Category: Get More Tax Clients

Online Lead Follow Up

When you generate a new lead on your website, what do they receive, and how quickly do they receive it?

As you may recall from last week, I made equal, token donations ($5) to both of the main presidential election campaigns, in order to study their marketing processes.

As I eagerly awaited that first email from both campaigns, the day started to grow long. After several hours, I checked my spam folder, but alas, nothing was there.

More hours passed. I was hoping to include some commentary in last Friday’s email about marketing messaging in those initial follow ups from the campaigns, but eventually I had to hit “send” and go on with my day.

Even well into the evening, I kept checking my throwaway email account, expecting something. But, nay. Nada. Zilch. Nanimonai.

Neither campaign could possibly know that I was just doing it for marketing research. Could they? Was my name on some database that they check against to determine whom to email? For all they know, I could be a future million-dollar donor.

The emails finally did come. One campaign sent it at 6am Saturday morning, the other at 8am.

Wow. A full 24 hour delay. Fascinating.

Perhaps there is some secret psychology that I don’t know about. It certainly is possible. But in my 20+ years of marketing online, there have always been a tiny number of fundamental principles, one of which is: Follow up immediately with every lead.

The entire point of the information superhighway is to make information more readily accessible. Speed of information delivery is what the Internet does best — that’s why it was built. People searching the web want immediate access to whatever it is they’re looking for. Technology has exacerbated the human desire for instant gratification. I want my dopamine, and I want it now!

This was a huge engagement failure on the part of both presidential campaigns, and I hope that you’re not making the same mistake on your website.

I have a tax resolution boot camp to teach this morning, so I need to make this short. So I’ll leave you with three rules for your online lead generation:

1). Thou shalt have lead capture on your website.
2). Thou shalt offer a “widget” to entice lead signup.
3). Thou shalt deliver said  “widget” and a marketing offer in an immediate automated reply email.

Blunt … Continue reading

Recently, I’ve been shopping around for a new mortgage broker to refinance a rental property.

My local real estate agent referred me to a couple different people in the area.

Since mortgage rates are at all time lows right now, the refi market is alive and thriving. Loan officers have more prospects coming in than they can keep up with.

But even though that’s the case, it’s no excuse to completely blow off an inquiry, let alone multiple phone calls and emails, from a prospect. At a minimum, a one-sentence email reply to say they’re swamped and will get back to me as soon as they can should be in order.

But no, zero response at all.

When I relayed this back to the real estate agent I work with, that agent contacted the loan officer, and was told that she would get back to me when she could, but just didn’t have time to even tell me that directly.

My real estate agent wasn’t pleased at that response, and will not be sending any further referrals to this particular loan officer.

Referral source: Burned.

That mortgage broker is going to regret doing that when the refi market slows down. Dumb move. Very, very dumb move.

The ironic part is that this is the second time I’ve experienced this in the last couple years, in different markets.

Perhaps even more ironic is the fact that the real estate agent I work with here is somebody I selected because they were the only person that bothered to return my phone calls back in 2015. Since then, she’s earned three commissions from my transactions. Three. Simply because she bothered to return my phone calls 5 years ago.

Your referral sources are the single most valuable source of new business that you have. They’re more valuable than your SEO. More valuable than your social media presence. More valuable than the perfect direct mail piece.

Burn your referral sources, and they’ll simply stop referring. Even if you’re slammed with work, have the common courtesy to get back to people to schedule a future appointment, or let them know that you’re slammed and will get back to them by a certain time. Don’t just “ghost” them.

If you want to grow your referral base, I’d encourage you to snag a copy of the July 2020 issue of The Profitable Accountant newsletter. Until now, this paper-and-ink publication has only been available … Continue reading

In June 2014, I returned to the United States, rented a car, and visited a total of 42 cities, from coast to coast.

On this “road show”, I presented a simple 2-hour ethics CE class to other enrolled agents in each city I visited. Many times, there were only 3-4 people in the room. All told, I connected with over 200 other EAs as a result of this endeavor.

Why on Earth would I embark on such a journey?

I had several reasons for doing this, but one of the biggest reasons was this: It was the fastest way to exponentially grow my network of tax resolution referral sources.

At first, I was reluctant to do this road show. Another speaker/author from the tax prep world had to talk me into it, as he wanted to host several big, full-day workshops with tax professionals around the country. We did eight of those full day workshops together.

But, I sure am glad that he talked me into it. Otherwise, I never would have done my ethics classes along that route. Never would have met those other EAs. Never would have received the client referrals from them later in 2014 and 2015 — client work that helped fund the launch of my tech startup and funded the purchase of the duplex that marked my return to real estate investing after going bankrupt and losing everything in the 2008 recession.

See, when I made the decision to come back to the United States in the summer of 2014, I did so with the intent of creating long-term wealth, rather than just generating income. Tax resolution is the perfect service to offer if you want to be a globe-trotting expat, and at the time I had a great life in Sydney, Australia. But, while I had a healthy income, I wasn’t generating true wealth.

Fortunately, tax resolution is also a great wealth-building tool. And while I had other lead generation tools — my book, a webinar for consumers that converted well enough, successful direct mail campaigns — the reality is that referrals are the single best source of new clients. Always has been, and always will be.

In particular, referrals from the half a million unenrolled preparers that can’t independently represent clients in front of IRS Collections or Appeals at all…. Referrals from the more than 600,000 CPAs that have zero desire to touch a Collections case… Referrals … Continue reading