Yes, you ARE a salesperson. Embrace it.

If you’re a tax, accounting, or legal professional in private practice, you no longer have the luxury of relying on an employer to bring in business that pays your salary. When you’re the business owner, YOU have to generate leads, nurture those leads, book appointments, and close sales.

If you can’t close sales, you’re going to starve, pure and simple.

This reality is a very difficult one for many CPAs, attorneys, and EAs to swallow. They don’t want to be “salesy”. They don’t like to sell. They want nothing to do with traditional sales training and sales methodologies.

Fortunately, there is a type of sales process that is a natural fit for our profession, our personalities, and the nature of our work. It goes by numerous names, including “needs analysis selling” and “consultative selling”.  In today’s online training session, we’ll cover the most important concepts you need to understand in order to utilize this type of sales closing strategy to convert more of your prospects into paying clients via a simple, organized approach that is natural for you, helpful for the client (even if they don’t hire you), and in no way weird, gross, yucky, or slimy.

Most importantly, we’ll discuss pre-set, organized processes for moving a process along the path from prospect to paying client. When you create a conversion system for closing sales, most of the stress and anxiety of the selling process can be dissipated. Plus, when you have an organized system for this, it becomes repeatable, efficient, and tweakable to improve results. In other words, process = profits.

If you don’t already have it, and you’re interested in tax resolution, you should register just to receive the complimentary bonus gift: All registrants will receive a complimentary copy of my Tax Resolution Case Review Worksheet. This is the exact same that myself and many coaching clients continue to use to help them in the sales closing process. On the webinar, we will discuss two different variations on how to use a form such as this one to make your sales process more efficient — and it’s a strategy you can apply to every service you offer, not just tax tax resolution.

Every tax pro needs sales training — even if you don’t want to admit that fact to yourself. Today’s class is a mere $20, and you’ll walk away with practical, actionable advice that you can … Continue reading

Live Tax Resolution Training Schedule for the week of April 20-24, 2020

We have a jam-packed week for you, including a PPP update covering forgiveness criteria, del ret cases, sales training for tax pros, and our first ever webinar on the topic of IRS Examination.

Lettuce begin…

Tax Resolution Office Hours. April 20, 10am PDT (1pm EDT). For Tax Resolution Academy® members only. Bring your case work, marketing, and practice management questions for in-depth dissection. Members, click here to register.

Intro to Audits: A Sweeping Overview of IRS Examination Representation. April 21, 10am PDT / 1pm EDT. Dan Henn, CPA kicks off our brand new IRS Examination curriculum with this broad overview of the field examination process. 1 CE/CPE hour for both EAs and CPAs. Click here to register.

Basic Sales Training For Tax & Accounting Professionals. April 22, 11am PDT / 2pm EDT. Sorry to break it to ya’, but if you’re in business for yourself and you can’t close sales, then you’re not going to be in business very long. “Traditional” sales training is abhorrent to most accountants, so you need to learn a sales process that is a more natural fit for our profession. On this webinar, you’ll learn that process. No CPE, but your bank account will thank you. Register hither.

Inside the IRM™: Delinquent Return Investigations – Enforcement Determination. April 23, 11am PDT / 2pm EDT. What steps does the IRS take when they are unable to secure an original return from a taxpayer. What enforcement mechanisms are available to them? How can you, as the taxpayer representative, get closure on del ret investigations? All shall be revealed next Thursday. 1 CE/CPE hour for CPAs and EAs alike. Achieve awesomeness here.

And last but not least, we arrive at Friday…

SBA Paycheck Protection Program (PPP Loans). April 24, 11am PDT / 2pm EDT. The SBA released another interim final rule on April 15, four days after our last PPP CPE presentation, and 1 day before funding was exhausted. So, we’ve got that to talk about. Lots of stuff about forgiveness. Dan is working up a handy, dandy cheat sheet for you, too, which you’ll receive as a special bonus when you register. Plus, who knows what Congress might do in the next few days, we may have even more new stuff to talk about! 🤪 1 CPE hour for CPAs. Get the goodness.

Don’t forget that you … Continue reading

Common Sense Advice Regarding Offer In Compromise Scams

By now, everybody with a tax bill has heard the “pennies on the dollar” promises on radio and TV. Before handing over thousands of dollars to some Slick Rick salesman over the phone, here are some things you need to know about the Offer in Compromise program.

First and foremost: You probably don’t qualify. What’s that? How can I say that without even knowing you or your situation? Because the IRS statistics show that most people that apply don’t qualify, that’s why. In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, the IRS outright rejected 59% of all Offer in Compromise applications that were submitted.

Secondly, the Attorneys General of several states, the Federal Trade Commission, and multiple class action lawsuits have been won over the common sales practice of promising tax relief, and not being able to deliver. More often than not, clients in those situations are sold an Offer in Compromise program for many thousands of dollars, and are then converted to an Installment Agreement (monthly payment plan to the IRS) with no refund of the price difference. This has been going on for years, and and many tax debt resolution companies have been sued for this and other egregious sales practices that are designed to do nothing but part you from your money.

There are probably tens of thousands of other OIC settlements sold by these companies every year that are never actually filed, so they don’t even go into that number that the IRS tracks.

If somebody is trying to tell you that you qualify for an Offer in Compromise without doing a thorough analysis of your financial situation, RUN! They will often say that you can settle your debt for some fraction of what you owe. That fraction is a totally made up number! The formula the IRS uses to determine your required Offer in Compromise amount has absolutely nothing to do with how much you owe — it’s entirely based on what you own and what you earn.

To determine whether you even qualify for an Offer in Compromise, you need to examine the value of your assets, including your retirement accounts, cash, equity in your home, your vehicles, the value of business equipment, etc. If all that stuff is worth more than what you owe the IRS, then you are most likely ineligible for an Offer in Compromise.

Also, take a look at … Continue reading