Tag: tax resolution marketing

Marketing a Tax Resolution Practice Without Feeling Like a Salesman

You already know the marketing you hate.

The radio spot with the panicked voice promising to wipe out any IRS debt for pennies on the dollar. The fear-soaked postcard that lands in a stranger’s mailbox the same week a lien hits the county records. The call center that buys those leads and churns through them like firewood.

You went and earned a license so you would never have to sound like that. So when somebody tells you to go market your resolution practice, your gut tightens, and you quietly decide you will just keep taking whatever walks in the door.

That instinct is costing you the exact clients you are best suited to help. The business owner three quarters behind on payroll taxes is going to hire somebody. Right now, too often, it is not you, because you stayed invisible on purpose. In this post I am going to show you how to bring in resolution clients without once sounding like the mill you despise. Positioning, a short list of channels that feel like service instead of selling, and a weekly rhythm you can actually keep. This is the same practice-building work we teach inside the Tax Resolution Academy®, and most of it costs you discipline, not dollars.

Why “Marketing” Feels Gross (and Why the Feeling Is Lying to You)

Here is the problem. You have quietly defined marketing as manipulation. Convincing somebody to want a thing they do not need, using volume, hype, and a little fear. Of course that turns your stomach. You spend your days being the careful one in a profession full of careful people.

But that is not what marketing a resolution practice actually is. For a licensed pro, marketing is two plain things: being findable by a person who already has the problem, and being trusted by the time they reach you. That is it. Nobody is talking a happy taxpayer into wanting a Revenue Officer. The desire already exists. The levy already happened. The 1058 already arrived. Your only job is to make sure that when the person finally goes looking for a professional, you are standing where they can see you, sounding like someone they can trust.

Read that again, because it changes everything about how this feels. You are not creating want. You are answering a need that is already on fire. The “sleazy” feeling comes from imagining you have to generate demand. You do not. … Continue reading

Where High-Fee Clients Actually Come From: A Repeatable Lead System

Your best month was an accident, and you have no idea how to make it happen again.

Where did your last five-figure client come from? Not the $400 return. The big one. The IRS representation case where the fee had real commas in it. Where did that person actually come from?

If you can answer that with a name, a channel, and a date, great. You have a system, or at least the start of one. If your honest answer is “I’m not totally sure” or “they just kind of found me,” then here’s what’s actually happening. You are running the most important part of your business on hope and a prayer, and you have been getting away with it because you’re good at the work once they land.

That stops today. In this post I am going to hand you a repeatable system for generating high-fee leads. Not “do more marketing.” A specific, four-part pipeline you can run every quarter that brings the right clients to you on purpose, so your best months stop being accidents you can’t reproduce. This is the same kind of practice-building work we teach inside Tax Resolution Academy®, and most of it costs you more discipline than dollars.

High-Fee Clients Do Not Come From “More Leads”

Here’s the problem. Most tax pros believe the answer to a thin pipeline is volume. More ads. More posts. More chamber breakfasts. More people in the top of the funnel.

Wrong. Read that again, because this is the belief that keeps you broke and busy at the same time.

High-fee clients do not come from more leads. They come from the right leads, found through a small number of channels you run deliberately, and warmed up before they ever call you. A high-fee resolution client is not a volume play. You are not trying to fill a stadium. You are trying to find the handful of people each quarter who have a $30,000+ payroll tax problem, the means to pay for help, and the sense to know they need a professional. (Your numbers will vary. That figure is illustrative, not a promise.)

There are not thousands of those people clicking your ad. There are a few. And the pros who consistently land them are not casting wider. They are aiming narrower, and they are doing it the same way every single time.

The Math Behind Why This Matters

Let me do the arithmetic … Continue reading

Determining How Much to Pay in Tax Resolution Referral Fees

Today, we’re going to address the next most common question that I get whenever I start talking about this process of obtaining tax resolution referrals from other tax professionals.

I am fully aware that the issue of referral fees can be a contentious one. I anticipate no less than two dozen replies to this email slamming me for suggesting that we pay referral fees.

But I’ll say it loud and proud: If you’re able, I encourage you to pay referral fees.

While I would like to say that we live in a world where we could all do each other professional favors, and they will boomerang back in kind, the reality is that it’s very difficult to do. Many times, referrals are not returned in kind, nor are all they all able to be.

Think about it this way. One tax resolution referral to you is worth thousands of dollars. If you are a resolution-only practitioner, it’s impractical for you to try referring back to every one of your tax professional referral partners an equal revenue volume of tax prep work — you’re simply not going to have the volume.

So instead of quid pro quo (hmm, maybe I should avoid that phrase these days)…. So instead of trading favors, it’s easier to simply trade dollars. Money is, after all, a medium of exchange and a method of keeping score. Thus, we might as well use it.

To paraphrase a popular saying, “Money talks, favors walk.”

With that said, the next obvious question is: What is a reasonable referral fee to pay?

As a marketing person, I view this from a very practical standpoint. Let me explain.

If I engage in a direct mail campaign, telemarketing follow up, a pay per click ad campaign online, buy advertising in a niche trade journal, etc., my objective is to get back 3x what I invested in the marketing campaign. That’s gross receipts, and please note this applies to IRS Collections cases only, not tax prep, bookkeeping or other services.

In other words, I’m willing to invest $1,000 in order to get back $3,000. That math works for me, and it should work for you, too. If that math doesn’t work for you, then you need to reevaluate your expectations about ROI on marketing expenditure through traditional media (this is part of the beauty of referrals, public speaking, etc. — much lower cost of client … Continue reading