Jassen Bowman EA
Jassen Bowman EA

Free Webinar: Email Marketing to Grow Your Tax Firm

Email is the backbone of every digital marketing strategy, in every industry.

Not social media.

Not search ads.

Not even – dare I say it! – SEO. <gasp!>

Email.

Despite the rise of social media and messaging systems like Slack (ahem, anybody remember Internet Relay Chat???), email is still the primary business communication tool in use today. This is for both active client communication, but also for marketing purposes.

Have you ever watched a new show on Netflix because of that weekly “What’s New” email they send?

Have you ever applied for a credit card because Credit Karma sent you that promo email to utilize your credit score?

Ever cashed in a 20% coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond (🚀!) that you received via email?

How about purchasing an item on Amazon that was advertised at the bottom of those shipment confirmation emails from your last order?

Oh, oh, I know a good one. Ready? Have you ever registered for a CPE class that was brought to your attention via email? Hmm? Hmm? 🤔

Still not convinced? You’re an accountant, you like numbers, so here are some stats: According to MarketingSherpa, 91% of Americans want to receive promotional emails. According to Adestra, 73% of Millennials prefer receiving email marketing over direct mail, text messages, and phone app notifications. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email has a 38:1 return on investment. Lastly, consumers that purchase via email spend 138% more than those that don’t receive email offers, according to marketing agency CRM platform BenchmarkOne.

To help you get a grip on your email marketing, you’re invited to attend the next Digital Marketing Trialogue session with moi and special guests Nate Hagerty and Christian Jones of Tax Pro Marketer. We’ll discuss concrete steps for integrating email marketing into your overall business development process. There is no cost for this webinar, but it is limited to the first 100 registrations.

We’ll go live at 12pm Pacific / 1pm Mountain / 2pm Central / 3pm Eastern on Wednesday, February 3, 2021.

Register Here

If you’re unable to attend live, don’t worry: These webinars get converted into podcast episodes, so you can listen at your leisure later on.

To your success,
~Jassen Bowman

P.S. Ready to get going with your own email marketing for lead follow up? I’ve assembled a special collection of back issues of The Profitable Accountant newsletter covering lead follow up strategy and building … Continue reading

Tax Resolution Fee Models & Closing Tax Resolution Sales

Today is your last chance to get Martin Bissett’s new pricing course and still get the bonus I’m throwing in with it.

Martin’s course will still be available after today, but you only have until 11:59pm PST tonight to send me your email receipt and receive the 2-hour bonus training I’m providing on tax resolution fee models and closing tax resolution sales.

In this bonus training, you’ll learn the answers to some of the most common questions I receive about tax resolution fees, such as:

  • How much do you charge for a Streamline vs Regular Installment Agreement?
  • Do you include tax prep fees in your representation quote?
  • How much should I charge a client that………?
  • What’s the best fee to charge for lien withdrawal?

Due to federal anti-trust laws relating to fee collusion and price fixing, I cannot and will not tell you exactly what you should charge a client for any particular scenario (nobody else should be doing that either, by the way!). That would be a major no-no.

But in this recording, I do discuss the pros and cons of various fee structures for taxpayer representation, and national fee averages for various types of services.

In addition to fees, questions regarding exactly what to say to close a sale comprise another high percentage of questions I’m asked by tax pros. Common examples:

  • How do you conduct the consultation?
  • How do you transition from “consultation” to closing?
  • When do you quote the fee?
  • These are tax debtors! How do you actually get paid?
  • What “key words” or “magic phrases” can I use to close sales?

Let’s face it: The vast majority of CPAs, Enrolled Agents, and tax attorneys are NOT natural born salespeople. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Fortunately, just like accounting and taxpayer representation, sales is a skill that can be learned. I was a science geek in high school, a nuclear power electrician in the Navy, and got my B.S. in nuclear power. Not marketing or business, but atom smashing. That’s about as far from preparation for a life in sales and marketing as I think one can get in this country.

As you well know, the big national tax resolution firms employ slick, high pressure salesmen. Many of the “closers” I knew back in the day in Denver were former timeshare sales reps, and you know how high pressure they can be!

I’ve never been that guy, … Continue reading

Tax Resolution Training: Attend Our “Sweeping Overview” Series

Becoming a specialist in any specific service offering, be it advisory, tax planning, tax resolution, or anything else, requires establishing a solid foundation of knowledge. Once you’ve established that foundation, you can then take deeper dives into specific subject areas to increase your technical competency in those areas.

To obtain that foundation, Tax Resolution Academy® is proud and delighted to announce our complete introductory tax resolution course arc is now available. This new curriculum, consisting a total of 7 hours of material, is now being presented in an ongoing rotation. Six of these tax resolution courses qualify for continuing education credit with the IRS for Enrolled Agents, NASBA for CPAs, and the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy specifically for CPAs in Texas.

We have called this basic tax resolution training program the Sweeping Overview series because each class provides exactly that: A sweeping overview of topics to help you learn more about what tax resolution actually is, what’s involved in the day-to-day client work, and broad concepts to help you evaluate tax debt cases for resolution. If you’ve ever taken a survey course in college, that would appropriately describe what we’re trying to achieve with this training program.

Since tax resolution encompasses quite a few sub-topics, we felt that this broad survey approach to teaching the basics was the appropriate way to present the foundational knowledge on which you can then build a successful career and highly profitable tax firm.

Tax Resolution Training Topics

The complete set of courses, broken into 1-hour webinars, is as follows:

  • IRS Collections Representation: A Sweeping Overview (1 hour CE/CPE)
  • IRS Collections Financial Analysis: A Sweeping Overview (1 hour CE/CPE)
  • IRS Examination Representation: A Sweeping Overview (1 hour CE/CPE)
  • Trust Fund Recovery Penalty: A Sweeping Overview (1 hour CE/CPE)
  • Federal Tax Liens: A Sweeping Overview (1 hour CE/CPE)
  • IRS Appeals: A Sweeping Overview (1 hour CE/CPE)
  • The First $2500: 3 Tax Resolution Marketing Tactics to Find Your First Clients (1 hour, no CE/CPE)

To see the current schedule of classes, and register for upcoming sessions, visit our Eventbrite page:

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/live-tax-resolution-training-6598293989

What’s Covered in Each Class?

As you start your tax resolution training journey with us, you may want to know exactly what we’ll be covering.

To reiterate: These are basic, introductory level classes. They are intended mainly for those tax professionals that have very little prior exposure to IRS Collections and Examination case work. More than anything else, the … Continue reading