Referrals are typically the best source of leads for an accounting firm. Referrals from clients and from other businesses.
Do you have a number of business alliances for your firm, yet generate only a few warm, quality leads?
That’s not uncommon, but there’s a lot you can do to change that.
In this post I’ll focus in on effective strategies to increase referrals from your current alliances as well as how to increase leads in future ones.
I’ll also introduce you to a far more fruitful alliance strategy to give your number of leads a serious boost.
Do Your Alliance Partners Know Your USP?
One of the biggest challenges for an alliance partner is to describe another business’ USP – Unique Selling Proposition.
The typical conversation without this knowledge is simply to say, “I know an accounting firm who can help you.”
There’s very little education or persuasion in that statement and this is the challenge.
When an alliance partner wants to refer people to your firm, what can they say that enhances the attractiveness of your firm to sound be a little more persuasive?
It doesn’t have to be some sensational USP that rocks their world, it just has to sound like your firm “specializes” in something related to their situation. It could be that you specialize in accounting for businesses with up to 10 employees in the home services industry, for example. Or a complete wealth-management advisory service.
What does your firm specialize in and have you shared that with all of your alliance partners? If not, this is a significant opportunity to increase leads from them. Plus, you’ll find the leads that come to you are a lot warmer and looking forward to a meeting. This reduces cancelled meetings too.
How Are You Using Your Trusted Advisor Title?
Business owners only really have one true “trusted advisor,” and that’s their accountant.
This is an incredible opportunity to enhance that status by taking it one step further and use it as a lead magnet for your firm.
When a person trusts another, that trust is leveraged to the next person, about 50%. In other words, if you trust someone, you’ll half trust the person they refer you to.
In a business owner's world, they need about a dozen different service provider suppliers. As you know, it can be a challenge to find the quality ones. That is your firm's opportunity, which could even become one of your firms USPs.
Having a list of “recommended” suppliers, vetted through a rigorous and documented ‘due diligence’ process – that you can even promote on your firm’s website, would be impressive to any potential small business clients.
You would need to determine the qualities of any business that becomes your due diligence process with such criteria as:
- A strong public reputation – seen in a high rating in Google Reviews
- An “integrity first” approach to their clients
- Dedicated to follow up and support
- A decade long trading history
- Glowing testimonials
- A modern website
These are examples, not necessarily recommendations, to get you thinking.
You need to start by making a list of popular suppliers for your most common industry types of clients. You may have a supplier on your client list that you could start with to “vet” out for your criteria.
It is wise to put together a basic Alliance Partner Informal Agreement, which is more of a MOU – Memorandum of Understanding – that documents what your expectations are as far as how the alliance partner will work with your clients referred to this.
One recommendation for alliance partners is to ‘try them out’ and be a receiver of their services yourself, or someone in your firm. Let them receive their service and possibly even pay for it (ask for half price) so you can experience it, if that’s relevant.
With my own alliance partners, I often refer quite a few leads in a year and I give them a lot of information, not just one or two sentences.
I actually warn my alliance partners that the leads I refer will be very “warm to buy” and quite well versed in what they are offering. This helps the working relationship.
When I pass on a lead, I often talk to the alliance partner in advance; telling them who I am recommending to them and a little about their background. That just helps their first meeting to run very smoothly.
This strategy also keeps both parties on the same page.
When you’ve generated a few different alliance partners, by all means add them to your firm’s website. Promote your 'due diligence process' and call your firm a “One Stop Shop of Trusted Service Providers.”
This strategy has a lot of power, especially when you promote it through your own regular newsletters to clients, which is another highly recommended strategy.
This strategy enhances the feelings of clients towards your practice, as being like a small community, almost family-like in that you are demonstrating your depth of caring about your clients.
It’s the effort to put this together that is a demonstration of how much you care about the wellbeing of your clients.
Want to Know More?
This post is just one small strategy from one of my books/reports called 5 Growth Opportunities for Accounting Firms in 2019. You’re welcome to get a copy and read more about this strategy plus four more in the report.
Tim Stokes
Author Bio: Tim Stokes is a 36 year experienced business owner and builder of 7 in service industries. In 1997 he began mentoring business owners in all aspects of business growth and lifestyle success with results published in national magazines. He’s no accountant, but he brings a fresh, very practical, intelligent point of view to growing businesses that his principal clients enjoy. He’s authored 12 books and The Academy of Business Mastery business management course with its systems and management tools. He’s respected for his contribution to clients of accounting firms who see the results. Tim believes the most important figure in businesses is the net profit percentage and specializes in increasing it with a full suite of time-proven strategies. Visit Tim's website to learn more about him.