| Packaging is part and parcel of marketing. Learn how to package your basic Accounting service into a highly desirable product... and get a unique and positively differentiating service concept that has tremendous PULL on the market.... |
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Packaging Accounting services into a highly desirable product
Your service is a combination of work, expertise, knowledge and advisory capacity, all of which combines into a sellable commodity. To sell a commodity one must have buyers. To have buyers, one must have a commodity that interests a sizeable group of potential buyers. And to do that, your service must be packaged accordingly. Packaging is basically the first of the two main parts of marketing. It's also the more important of the two, albeit only because the second part can't be performed without packaging. The first part is "creating something that's of high value and interest for business owners to buy." You PACKAGE the service into something that will create interest and WANT. The second part is to get it on the market, find a way to get business owners to know about it and to understand its benefits, etc. However, most Accounting firms don't actually realise this and only concentrate on the SECOND part of marketing. They're so intent on "taking the service onto the market" that they don't see that WHAT they're offering is just totally non-desirable and definitely doesn't create interest. If you offer basically an identical service that business owners are currently receiving from their Accountants... why would it interest them, what in it would create a desire to go into all the trouble that changing Accountants necessitates? Right. Yet, by NOT spending time to package the service into a highly desirable commodity which would have natural PULL in that market, Accounting firms are just wasting the money they throw at marketing. They're only really setting themselves up for a lifelong disappointment by attempting the impossible. To get results in marketing, one must first ensure that WHAT you're marketing is of high desirability and unique quality as seen by those to whom you are going to sell it.
Packaging of Accounting services — the two aspects of equal importanceThe art of packaging can be divided into two subcategories or aspects. l The FIRST aspect of packaging involves the basic Accounting service itself. Now, with this I really mean your BASIC service concept that is offered to every client. Currently it probably consists of monthly accounts and other compliance services. Before you can package your basic service, you need to find out what your target group values and wants most. Finding out what they would want but aren't getting from their current Accounting is even more important as it gives you exactly the thing you need to spearhead your new service (and the marketing message presenting it). Here, you also use your technical knowledge to adapt what THEY want into what they need (and what legislation stipulates, etc.). l The SECOND aspect of packaging concerns the messages you're going to use in advertising, presenting, selling and delivering this unique service. It involves creating the "wrapping for the product." This includes NAMING the product and using very specific words, concepts, views and messages in DESCRIBING what the product is and what benefits if offers to that specific target group. For this, you need to find out the fears, feelings, opinions, fixed ideas and preconceptions, realities, desires and goals in the subject of Accounting and finance AS SEEN BY BUSINESS OWNERS. These concepts need to be mapped out and MAJORITY VIEWS need to be found. With "majority views" I mean fears, feelings, considerations and such that can be found to have a large following among your target audience... those owners of small-to-medium sized businesses in your local area. Upon research, it will be found that large numbers of them hold very similar or even identical opinions about Accounting services. This is especially true of negative generalisations — what's wrong with Accountants, what's bad about their services, etc. In packaging Accounting services, you must WRAP the new service with these views. You must AGREE with them on what's wrong to DIFFERENTIATE yourself from "all those Accountants..." and you must offer them BENEFITS which come from "correcting those mistakes all Accountants make." I'm using quotations hereto illustrate THEIR viewpoints and to differentiate them from yours and mine. The purpose of this article is to show how you can get a lot more (and better-paying, more appreciative) clients. I neither moralise nor defend the Accounting industry on what it does and how it thinks as a big aggregate on average. You don't have to be just a clog in a big machine. You don't have to conform with what others think about marketing. And you can't, not if you want to package services so that business owners will see yours as unique and infinitely more valuable than "those identical basic services delivered by every Accountant."
Deliver what they want and describe its qualities with concepts to which they assign value (and which they USE and understand)... and then make sure that it all worksThe packaging of Accounting services incorporates several aspects of marketing and also goes into the technical side of Accountancy. You find out what business owners want from Accounting and kind of help or service is valuable to them. You try to find something that they AREN'T receiving from their current service provider. You package basic compliance services together with those special "most-wanted" things, name the service and WRAP it with concepts THEY use in describing those wanted benefits of high value. You then do a dry-run to see how this can all be put together technically so the service DELIVERS what it promises and also conforms with legal requirements of Accounting procedures. You then PILOT it for a while with live clients to catch the bugs and iron out any stops and problems that surface once it's being tested in real-life circumstances. Next, you create the system of bringing it to the market — making it known in your area and ensuring the benefits are understood by those who receive your message. Then test it, adjust and pilot it until it produces contacts. Next, you create the way to PRESENT it in a standard way so that you can get the majority of potential clients to sign onto the service. Test, pilot, adjust... and so on. And there you have it — a unique, one-of-a-kind service concept that's going to have enormous pull and bring all the benefits you could ever imagine!
