Accounting service
prospecting: How they receive and understand the message you
send out
 How can you find potential
clients for your firm when business owners don't seem to be AT
ALL interested in Accounting services?
And how can
you get ACROSS the benefits and high quality of your service
when they don't seem to CARE one way or another?
WHY are they
so disinterested? WHY don't they care?
These mysteries
of Accounting services marketing baffle us.
The good news
is that the cause behind these mysteries has been found out.
After researching this for three years, after interviewing tens
of thousands of business owners on the subject of Accounting
services — and how they FEEL about Accountants, finances,
and so on — the cause has been finally established.
The viewpoint
from which business owners look at Accounting services
I know you've
worked hard to develop ways of explaining the benefits of your
services. I know you've probably spent many nights composing
messages in order to make the value of your services understood
by business owners.
But the problem
is that when this message reaches business owners, they look
at it from a very different viewpoint than what you intended.
People have
a lot of preconceptions about things. We all have them about
many subjects.
Let me illustrate
this by asking you a few questions:
When a salesman
explains the virtue of whatever he is selling, are you really
listening to what he says without ANY doubts, reservations or
preconceptions?
When a used-car
salesman extols the excellence of a second-hand car, do you
take his staments at face value?
When
someone applies for a position in your firm, do you accept his
merits and claims exactly as he presents them?
Of course you
don't.
You have previous
EXPERIENCES about these persons and these types of situations.
You've also heard all kinds of STORIES about these from friends
and media.
You have DATA
and KNOWLEDGE about these people and situations... and you
USE this data to MODIFY what they say.
When you talk
to a salesman, you FILTER all that he says with preconceptions
of your own, which may include concepts such as...
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"salesmen
only bring forth the positive aspects of whatever they're selling
(and tend to ‘forget' those facts that might make the purchase
less inviting for you)..." |
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"the legal
written contract / bill of sale is the only thing that really
BINDS the organisation that the salesman is representing. The
salesman can basically SAY ANYTHING and, as long as it's not
written in the contract, there's no way it would obligate the
organisation..." |
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"most (or
all) salesmen are prone to telling half truths or untruths... |
...and so on. Buyer beware,
in other words.
Now, I'm not
saying that the above generalisations are the most predominant
ones around or that you think that way.
But I'm sure
we agree on that this type of preconceptions about salesmen EXIST
and are quite common among people.
In our society,
it's practically impossible NOT to have some negative preconceptions
about salesmen, don't you agree?
Just think
how many times we've been the target of a sales pitch. How can
we not form preconceptions, with so many experiences and
considering how inept, aggressive, ill-mannered and downright
RUDE many salesmen are?
Or take someone
applying for a well-paid position in your firm. If you have hired
and fired a few employees, no doubt you don't ever accept the
applicants' self-presentations at face value.
After all,
they're trying to get onto your generous payroll by selling themselves
by WORDS... and, once you've hired them, they get their pay regardless
of whether you get anything in exchange for it.
Believe it
or not, a lot of applicants simply HOPE they can convince the
employer to hire them so they could "see how the job goes"...
as if LUCK was the primary factor governing their future success
in KEEPING the job.
Everyone has
preconceptions about things. Whether consciously or unawares,
we create preconceptions about things that give us unpleasant
experiences.
And it works
the other way too:
Every profession
and line of business has accumulated many preconceptions in the
minds of their clienteles.
Now, whoever
HAS a preconception about something will automatically assign
a very high truth-value to that viewpoint. To that person
it is TRUE.
Whether or
not it is OBJECTIVELY true is another matter. I'm not going to
open that can of worms here or elsewhere. However, we can easily
deduct that the person OF WHOM the preconception has been formed
is likely to DISAGREE with its contents.
Salesmen don't,
as a rule, consider themselves to be untruthful or deceitful,
for instance.
All right.
