How To Use IRS Tax Lien Filings To Get New Clients

Note: This blog post was originally written in 2013, during the height of tax lien marketing’s prominence. Since then, lien filings have dropped by more than half, and the number of tax resolution companies chasing these fewer liens has more than tripled. Thus, tax lien marketing is no longer the panacea it once was. Today, less than 5% of all federal tax debtors have a tax lien filed against them at all. Bear this in mind if you choose to pursue this strategy. More than anything, I’d suggest using the information presented here to help you in developing a strategy for marketing to niche target markets.

Using IRS and state tax lien filings is one of the most common methods for getting new tax clients. It also happens to be one of the most effective. A few hundred million dollars of tax resolution services alone are sold each and every year in the United States simply by marketing to federal tax lien lists, which are available directly from your local county clerk and recorder, specialty list brokerages, and credit bureaus. While not the only way to generate tax settlement leads, the reality is that the presence of a federal tax lien signifies an obvious problem for the taxpayer — a problem you can help solve.

I would advise reading through this tutorial thoroughly. It covers a lot of ground, and introduces marketing concepts you may or may not be familiar with. This tutorial in itself is a complete marketing plan for generating $1 million a year in client fees. It’s also a fairly thorough introduction to direct mail and telemarketing for lead generation purposes.

The Big Picture Idea

There are a couple of core concepts I want to cover before we get into the nitty-gritty how to portion of this tutorial.

First, as a tax practitioner (or any professional service provider, for that matter), you need to realize one very important, fundamental concept: You are a CPA, tax attorney, or Enrolled Agent SECOND, and a sales and marketing professional FIRST. This is a very radical concept to most people, no matter what their line of work. But the bottom line reality is that if you are in a small firm or in private practice, then you need CLIENTS in order to pay the rent and put food on the table. In order to get clients, you have to do marketing (word of mouth and … Continue reading

Federal tax lien volume picking up

During the federal government shutdown in October, the IRS stopped filing new federal tax liens. That put a major damper on marketing efforts for those of us that rely heavily on tax liens for our marketing.

We’re starting to see lien volume picking up again finally. There was a full two weeks of nothing, then two more weeks of just a trickle. Literally over the course of the past few days, we’re finally starting to see a significant uptick in lien records we’re picking up. We’re still a long ways from the 400+ liens per day above our $5,000 threshold that we’re used to seeing across the country, but it’s back above 200 per day and growing.

This hickup in the flow of lien filing was a good time to remind ourselves about two important marketing rules:

1). Make sure that you’re wringing every ounce of value from your existing lien lists by contacting them multiple times over a lengthier time period.

2). Never rely on a single prospecting method to bring in all your clients.

No business, no matter how small, should have less than three different methods for bringing in new leads. Tax lien marketing is lucrative and powerful, but it shouldn’t be the only trick up your sleeve. If you’re not simultaneously utilizing non-lien marketing to help bring in clients, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.… Continue reading

Why YOU should write a book

I wrote my first book over the long Christmas weekend of 2011. In terms of generating highly qualified inbound tax resolution leads, it was the best piece of free marketing I’ve ever done. Today I’m going to share with you the benefits of writing your own book, and a strategy to help you actually get it done.

To this day, two and a half years later, an average of two dozen people per month purchase Tax Resolution Secrets. And on average, about 1/3 of those people contact me directly every month in some fashion. Some of them call me, some of them go straight to my web site that’s listed in the book, some sign up for my email list, etc.

Are all of these ideal clients? No, of course not. If I wanted to, I could work with all of them. But I’m quite choosy these days about who I will represent. But every two or three months, a case will come along directly from the book that intrigues me enough to take on, and these are usually cases with higher fees. The rest of them either stay in my lead follow up program with no effort on my part to close the sale, or I refer them out to another practitioner.

My friend Salim Omar experienced something similar after writing his first book. Very different book topic, mind you, but still effective at generating a small, yet steady, trickle of inbound leads. In his case, he’s interested in attracting small business clients for doing their books, write up work, corporate returns, payroll, etc.

Having a book out there is not only a legitimate lead generation strategy in and of itself, but it’s also a tremendous credibility booster. Something very interesting happened when I would meet people locally, and they’d start telling me about their own experience, or the experience of somebody they know, in relation to an IRS problem. Instead of handing them a business card and suggesting they or their friend call me, handing them a book with my name on it generated a very different reaction. At only $2 or $3 per author copy for the book, it was a good investment to always have a few laying around.

Having a book is also one piece of the overall process for framing yourself as a local celebrity in your area. It can be the gateway to newspaper interviews, … Continue reading