đŸ’„Get Advisory Clients During Tax Season

PLUS: How to make more money on tax services and how to double your accounting firm through workflows.

Hey there 👋 

In today's email, we’ve got three tips you can use to escape the accountant’s trap.

1. How to get advisory clients during tax season.
2. How to make more money on tax services.
3. How to double your accounting firm through workflows.

What’s the accountant’s trap you ask? You're in the trap if the only way to get paid more is to work more hours or take on more low-value and high-demanding clients. At the same time, you can't raise your fees because there's always a competitor willing to do the same work for less.

DID YOU KNOW?

The average accountant’s effective hourly rate is $36*

The average business advisor’s effective hourly rate is $286.**

An accountant offering advisory is almost 8x more profitable.

*We took the average accountant’s salary of $74,240 (source) and divided it by 52 weeks of the year and then by 40 hour work weeks (as if accountant’s only work 40 hours a week!).

**We took the average advisory client fee of $2,000 (source) and divided it by how long it takes to service one advisory client (same source).

HOW TO GET ADVISORY CLIENTS DURING TAX SEASON

It's no secret that we're big believers that offering advisory services is the best way to escape the accountant's trap. Why?

Because advisory services are valuable to your clients. Which means they’ll be glad to pay more for that service (as compared to tax/bookkeeping). Which means you can increase your income without working as hard.

A great way to get advisory clients is to pitch an advisory service to your existing tax clients during tax season. Here’s how.

Step 1: Complete your clients' tax returns as normal.

Step 2: At the end of tax season send an email to you business owner clients that says something to the effect of:

Hey Mr. Client,

I've just completed your tax returns and I've spotted some red flags and opportunities that I see for growth in your business. Can we hop on a call next week to talk through them?

Step 3: Wait for your client to respond “Heck yeah!”. Boom. Now you're seen as an advisor instead of 'just' an accountant. This will pave the way for you to upsell your clients to an advisory service.

Don’t let the 2024 tax season go to a waste! Leverage it to upsell clients to a higher-margin advisory service!

Want training on how to sell advisory services? RSVP for a training called How to Start a CFO Service by The CFO Project by clicking here.

HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY ON TAX SERVICES

A great way to escape the accountant’s trap is to make more money on your tax services.

We sat down with someone who is all too familiar with how to do just that. His name is Will Hamilton and he’s the CEO of smartpath.co (a company that coincidentally helps you make more money on tax services). 😜

Here’s Will’s Top 3 tips to make more money on tax services.

Tip #1. Don’t under price your tax engagements. This is sort of obvious, however, Will says that small tax firms lose an average of $24,700 per year from under-pricing clients.

Tip #2. Your clients may not reveal all of the services they need. Will says that the key to earning more on tax services is to let your client choose all of the services they want - which may be more than what most accountants initially think the client will buy.

Tip #3. Match the price you quote to the clients’ life and business. Will suggests asking simple (no tax jargon) questions about the clients life and business so you can match their needs with one of your service packages.

Want help quoting tax fees with confidence? Checkout the SmartPath software that Will and his team created. Pretty nifty. Here’s the link: smartpath.co

Want to hear more from Will? Checkout a recent video podcast episode we recorded with him here where we discussed how to get prospects to say “yes” with zero selling. Here’s the link to the video podcast.

YOUR VOTE

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FREE FOR YOU

Our friends at Jetpack Workflow (a workflow software for accounting & bookkeeping firms) wrote a book called Double Your Accounting Firm.

It contains lessons learned on how top firms grow fast, build stronger teams, and increase profit while working less.

And
they’re giving it to you for free. Want your copy? Download it here.

JUST FOR FUN

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