Tax Resolution Academy

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. -Desiderius Erasmus (1500)

Translated into marketing-speak: She who bothers to be even slightly better than average wins the business.

Since we now live in a world where average equals mediocrity, it doesn’t take much effort to be better and do better than your peers. A lot of people are very uncomfortable with this assessment, but I stand by it.

Another way of looking at it, through the lens of another common expression, is that “80% of success is showing up” as Woody Allen put it.

So that’s what we’re looking at for the next few days. Take an inventory sometime:

1. Where do you show up now?
2. Where should you be showing up?
3. What are some things that YOU do in your practice that makes you better than average?
4. What else can you do in your practice move beyond being seen as “mediocre”, e.g., just another practitioner?

For the next few challenge tasks, I really want to focus on that second one: Where should you be showing up?

Even better, let’s break it up into a few more pieces:

• Where should you be seen digitally?
• Where should you be seen physically?
• Where should you be seen in media?

Let’s start with your digital footprint. Again, if you’re not showing up in the right places, then the right people won’t be able to find you. Since we’re talking about 941 work, there are certain places online that you should be.

First among them is probably LinkedIn. Have you looked over your LinkedIn profile lately? Is it complete? Do you have a photo? Do you have a bio describing the kind of client you’re looking for, and an offer for a lead magnet? Are you posting occasionally? Do you write articles on the LinkedIn “blogging” platform?

Take a few minutes to spruce up your LinkedIn profile today. Don’t end the day without at least a photo and a link back to your website in your bio. While you’re on there, post a single status update offering a lead magnet to your B2B connections that might have 941 problems. For what it’s worth, your elevator pitch makes a great bio or status update item.

The other place that you absolutely, positively need to be seen online is Google Maps. I guess more appropriately it would be Google My Business. At this moment, there is no more important … Continue reading

In yesterday’s challenge, you did some research in an effort to find bigger companies to do special marketing initiatives to.

Over the rest of the month, we will revisit this super-short “hit list” a couple times, but today, we start in a meaningful way.

First, do a little bit more research on Google, perhaps even LinkedIn. The goal: Find out who is in charge overall, and who is in charge of the accounting, finance, and legal functions. Yes, that means up to four people. If not people, find out who their accounting firm is, what local law firm they utilize, etc. You may need to pick up the phone for this leg work.

Once you know the names and addresses of the folks in charge, here’s what you’re going to do:

1. Print out copies of any “financial turmoil” media articles you found yesterday.
2. Type up a cover letter on your letterhead saying you came across the attached news items, and provide 2-3 specific suggestions for how you could help based on what was publicly reported.
3. FedEx or courier this entire stack to the people you found in your research. Not email. Not fax. Not USPS. FedEx or courier. Don’t be a cheapskate on this, it’s worth the extra few dollars.
4. Add to your calendar a to do to follow up via telephone in 48 hours.

In this day and age, showing even the tiniest demonstration of competency and tenacity goes a LONG way. Frankly, it’s frightening how low the bar has become for impressing people. This makes it easier to get a meeting with some local corporate mid-wig than you think it is. By taking the time to research a company, try to understand their problems, even with incomplete external knowledge, and offer possible solutions, you’re probably being more proactive than their controller or CFO.

That’s how you land whales.… Continue reading

Today, we’re going whale hunting.

Or, at least the research required to go whale hunting.

First off, what’s a whale?

One of the nice things about 941 work over 1040 work is that the cases are much more diverse and interesting. Over 90% of 1040 tax resolution cases are just the same thing over and over and over. Most of them are Streamline or, as they are now called, “Expanded” Installment Agreements. Same thing, over and over…

Not so with 941 cases. 941 case work is much more varied, making it inherently more interesting, at least to a nerd like me.

One little factor that makes it more interesting? You’re much more likely to land the occasional mid-sized business as a client.

Depending upon whom you ask, a mid-sized business is defined as one with more than 100 employees, but less than 1,000 employees, or that has revenue in excess of $10 million per year but less than a $1 billion. The US SBA definition is much more complex, based on industry.

Medium-sized businesses are excellent clients for a number of reasons that are really beyond the scope of the challenge. From a strictly tax resolution perspective, they’re great because they can afford to pay you higher fees, and also because the root cause of their payroll tax problem is usually a short-term problem. Lastly, they can cash flow their way out of the federal and state tax debt. Oh, and for-reals lastly, they generally don’t have unfiled returns or mountains of accounting work to be done.

In other words, they’re pure representation clients. For somebody like me that doesn’t like doing tax prep, and isn’t an accountant, I love cases where all I’m doing is the representation!

Identifying potential whale clients is fairly simple, but marketing to them can be a different story. Today, we’ll talk about identifying them, and over the next few days we’ll talk about marketing to them.

Finding whales starts with having the right boat. For our purposes, the main boat you need is Google.

1. Start by Googling phrases such as “your-city business in trouble” and “your-city company financial issues” and “your-city business faces losses”, etc.
2. Find your local business journal, and start scouring for news articles and reports of businesses in trouble.
3. Look online for your local “Book of Lists”, usually put out by a business journal publisher. Scour that list for year-over-year declines in staffing.
4. If you