group won’t attend a workshop, meeting, seminar, or webinar, then you can’t go speaking to them, obviously.

This is precisely the reason that you hear myself (and others) so frequently use the real estate agent example when discussing this topic.

Before entering the tax profession, I was a real estate agent for a living. When I was with Keller Williams, we would have a weekly sales meeting, first thing every Monday morning. It lasted 1-2 hours. Agents would talk about their “pocket listings” or the special request of a buyer client, in hopes of finding a matching buyer or seller that somebody else was representing.

There would also usually be a company – that day’s meeting sponsor – that brought the coffee and donuts, and did a 5-10 minute song and dance about their services. Usually it was a title company, bank, insurance rep, or mortgage broker, and most of their spiels were, quite frankly, boring and useless.

But on … Continue reading