Now, Accounting
services are about the most widely-used line of services business
owners use overall. I'm not talking about the frequency of use
day to day but the fact that every single business must keep
books and they predominantly leave this to an Accounting firm.
Therefore,
there are many preconceptions about Accountants and their
services among business owners. We've surveyed these preconceptions
for years and a full survey report is found in Part 1 of Modern
Accountancy Marketing & Sales Course.
Some preconceptions
are more predominant then others.
Now, in this
article, I want to let you in on two preconceptions that have
tremendous weight and importance in regards to your marketing
and sales:
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1. |
Practically
every business owner we've interviewed thinks that Accounting
services are IDENTICAL firm to firm.
In other words,
they see no difference between the services of Accounting
firms. In their view, one is just as good or bad as the other... |
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2. |
Business owners
believe that CHANGING Accountants will be difficult, time-consuming,
costly and RISKY. Additionally, they fear the embarrassment
of having to terminate the contract with their longtime Accountant
whom they've befriended over the years.
Yet, they also
fear that the Accountant would punish them for leaving by making
the transfer awkward and slow and possibly even charging more
so they end up paying double for the transition period.
Additionally,
there's this preconception that it takes MONTHS to "learn
to speak the same language" with a new Accountant in terms
of briefing him on the specifics of the company and learning
to work together.
Add to all
this the fact that business owners have neither the familiarity
nor the expertise required to actually EVALUATE the skills of
the new Accountant to be... which opens the possibility that
the new one might well be WORSE than the one they're leaving... |
By the way,
don't waste your energy trying to find LOGIC in these preconceptions.
These are FEELINGS substituting actual expertise in Accounting,
so logic doesn't really enter the equation.
People act
on their "gut feelings" and "sixth senses"
when making decisions in a subject on which they don't really
have any in-depth knowledge or expertise.
Making a decision
mainly on feelings has many names — premonition, intuition,
instinct, hunch, impulse, good judge of character, or even genius.
Whatever the
name, it's principal characteristic is that it is NOT based on
thorough analysis by someone with sufficient expertise and experience
to make an informed decision.
Good. Now,
with these points 1 and 2 we finally get to the cause of the
mystery of disinterest toward changing Accountants... or, in
fact, even LISTENING to what you're trying to communicate to
business owners:
With so
many risk and additional work/costs involved WITH changing Accountants
and yet so absolutely NOTHING to be GAINED by it... why would
business owners bother listening to what you have to say?
That's THEIR
viewpoint, mind you, not mine. But you can see how THEY receive
your message... and why your marketing efforts will mainly fall
in barren ground:
They
don't believe your service is any different!
Try as you
may, there's no way to convince business owners that YOUR compliance
services are BETTER than those he is currently receiving from
his Accountant.
In fact, you
only have about a couple of seconds to make a DIFFERENCE before
their ears and minds shut down automatically. See, they've PLACED
you into a category for which they already have a preconception...
and that concept fills in the rest, even REPLYING automatically.
When you call
a business owner, this is the predetermined thinking pattern
the second he hears you're an Accountant offering your services:
"Oh,
he is offering Accounting services... well, I already HAVE an
Accountant. All Accountants and Accounting services are the same,
so no point in wasting my time listening since I have nothing
to gain by changing Accountants..."
And OUT comes
the automatic response which he KNOWS will make you give up immediately:
"We're
really fully satisfied with our current Accountant, thank you..."
IS he really
satisfied with what he receives from his current Accountant?
Well, surveys show otherwise... in fact 85% of business are not
fully satisfied.
But see...
he isn't really answering the question "Are you satisfied"
but, instead, executing a powerful "get-rid-of-him-fast"
-repellant... he is giving you the one poison that'll wither
your enthusiasm immediately.
There's nothing
you can do after he has said that he is fully satisfied. So,
he says it just to get rid of you.
In HIS mind
— remember the preconceptions? — there's no point
in discussing his dissatisfaction on his current Accountant's
services because YOURS are "just the same."
