Category: Get More Tax Clients

The cure for any revenue problem is simply to increase revenue. The more revenue flowing into your tax practice, the better things in general tend to be for everybody at your firm.

In order to get more revenue flowing into your practice, you must add more value to the world.

What does this mean, “add more value to the world”?

You add more value to the world when you make solve more people’s tax and accounting problems. When you give somebody a solution to a problem that keeps them awake at night, they happily pay you money for doing so.

In order to solve more people’s tax and accounting problems, they need to be made aware of the fact that there actually exists a solution to their problem. You need to make them aware of that solution. Also, realize that most people are a bit stubborn, and resistant to change. So, you need to tell them multiple times that there is a solution to their problem.

Because marketing isn’t a one-shot game, and you should be receiving marketing support on an ongoing basis, I have decided to make some drastic changes to how our programs here at Tax Marketing HQ are structured.

While our comprehensive systems courses and marketing toolkits will still be available individually, as will the new subject-specific courses we create each month (such as last month’s Direct Response Marketing course), we are also making that course content available through our new premium membership plans.

These new premium membership plans are an outgrowth of this daily newsletter, merged with our tax lien data subscriptions, and enhanced with the marketing plans, ready to use marketing templates, and other resources you need to grow your practice.

Where is this coming from? So many tax practitioners have asked me to either take over their marketing entirely, or to bundle different pieces of our bigger courses together just for them, that I started seeing the need. Many readers of this newsletter need more than just mailing lists — they need ready-made marketing pieces, very specific “how to” instructions for getting their message out, assistance evaluating tax resolution cases, or want their marketing done completely for them and they just take the phone calls.

Depending upon the membership level you choose, here are just some of the new benefits available to members:

• Monthly premium marketing newsletter
• Monthly tax lien download credits
• Access to new ready-made marketing pieces

Just in case you don’t keep up with IRS regulatory changes on a day to day basis, yesterday was a momentous day. After 15 years, the IRS finally fixed the single greatest problem with the Offer in Compromise program, and reduced the remaining income multiplier from 48 or 60 down to 12 or 24 when calculating the Reasonable Collection Potential (RCP).

In addition, the IRS is now allowing Federal student loan payments and delinquent state and local taxes as an allowable expense, and has expanded the national standards under the miscellaneous category to allow room for minimum credit card payments.

What does this mean for you? It creates an incredible marketing opportunity, as the minimum acceptable Offer amount for prospective clients just dropped by as much as 80%. This will drastically increase the number of people that can (and will) file processable Offers.

In particular, I see this as an opportunity to tackle two distinct target markets:

1. High dollar Trust Fund Recovery Penalty (IRC 6672) cases, particularly those with lien amounts between about $100,000 and $250,000.
2. Mid-range 1040 debtors (those that owe approximately $15,000 to $50,000) that have traditionally been blocked from the Offer program because of the remaining income multiplier.

This kind of marketing opportunity has been handed to us on a silver platter by the IRS approximately once per year for the past three years now. If you missed this opportunity in 2010 and 2011, then be sure to take advantage of it now.

Here are my suggestions for exactly HOW to take advantage of this policy change:

1. Utilize the 80% reduction in the minimum Offer amount statistic in your direct mail pieces, email newsletters, blog posts, and telemarketing scripts.
2. If you traditionally only market to businesses, start marketing to individuals using the criteria I suggested above.
3. Create a limited-time flat fee Offer in Compromise service, and market it heavily.
4. Go through your list of prospects from the past 6 to 9 months that did not hire you, and call, email, and mail them in regards to the new OIC criteria.

I guarantee you that some astute practitioner out there that doesn’t subscribe to this newsletter is thinking along the same lines as this, and is going to take action. The relaxation of the OIC criteria is going to create a slew of potential new clients in the marketplace, and you can choose to either take advantage … Continue reading

This is the story of a small CPA firm (three partners) in New York City that hired me in January 2011 to help them grow their tax resolution business. I worked with them to create a written, systematic, and scheduled marketing process to drive sales of this service, which then fed sales of their other service offerings.

The firm employs no sales closers, and they rely exclusively on old tax lien filings (3 to 6 months old) as sales leads. They use old leads because, after a couple months, the vast majority of tax resolution firms have quit calling them, and they are therefore able to pick up clients with very little simultaneous telemarketing competition.

The firm’s telemarketers (“openers”) call these tax liens to verify that they’ve got the correct business, confirm that the tax lien is still an issue, and collect an email address and/or fax number and obtain permission to send “free information regarding how to get the IRS off their back” — there is absolutely no “selling” involved in a traditional sense. They then immediately receive a two-page introduction letter via fax and/or email, and they also receive a 12-page info packet (a 9 page sales letter, 2 page engagement letter, and a payment form) in the mail that comes in a specialized red “Rush Priority Express” envelope.

Every 5 days for 60 days, without fail, completely on automation, the prospect gets an email and/or fax with a short blurb (about two paragraphs) about a tax topic, and an offer — free consultation with a CPA (NOT a salesman), a free review of their latest IRS notice, X percent off representation, free end of year 940 prep, two 941’s prepared during the course of representation, etc. These “touches” are a highly effective follow up program from the very beginning, and their phone rings off the hook.

The key to this tactic was the creation of the series of emails (duplicated as faxes) that go out over the course of a couple months, every 5 days. Prospects are bombarded with the risks of being in collections, the problem with going at it themselves, and what the firm can do to fix the situation. This follow up program puts the CPA on the “right side of the desk”, as prospects then call in for help, rather than the CPA having to be the aggressor and chase the prospect down.

The licensed partners close all … Continue reading