"Wonder why Accounting professionals don't go for full packaging..."If you began feeling slightly exasperated during the "what to do" list above, don't worry. You're not alone. In fact, if you do some research into what other Accounting firms are offering, you'll notice that utterly few have ANY packaging whatsoever in what they offer. If you could call these firms to enquire about their services, you would find that they only offer to perform mundane TASKS such as "monthly accounts" and other compliance services. You would also find out that they don't have any FORMAT for handling enquiries. They don't have any form of a prepared, in-depth interview to encourage YOU to form positive opinions on their expertise or on the unique qualities of their service. If you would ask for their fee, they would tell you — and yet, it's the CARDINAL SIN of sales to give the cost before ensuring the prospect fully understand WHAT it's for... what HE gets in exchange, what benefits are on offer from the service, and so on. So, nothing is packaged and every little part of the marketing, presentation and sales keeps changing over and over (as none of it is standardised and documented into a finalised tool). In other words, it's all very much like groping in the dark. With some firms, you'll find "self-originated packaging." With this I mean that they HAVE formed unique service concepts, named these and try their best to explain the benefits of each to their potential clients... but they've done so based solely on their OWN views on what they think business owners want and need. While I applaud the effort, I'm afraid it's not going to bring many clients despite the hard work and countless thousands spent on marketing. Since it's all based on their SUBJECTIVE views on the subject, such packaging has practically no chance of hitting the right buttons with BUSINESS OWNERS. (Their packaging will greatly impress YOU since it's created by a colleague who shares many of the same views as you do. Both of you are in the SAME TARGET GROUP, see?) Essentially, there are about 100 different issues involved in packaging. For you (in terms of getting YOUR service sold) these 100 steps form a safe path through the minefield of ignorance, disinterest and disappointments of business owners. You just can't GUESS your way through a minefield of this size and extent, no way. It would be a feat similar to guessing several telephone numbers correctly one after another. If you could do that then you would have been a billionaire for years... for any game of chance would be free pickings for such psychic powers! To go about packaging the right way, a lot of time and work are needed. You need to interview a sizeable group of business owners. You need to test and develop ideas for services and then survey the desirability of these with business owners again (explained in lay terms, of course). Next, you need a sufficiently large TEST GROUP of clients to try the service with. One hundred will do, provided you get to work with each at least a year (preferably two). You need to keep accurate statistics on how they react to it, how they like it, what types of problems emerge and how these are solved... a whole host of things. In between these things, you must implement changes to your service and also follow through these on your marketing (advertising, presentation, sales). It's a lot of work and I've only given you a very modest part of the tasks required to finally come up with the package that is CERTAIN to...
...and this is not a full list here at all. A correctly packaged service concept is a major factor which directly governs the success of an Accounting firm. The importance of having a superior service to offer simply cannot be overstated. With it, marketing is full of opportunities and even mediocre attempts can bring results in form of new clients. And without it, no amount of money will bring results... Unfortunately, because the task of creating a packaged service is so HUGE, few Accounting firms could ever really hope to have the needed RESOURCES to do it properly. That's the bad news. And here's the good news: Luckily, you don't HAVE to do it on your own. Such a packaged basic service already exists. We call it Monthly Financial Consulting Service. It is the world's ONLY basic added-value service that's fully packaged according to the wishes and needs of business owners. It's also the only packaged service whose functionality has been piloted with more than 50 Accounting firms and thousands of clients for a period of three years BEFORE it was published in form of a course. Therefore, it works. And, when you employ this system in YOUR practice, the results are s something to behold.... A packaged service is the only way to provide business owners with a sufficiently substantial reason to CHANGE Accountants. Without such a starter service, you're hard put to get results in marketing since they'll see your service as "exactly identical to the one they're already receiving from their current Accountant..." and that's just not inviting. See. That's how THEY think... and if you want clients, you have to go by what they believe right now. If you want business owners to start considering a change of Accountants — and they think it's a huge undertaking, by the way — then you must give them a powerful REASON to do so! And that's what Monthly Financial Consulting Service can do for you.
Best wishes, Harry Kafka |
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In
terms of marketing theory, Accounting services are basically
just like any other merchandise.|
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- Monthly Financial Consulting Service: Introducing the proven superior BASIC accounting service that will give you a steady flow of new clients: The MFCS practically sells itself!IF there was a way to ensure that clients understand and use the information they receive from YOUR basic Accounting service... you would have a mile-long queue of business owners outside your door, all begging for you to accept them as new clients! |
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Do you KNOW what what business owners think about, value in, and want from Accounting... or just THINK you do? Are you LOSING THOUSANDS by assuming business owners think the same way you do about Accounting services? Could it be that their viewpoint is very much different? One thing is for certain: If you align your marketing message to meet EXACTLY what business owners want from Accounting services, you will start gettin a lot of new clients. Read why most Accounting firms are SO CERTAIN THEY KNOW while they still can't get new clients... |
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Risk Management: Controlling the risks in marketing Accounting services |
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7 factors governing the success of Accountancy prospecting
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You're 98% success... but to get a new client you need a hundred!
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from contact to sign-on to follow? to really GET results? with TOOLS that require no training to use? & sales activity of practical nature? and troubleshoot problems? independence to obtain new Accounting clients wherever you want? |
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