I’ve been pontificating upon the virtues of starting a taxpayer representation practice for 10 full years now. Having built two firms, I’m incredibly biased in regards to the pros of adding this lucrative service to your tax practice. But there certainly are cons to it, also. Tax resolution isn’t a good fit for every tax professional, and in this episode of the podcast, I explain five specific reasons why you might not want to get involved in taxpayer representation.… Continue reading
Podcast Episode #21: The Price is the Price
Ever had a client demand a discount?
Ever had a client ghost you on an invoice balance after the work was already done?
Ever cut a client a break on fees because of [insert random excuse]?
As a business owner, one of your jobs is to set your fees.
You determine this based on factors such as your overhead, how much profit you desire, and what your local market will bear.
You determine this. YOU. You set your fees. Not your staff, not your clients, not your relatives, not your competitors. YOU.
In this week’s episode of The Profitable Accountant Podcast, Dan Henn, CPA and I discuss this important issue of maintaining the integrity of your fee schedule. This is 38 minutes that you’re definitely going to want to listen in on.… Continue reading
Why “tax tips” are terrible blog post and email content
If you subscribe to most SEO, email drip, or social media feed services for accountants, over 90% of what’s going to get dripped out to your audience is tax tips.
Today, I’m going to explain to you why these services are doing you a disservice, and what you should be writing about instead as you dive further into content marketing for your tax firm.
Why the hate, bruh?
Due to the fact that so many thousands of tax pros subscribe to this email newsletter, I, in turn, get automatically added to quite a few email newsletters sent by you. Basically, whenever one of you signs up for an email newsletter service, that service will offer to scan your contact list inside your email, then add all those people to your new email newsletter. Voila, Jassen winds up on a lot of such email lists.
This means that I see ALL the email newsletters. Yup, all of them. From every service provider that provides turnkey websites, social media, and email content for our industry.
And most of them suck.
Yup, I said it. Not gonna pull any punches on this one.
Each of them sucks to a different degree, and for different reasons. But there are three common characteristics amongst the suckage:
#1). They’re overly technical. Very, very few of your prospects/clients care about the nuanced details of this deduction or that credit or that new Revenue Procedure. They seriously just don’t care. Those details are what they pay you for. Sure, they want hear that some new thing exists that will benefit them — the proverbial what’s in it for me? — but that’s the extent of it. Better way: Here’s the thing, it exists, let’s see if you qualify. That should be the marketing communication — not a treatise on the technical details.
#2). Because they’re overly technical, they don’t actually provide content that people want to read. Your email newsletter, blog posts, social media posts — it’s all utterly worthless if nobody actually reads it. Remember, the modern consumer has a short attention span — they’re not reading your 27-point fact sheet on the Child Tax Credit. They just aren’t. Folks want the quick win, the simple points, easily digestible. For most of your clients, you are likely their only trusted advisor in the entire financial universe. From you, they want to hear about more than … Continue reading