Category: Get More Tax Clients

Are you looking to completely transform your tax and accounting practice?

Do you want a simple, focused strategy for getting started in tax resolution?

How about this from left field: Stop being an accountant.

When I was building my own firm, centered around the transportation industry, I became more than just a tax problem fixer: I became a business consultant to the trucking firms I worked with.

Many accountants take on a broader advisory role with some of their clients without even thinking about it. Consider the clients that you have an incredibly close relationship with, which goes far beyond just tax and accounting.

For many small business clients, you are there one and only source of tax, accounting, and financial information. Most of these business owners know an attorney, but do not have a close relationship with one. As such, it’s not uncommon for accountants to sometimes become de facto legal advisors on general matters, also (you shouldn’t, obviously, but the reality is that it happens more often than we all care to admit).

When I was working primarily with small trucking companies, here are just a few of the additional services I advised them on, beyond resolving their tax debt problem:

1. Controlling employee costs
2. Managing credit
3. Brokering freight
4. Factoring accounts receivable
5. Adapting new technology, such as GPS tracking, electronic log books, and weigh station bypass systems.
6. Managing tractor/trailer registration in other states
7. Recruiting drivers (competitive CDL market at the time)
8. Sales training
9. Creation of policies and procedures to operate more efficiently

Taken as a whole, these services are typically classified as management advisory services or management consulting. I have never labeled myself as such, but in all reality, this is what I really did for a living. It just so happens that it was all anchored by the 941 representation, with the management consulting usually kicking in as a direct result of the federal tax lien impacting the company’s factoring agreement.

These additional services are precisely what allowed me to easily justify the five-figure fees I would routinely charge these clients. When a small, mom and pop business is paying you $8,000 to $12,000, on average, it ain’t just for the tax work.

Tax Resolution + Advisory Services = Higher Fees + Better Client Relationships + Fewer Clients

I consider myself to be one of the laziest people on Earth. Seriously, I’d rather sleep or play with the dog than … Continue reading

In other posts on this blog, I’ve covered the topic of client acquisition cost fairly extensively.

I’ve also written extensively about the lucrative nature of this particular service. To give you the short version, there are 12.4 million active IRS collections cases right now, and the average 1040 client pays about $2,500 for full service representation. Business clients are even more lucrative, paying average fees of $3,500 for straight forward 941 cases, and thousands more on top of that for a variety of unique situations, lien work, 6672 representation, etc.

Combining these two factors, something readily apparent should emerge: You need to determine how much you’re willing to spend to acquire a client.

Without a sales staff to pay commissions to (which skyrockets your client acquisition cost, plus introduces a host of other problems, of course), my cost of client acquisition has average around $400 for tax resolution work. That’s a rough average across all my lead generation efforts, both paid and free, as well as my lead follow up costs to convert leads into prospects over time (there’s a HUGE marketing lesson in that sentence, by the way).

I’m more than happy…no, I’m ecstatic to pay $400 to make $3,500. That math works for me. $400 in…$3,500 out. Sure, there are ups and downs. Some cringe-worthy marketing tests sometimes. But all in all, that’s the formula.

How much are you willing to spend to acquire a customer? Seriously, think it over. It’s one of the single most important questions you can ask yourself if your goal is to GROW your tax practice.

My answer to that question is actually much more than my $400 average. In fact, it’s three times as much. Yes, I’m willing to spend up to $1200 to acquire a single client. In fact, given some challenges with conducting tax resolution marketing campaigns in my new home town, that number is probably going to increase. By the end of summer, I expect to be willing to spend $1600 to acquire a high-fee tax resolution client. Mind you, that won’t be my average, just my maximum.

If those kinds of numbers induce a panic attack, I’ve got some good news for you.

Two years ago, while visiting the beautiful city of Tallinn, Estonia for a full month, I conducted an experiment. It was a wildly successful experiment, and over the following 18 months I repeated it twice.… Continue reading

Lest you think the days of unscrupulous tax debt resolution companies are behind us… Think again. Check out this short piece of investigative journalism broadcast last week on a Los Angeles TV station…

If you want to read the extensive consumer complaints, check out their Yelp page.

See all those complaints on Yelp? People that paid $3,200…$3,300…$2,300… Those are real tax resolution case fees, for people that really needed help — and had the money to pay the fees.

These folks are out there, waiting for YOU to enter into their lives. So, why aren’t you?

Tax prep season is winding down, and tax resolution season is winding up. You’re probably tired of me saying it, but truth is truth: Second tax season can be more lucrative than first tax season.

Now is the time to be revving those engines for tax resolution season. If you’re ready to come out of the gates running, then please join me in Atlanta on May 5 and 6 for the 2015 Tax Resolution Leadership Conference.… Continue reading