Category: Get More Tax Clients

Note: This blog post was originally written in 2013, during the height of tax lien marketing’s prominence. Since then, lien filings have dropped by more than half, and the number of tax resolution companies chasing these fewer liens has more than tripled. Thus, tax lien marketing is no longer the panacea it once was. Today, less than 5% of all federal tax debtors have a tax lien filed against them at all. Bear this in mind if you choose to pursue this strategy. More than anything, I’d suggest using the information presented here to help you in developing a strategy for marketing to niche target markets.

Using IRS and state tax lien filings is one of the most common methods for getting new tax clients. It also happens to be one of the most effective. A few hundred million dollars of tax resolution services alone are sold each and every year in the United States simply by marketing to federal tax lien lists, which are available directly from your local county clerk and recorder, specialty list brokerages, and credit bureaus. While not the only way to generate tax settlement leads, the reality is that the presence of a federal tax lien signifies an obvious problem for the taxpayer — a problem you can help solve.

I would advise reading through this tutorial thoroughly. It covers a lot of ground, and introduces marketing concepts you may or may not be familiar with. This tutorial in itself is a complete marketing plan for generating $1 million a year in client fees. It’s also a fairly thorough introduction to direct mail and telemarketing for lead generation purposes.

The Big Picture Idea

There are a couple of core concepts I want to cover before we get into the nitty-gritty how to portion of this tutorial.

First, as a tax practitioner (or any professional service provider, for that matter), you need to realize one very important, fundamental concept: You are a CPA, tax attorney, or Enrolled Agent SECOND, and a sales and marketing professional FIRST. This is a very radical concept to most people, no matter what their line of work. But the bottom line reality is that if you are in a small firm or in private practice, then you need CLIENTS in order to pay the rent and put food on the table. In order to get clients, you have to do marketing (word of mouth and … Continue reading

I wrote my first book over the long Christmas weekend of 2011. In terms of generating highly qualified inbound tax resolution leads, it was the best piece of free marketing I’ve ever done. Today I’m going to share with you the benefits of writing your own book, and a strategy to help you actually get it done.

To this day, two and a half years later, an average of two dozen people per month purchase Tax Resolution Secrets. And on average, about 1/3 of those people contact me directly every month in some fashion. Some of them call me, some of them go straight to my web site that’s listed in the book, some sign up for my email list, etc.

Are all of these ideal clients? No, of course not. If I wanted to, I could work with all of them. But I’m quite choosy these days about who I will represent. But every two or three months, a case will come along directly from the book that intrigues me enough to take on, and these are usually cases with higher fees. The rest of them either stay in my lead follow up program with no effort on my part to close the sale, or I refer them out to another practitioner.

My friend Salim Omar experienced something similar after writing his first book. Very different book topic, mind you, but still effective at generating a small, yet steady, trickle of inbound leads. In his case, he’s interested in attracting small business clients for doing their books, write up work, corporate returns, payroll, etc.

Having a book out there is not only a legitimate lead generation strategy in and of itself, but it’s also a tremendous credibility booster. Something very interesting happened when I would meet people locally, and they’d start telling me about their own experience, or the experience of somebody they know, in relation to an IRS problem. Instead of handing them a business card and suggesting they or their friend call me, handing them a book with my name on it generated a very different reaction. At only $2 or $3 per author copy for the book, it was a good investment to always have a few laying around.

Having a book is also one piece of the overall process for framing yourself as a local celebrity in your area. It can be the gateway to newspaper interviews, … Continue reading

One of the things I try to impress upon readers requires a slight mental shift. Namely, I encourage you to view any governmental policy or tax law change with a slightly different eye. You’re reading IRS e-News anyway, so read it with an eye for uncovering new marketing opportunities.

In case you missed IR-2013-72 last Thursday, the IRS is now going to treat all same-sex couples that were legally married in a jurisdiction where the marriage was lawful as married for all federal tax purposes, regardless of where that couple now resides.

This recognition, in response to the Supreme Court case in which certain provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act were struck down, even applies to same-sex marriages performed in foreign countries.

Now I realize that you may have a very strong personal belief about the same-sex marriage issue. Heck, I’m sure more than one person has already quit reading in disgust, and that’s their perogative. But if you’re still reading, this is something you can possibly capitalize on in your practice.

In terms of policy changes or tax law changes over the course of the past two years, I consider this to be only the third seriously significant, massive marketing opportunity that such changes have created. Last year, of course, came the Fresh Start initiative and the associated changes to Streamline Installment Agreements and the calculation of RCP on Offers in Compromise. The start of 2013 brought us the Fiscal Cliff situation and resulting legislation. The marketing opportunity created by this latest policy change is just as profound.

Finding data on the number of legally married same-sex couples in America was actually difficult. Reuters reports a number of about 130,000, and CNN gives us a 150,000 figure. More states have recently legalized this, and it is quite likely that more states will also do so in the coming years. Add in the unknown number of foreign same-sex marriages, particularly Americans that have visited Canada for this purpose, and the number becomes quite large, and will continue to grow.

Regardless of your own orientation, there is a huge market opportunity here, particularly for folks in either large cities or much more politically liberal cities. I imagine that any community large enough to have a local LGBT publication or business directory is going to be big enough for a tax practitioner to capitalize on the IRS same-sex marriage decision.

Practitioners that choose to … Continue reading