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HDK Consultants Ltd, East Grinstead, West Sussex, United Kingdom, telephone 01342-328 116 |
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Bespoke Referral Modern One-day Subscribe
to About Harry Kafka, the accountancy marketing consultant, lecturer and author |
About HDK Consultants LtdHDK Consultants Ltd was founded in June 2001 to provide marketing knowhow to British accounting firms. Our expertise is based on a 3-year marketing programme with more than 50 independent accounting firms, researching the views of the target group and "solving the unsolvable" — how to find new and better accounting clients at a higher profit. Admittedly it was the toughest challenge I've ever faced in my 35 years in marketing, sales and advertising. The problems in marketing accounting services are known to all. Clients do not understand accounting so you cannot create satisfaction with high technical standard of work, really... because clients won't SEE it. Additionally, you deal with taxation and various compliance regulations legislated for companies' financial practices and records. Most business owners cannot help but have SOME negative connotations with taxation. After all, it is a type of "enforced philanthropy" if you wish, and many business owners oppose anyone's attempts to tell them what they can do with their money... You know how it is. But these EMOTIONAL connotations stretch over to you, the accounting professional. Many entrepreneurs aren't comfortable with an accountant simply because they confuse your services with those of Inland Revenue and/or Customs & Excise. Combine the two — their lack of understanding of accounting and the emotional connotations with taxation — and what do you end up with?
"Accounting services are all alike..."Amazingly, most business owners consider all accounting firms identical in their services. Additionally, they don't see much benefit coming from the knowhow of the accounting professional. Of course, this is a misconception to end all fallacies... but now you're onto WHY it's so difficult to acquire new clients. After all, a "new" client is really "someone's old" about 98 times of a hundred, so the challenge is to offer a better service for those who feel they do NOT receive what they want from their current accounting service provider. But how do you do that if they consider "all accounting firms alike?" That's the dilemma. Its other manifestations are that accounting services are compared by PRICE alone, which is understandable if the potential client has no working understanding to compare the SERVICES of two firms, right? That's why they always ask for your hourly rates. And that's also why it is so difficult to increase those rates and why they've become a glass ceiling for your profits.
Are you communicating a marketing message that's unbelievable to its recipients?I'm sure you do your very best in creating various forms of presenting your accounting services in a positive and desirable light. But are you really starting from what your TARGET GROUP considers the reality in these matters? If not, then your message will be rejected automatically as untruthful. Not only that but, because of the warped illogic of human thinking, it will also act as "evidence" of exactly THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOUR CLAIMS STATE. Let me explain. If a used-car salesman advertises "You can trust me" then what would YOU deduct from that claim? That he CAN be trusted? Or that what he says proves that "all used-car salesmen are dishonest" (as the general thinking goes)? Right. So before you spend money in communicating to your target audience, be sure to verify that your message COMMUNICATES what you want instead of communicating inadvertently something altogether different. It won't unless you talk to them on THEIR level of reality, starting from THEIR view of what's what (also in terms of accounting services and accountants)... and then work it up from there until you reach where they UNDERSTAND what you actually can do for them. Now, here's how I want your potential clients to see your services: "A unique way of receiving help in understanding finances and make correct financial decisions, get one's finances under better control and generally utilise the vast knowhow of the accounting professional." But that's not the way they see it, not before you know how to educate each contact to understand it the right way. Presently, they see it very differently. Let's reiterate the "selling points" of accounting services as viewed by the intended clients in the present reality: "Hmm... services that are identical to each other... work that's necessary only because government has made it compulsory to keep financial records and pay taxes... a subject of which the client understands little or nothing..." If you look at it that way, it doesn't appear to be an item of sale of high value in great demand, does it now? But it DOES now explain why your best marketing efforts were met with so little enthusiasm and why the results thereof were so meager, doesn't it? Which of the two declarations of value would YOU rather be seen by?
Two options for being right about accountancy marketingEssentially, the human survival instinct demands him to be right about things more than wrong. Thus we are utterly convinced of being right in those things in which we can't MAKE go right. The more we fail in something, the more CERTAIN we become why it cannot be done at all. Thus, every accounting practitioner IS right about marketing of accountancy services, whatever he or she thinks. But there are two ways to be right with two optional end results. You can be right about it and acquire new and better accounting clients every month. Or you can be right about it and NOT receive new clients regularly. The latter option is the easy one as it requires NO change in attitude or actions. It means continuing things as they are, using the traditional marketing approach with all its self-made claims of excellence which nobody believes. The first option — the one wherein you DO receive results continually — requires a change in that the marketing actions must be based on the ACTUAL reality of your target group and problems of accountancy marketing, not on the PERCEIVED one of any person. The ACTUAL reality is that there are seven major blocks that stop you from acquiring clients at the rate you want and with the profit you need. The PERCEIVED reality is the voice of your more cynical colleagues. They say a cynic is but an idealist who's been happy-slapped by reality. But the reality that slapped him was his SUBJECTIVE one, the conclusions at which he arrived because he did NOT know the actual barriers to accountancy client-acquisition. Those barriers WILL stop you. The fact that they're unknown and thus invisible IS why they can stop you, because the moment you SEE them you'll circumvent and/or solve those problems... and they cannot stop you any longer. Which way of being right you choose is solely your decision. Of course, the one where you achieve your goals requires some doing but it is the easier option, relatively speaking. It is easier because it OPENS possibilities instead of closing them. It is easier because it makes you FEEL BETTER and not the opposite. And it is easier simply because it is what you intended way back when you started your practice. Our mission is to work with those accounting professionals who want to investigate the option that opens possibilities. And that's what this web site and our services are all about. If you wish to discuss your views with me personally, please feel free to call me on the number below.
Best wishes, Harry
Kafka |
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