Get More Tax Clients

This is probably my checklist that you are most interested in taking a look at. The Tax Practice Daily Marketing Checklist provides an answer to the most important question most practitioners ask themselves: How can I get more clients?

Even if you have no real desire to grow your practice, you still need to do marketing. Let’s face it: Clients leave for a variety of reasons. Perhaps their cousin became a CPA, or they were enticed away by some EA’s marketing. In order to keep your practice the same size, you’re going to have to replace this lost client.

If your goal is to grow your firm, then client acquisition is a fact of life. Regardless of your tax practice areas and specializations, you need to be doing marketing in order to generate leads, get prospects in the door for consultations, and successfully get them to retain your services. This entire process starts with lead generation, which is what marketing is really all about.

This daily marketing checklist is meant to be used equally across all practice areas. Even if you only operate in the tax preparation space, it is equally useful to you. Alternatively, if you offer an extensive range of tax and accounting services, then this checklist can be used across each practice area, and often in an overlapping manner. What you say (your marketing message) and who you say it to (your market) may change, but the principles of the checklists are the same.

This checklist consists largely of other checklists, which will be discussed in greater detail later.

Tax Practice Daily Marketing Checklist

1. Marketing Technology Verification Checklist
2. Daily Internet Marketing Checklist
3. Daily Direct Mail Checklist
4. Daily Telephone Marketing & Followup Checklist
5. Marketing To Existing Contacts Checklist
6. Monthly Newsletter Checklist
7. Print Media Marketing Checklist
8. Weekly Professional Network Checklist
9. Seminar Marketing Checklist

This checklist includes activities that you may choose not to participate in. The more marketing activity you do, the more leads your going to generate, and the more consultations and therefore clients you are going to have. Some of these marketing activities are more time consuming than others, and some require more capital than others. Depending on what stage your business is in, some of these activities will make more sense than others, or be more appealing than others.

For example, if you hate speaking in front of a group, and don’t have anybody on your staff that will do it, … Continue reading

I like to start my day by reminding myself why I bothered to get out of bed. Some people need that sort of daily reminder in order to be motivated about doing the things they need to do. Other folks may not need that, but perhaps need something to help them stay focused, rather than playing Angry Birds all day. For other folks, perhaps they need a quick look at their short term or long term goals in order to stay focused on achieving some objective.

Whatever your reason, I think that everybody should start their day by reviewing their goals. Your goals, vision, and mission in life are what drive you, both personally and professionally. A practice operating without goals is most likely a dying practice, no matter how slowly. Even if you have no desire to grow your practice, you still need goals in place in order sustain your practice.

Your tax practice goals can come in any number of different flavors. The purpose of this checklist isn’t to set goals, but rather to review them and determine where you’re at in regards to the steps required to reach those goals (goal setting itself will be covered in a future article). Your tax practice goals could be based on revenue, number of returns prepared, number of active cases, marketing metrics, number of days off, etc.

Daily Goals Checklist

1. Repeat your daily affirmations and visualizations.
2. Review your entire written list of functional goals and their deadlines, as a reminder.
3. If I accomplished only one thing today, what should it be, and why?
4. What milestones do I need to reach today (this week/month/quarter/year) in order to reach my goals
5. What actions have I NOT been taking that are preventing me from reaching any goals I’ve set?
6. If I’m not feeling motivated, what physical actions do I need to take in order to become motivated or create momentum?

Some people may think verbal affirmations or visualization exercises are lame or cheesy, but I have yet to meet any successful athlete, no matter how macho, that doesn’t use them, and highly successful leaders and entrepreneurs have used these techniques for eons. I have been fortunate to interact with some of the most elite figure skaters and competitive shooters in the world, and none of them would have gotten as far in their sport if it weren’t for the power of visualization exercises.

I’ll cover goal setting itself … Continue reading

Starting today, I’m going to start sharing the core checklists that constitute my tax practice systems. I’ll be sharing these checklists in order to help you organize your tax practice and make it operate more efficiently. Keep in mind that these systems are constantly changing, based on new lessons learned, input from staff members and clients, and ideas gleaned from books, courses, and seminars from the worlds of sales, marketing, management, and more. As these checklists and systems change, they will be updated on the TaxMarketingHQ.com blog.

I encourage your feedback on these checklists. Be sure to leave a comment on the blog if you have any thoughts to share.

Checklists are organized as layers, like the roots of a tree, starting at one point and branching out and down deeper, and deeper. The Tax Practice Daily Checklist is where I start, and everything branches out from there.

Tax Practice Daily Checklist

1. Tax Practice Goals Checklist
2. Tax Practice Daily Marketing Checklist
3. Tax Resolution Daily Client Checklist
4. Tax Preparation Daily Client Checklist
5. Other Client Services Checklists
6. Tax Practice Business Management Checklist

Checklist Overview

Each of the sub-checklists in the main Tax Practice Daily Checklist serves a core purpose within the overall scope of running a business. The checklist is intentionally oriented towards running a profitable tax firm, and the sub-checklists are presented essentially in order of importance to be tackled each day.

To start, it’s important to take a look at your goals every day. This is to remind you of what you are trying to achieve, why you’re even in business, and to “right your ship” at the start of your work day to give you the proper focus and direction for the day.

Next, the Daily Marketing Checklist guides you through testing your marketing systems to make sure everything that needs to be working is working. These can be simple things like making sure your 800 number and your web site are operational, all the way to making sure that complex automated direct mail fulfillment systems are up and running. The Daily Marketing Checklist comes before client work on purpose: Lead generation and new client consultations are the absolute single most important thing you do every day. This statement may run contrary to what many CPA’s and Enrolled Agents think is true, but think about it: A constant stream of new potential clients coming through your office is what eliminates the up and down … Continue reading