If he's been
around for a while, he may also know that the CURRENT Accountant
let on to be better than the previous one... and wasn't.
So he has NO
illusions about any Accountant ever having anything better than
what he is currently receiving. And he KNOWS it would cost him
dearly to change Accountants.
End of conversation:
"Don't call us, we'll call you..."
Earplugs.
What you tell
them and what they HEAR are two very different things!
Now, to solve
this seemingly hopeless impasse you need two things.
A. Get a service that IS
clearly different in that it offers what they WANT
The way you
can make a difference in what you offer is by
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KNOWING what business
owners really WANT (but aren't getting) from their Accountants...
and |
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PACKAGING your
basic service so it INCLUDES these elements... and |
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SPEARHEADING your
service presentation with these highly desirable elements. |
Basically this
means a service whose contents and appearance are highly desirable
to business owners as THEY SEE IT:
You're offering
something they want but CAN'T GET from their current Accountant.
It means that
your services are positively DIFFERENT from everyone else's.
The service INCLUDES compliance services but it FRONTS with what
business owners really WANT, see?
If you start
new clients only on compliance services, how could there be much
difference even if viewed by an Accounting professional let alone
seen through the eyes of business owners who don't have the expertise
to notice the differences?
The simplest
of all solutions is to GET a service that's different...
positively so.
Since the problem
is with having "identical" service then get one that
clearly ISN'T "the same!"
Now, we have
just such a service included in Modern Accountancy Marketing
& Sales Course. It's called Monthly Financial Consulting
Service (but you can call it anything you like, of course) and
it is based on the researched wishes and needs of business owners.
CLICK
HERE to read about this unique service Monthly Financial Consulting
Service!
We also offer
a wide range of THEME SEMINARS which will help clarify what's at
stake in marketing and why the message is so vital.
If you prefer
to start from scratch and create your own special basic service,
there's a separate article on packaging of Accounting services
on this site and you'll find a link to it at the end of this
page.
Having a highly
desirable basic service to offer makes all the difference. Automatically,
it puts you on a stellar level in competing for the attention
and business of companies in your area!
But there's
still the problem of "earplugs," which brings us to
the second part of the solution.
B. Get a message that totally
avoids contradicting his viewpoints (and all traditional
marketing & sales approaches)
Once you HAVE
a service that's positively different there's still one more
problem. That's COMMUNICATING the existence, benefits and qualities
of this service to business owners so they LISTEN and UNDERSTAND
what you say.
It's a sizeable
problem because those "instant earplugs" go on the
second he hears you're an Accountant offering his services.
So we need
a very clever approach to avoid that instant "la-la-la I'm
not listening" reaction AND to ensure their preconceptions
aren't CHANGING our message.
For the first,
the approach needs to be something fresh and new — something
he won't recognise immediately as marketing or selling. The tools
for this are within Modern Accountancy Marketing & Sales
Course and there are articles on this site about these so I won't
go into that here.
For the second,
you need to ensure that you ONLY forward THEIR viewpoint on
everything you say (for the first contacts).
Part of the
problem comes from the fact that people believe in thinking with
"opposites."
In our world,
everything is drawn into a confrontational model in which there
are two parties with totally opposite goals, characteristics,
opinions and so on.
Husband and
wife. Man and woman. Salesman and client. The government and
opposition. Employers and employees.
You get the
idea. It's an endless list of "opponents."
Of course,
the husband is no enemy of his wife, quite the contrary. A woman
is not the opposite of a man. The true interests of both the
salesman and his client are ALIGNED, not different.
Political parties
are composed of career politicians who have lots in common. They
all claim to save the nation and only argue about the correct
WAY to achieve the same goal.
And both employer
and employees prosper when the company succeeds... and lose when
it doesn't.
All through
the ages, there have been many in whose interests it is to create
such opposite divisions. Money and power can also be achieved
by creating controversy. The media does exactly that and bankrolls
billions every week for it.
On top of our
daily portion of controversy delivered by the media, we enjoy
the dramatizations of soap operas and big screen films... all
of which are full of people whose social skills are strangely
lacking so that they're on a continuous roller-coaster from one
controversy to another.
Whether we've
learned it from the TV or have it innately, Man is prone to viewing
things in light of opposite polarities.
It's a dog-eat-dog
world, supposedly, where the interests of two parties in any
cooperation are easily presumed opposing.
This thinking
seeps into preconceptions of people, taking direct control over
their reactions to communication:
The MOMENT
a business owner perceives you driving YOUR interests or bringing
forth a viewpoint that's YOURS (and not HIS), he reacts to it
with surprisingly strong rejection.
The solution
is to position yourself NOT as his opposite but as his ally.
Your message needs to be written as BY HIM:
It needs
to take HIS viewpoint so that he CAN'T disagree with it.
You need to
talk about HIS reality of existence in doing his job the way
HE would explain it... not the way YOU would explain it and definitely
not the way you SEE it.
Your view is
likely to be more accurate. But he doesn't know you and he isn't
prepared to ACCEPT your view — it would only break down
the communication, see?
Once he has
SIGNED ON and you've gained his TRUST... well, then it's another
matter, of course and that's where you'll have to his attention
things he'd rather not look at.
But you must
avoid all that during the prospecting, presentation and sign-on
phases of client-acquisition.
Here, the message
has to convey his view of things down to the exact WORDS and
concepts that he uses when speaking of these situations, goals,
problems and solutions.
You make your
message affirmation of his views to the extent that, to him,
it feels as if HE had stated it. You use his views, words, realities
and reasoning in your promotion and presentation.
See. He isn't
going to disagree with himself, is he now?
Essentially,
the human behaviour dictates to a person that he is RIGHT about
things. In other words, a person will instinctively believe that
his own views on a subject — his opinions, evaluations,
experiences, understanding — is the ultimate TRUTH in that
matter.
And the innate
reaction to anyone telling him what he should think or do is
to conclude they're WRONG... and that's the end of that. That's
the unavoidable end result of TRADITIONAL Accounting service
marketing messages as these are BASED on "new ideas"
on how to tell the target audience what they should think and
do.
And that's
why traditional marketing of Accounting services brings little
or no results.
In order to
GET results you need something that WORKS.
In order to
get your message read and understood you need to START from the
reality of the recipient. That is also the way to creating INTEREST.
So, how
do you do that?
Well, there
are two ways.
The hard
way
is to study market research and then survey a few hundred business
owners to find out their views on Accounting, finance, management...
and their fears, hopes, likes and dislikes about Accountants
and taxation... and the specific words and concepts that they
use in verbalising these.
Then you start
creating a chain of messages and, through trial and error, find
each effective part of each message and put it all together into
a SEQUENCE of messages that finally produces the wanted results.
Having done
all of the above, I can tell you that it's doable. Only problem
is that it takes a few years of hard working on full-time basis.
Which brings
us to the easy way to get all this:
All this is
included in Modern Accountancy Marketing & Sales Course in
form of ready-to-use tools (such as direct mailing letters, interviews,
forms, presentation kits, etc.) along with detailed instructions
of use as well as the combined experiences of practitioners who
used the system for three years in our pilot programme... so
you'll know how to troubleshoot each tool if you experience any
problems.
And, since
you can get started at a cost comparable to Sunday lunch, it
might be the quicker and affordable alternative.
CLICK
HERE to read the introduction of Modern Accountancy Marketing
& Sales Course!
CLICK
HERE to read about packaging your services!
Best wishes
Harry Kafka
HDK
Consultants Ltd
32 Manning Close
Richmond Square
East Grinstead
West Sussex RH19 2DR
United Kingdom
Tel. (01342) 328 116
CONTACT
FORM
E-mail: info@accountancymarketing.co.uk |