by Erik Thomsen

Websites have become an integral part of just about every businesses. During the last few decades, websites have grown from being the frivolous tools of elite corporate bodies to one of the most powerful instruments in marketing so, as an accountant, you need to have a website.

Whether you get it designed by a professional web designer or do it yourself using a Content Management System like the ones provided by companies like Intuit and GoDaddy you will have colors throughout your site, including its background, the text, and its headlines and so on. Colors should be used properly because every color conveys a particular emotion.

Keep in mind these words of wisdom. An expert once said, “your website is like a brick wall between you and your client.” You should take the right steps to “tear down this brick wall” so as to create an impact on the visitors of your website. Your website should contain your logo, of course, but there’s much more to branding than just a logo. Your CPA website design should be done in such a manner that your site has an attractive layout and a color scheme the sends the right message to your prospects.

The Importance of a Good Color Scheme
Colors convey a lot. Colors psychologically impact the visitors to your site. When the colors you choose for your site melt into the theme of your profession, they can create a great connect between the potential clients and your business, but when they don’t the inconsistency can be jarring. At best this is off-putting, but at worst it can actually create feelings of distrust in your visitors.

Colors and Emotions
Colors are highly expressive and communicative. They provide ample scope for expression of emotions. Much of what graphic designers do is make small but significant changes to build upon the expressive strength of the colors. Your web designer should ensure that there is complete harmony between the colors and the theme of your profession. No space on your website will be without colors. Even the different shades of the same color can have different emotional impacts on the visitors.

Personalizing Your Website to Provide a Unique Identity to Your Business
Emulate CPA and accounting firms which have succeeded in personalizing the design of their websites by involving themselves completely during the design of their sites. These firms generally field unparalleled branding on their sites. You can actually enhance the quality of your relationship with your clients by exploiting the right colors on website.

The colors you choose can create a unique identity for your business. They will provide a subtle, almost subliminal, insight into the true nature of your business. In order to take full advantage of this unique attribute you need to clearly define the potential audience you want to reach. Identify what emotions you want them to have when they visit your site. This will help you to choose those colors that may inspire the visitors to have those specific emotions.

Ever notice that clearance sale tags are red? Red actually creates energy, a sense of urgency. It can even cause people’s metabolism to speed up. This is a BAD primary color for an accounting site as is it can create anxiety, but it can be a great way to influence a visitors actions on the site. Burgundy, on the other hand, creates a feeling of serenity. That’s why it’s so commonly used on cosmetics and hair care products.

The most common primary colors for any accounting website are blue (trust and security) and green (wealth and relaxation). Yellow (youth and optimism) is often used as well, most often in combination with orange (aggressiveness and enthusiasm). Black (power and authority) is often used to sell high end products, but I prefer to keep sites more down-to-earth. I find “power” sites can actually intimidate prospects.

Keep in mind that white IS a color for this purpose. White offers a sense of neatness, even purity or innocence, to a site. It implies organization and simplicity; powerful messages from an accounting firm. I like to use all the colors above, but I often make them “co-primary” colors to white.

The colors on your website and the way you combine them form a picture, and like any picture, they speak a million words. Use your creativity and look through your mind’s eye to imagine the emotions your visitors will have so that you can choose the most appropriate colors and transform your site into a great marketing tool.

by Brian O’Connell

CPA and accounting firms need to know the “calls to action” to use on their websites to allow them to get the traffic and clients that they need to grow their businesses. Calls to action provide a gateway to sales. They are a good tool to make use of on your website because they let you guide your site visitors to the information that you want them have.

Calls to Action is marketing lingo for “getting someone to do something”. This doesn’t always mean “buy now”, although that’s always the ultimate goal.  A simple example of a call to action is that of the infamous “click here”.

Calls to action need to be carefully crafted. The call to action needs to be catchy to attract attention, directional and be able to provide value to your reader.

In CPA website design, there are ways in which you can improve your calls to action to allow you to get the right outcome. These come in handy:

Offer incentives: Incentives can have real, virtual, or even simply perceived value and these are a great way of marketing yourself. For example, let’s consider a call to action for business owners to get a free consultation. You’d be happy to do this anyway, right? This offer has only perceived value, but it’s effective. Always let the site visitors know the incentives you can offer them when crafting a call to action.

Have limits and set a focus: For each page, make sure that there is a call of action that is relevant to the content on that page.

Don’t overdo it.The maximum number of calls of action per page should be about two.

Use catchy language: Make use of catchy language that will leave the visitors wanting to look at the call of action especially when you make use of strong words and phrases that suggest urgency.

Place them strategically: On a page, make sure you place the call of action at a strategic location; somewhere that visitors will not miss it. In addition, distribute them evenly throughout your websites on the various pages.

Plan your calls to action: Make sure that the calls to action give direction to a relevant page and deliver on the promises you’ve made.

Examples of calls to action that CPA website designers put into use in accounting firm websites include:

• Learn more- This is a call of action that will make your visitors want to know more about what you have to offer, your websites content and much more.
• Download this- This allows visitors to see a sample of what you can do. Providing such information allows you gain the trust of your visitors. If they like what they see, chances are that they will contact you for your services.
• Sign up- There are two ways of doing this: one is having a sign-up form that allows visitors to register for the purchase of an accounting service. The other can provide a base that allows visitors to sign up for a free service that will influence their decision to become your customers.

After putting the calls to action in place on your CPA website design you need to keep analyzing the best performing pages and update your calls to action concerning upcoming events accordingly. Compare the behavior and response of visitors to your website. This will ensure that your call of actions will help you increase the marketing punch of your website.

There is great opportunity for small accounting firms on the internet. A local CPA practice can reach a virtually limitless number of prospects online. In effect it is a great equalizer, allowing any size business to participate in the worldwide marketplace. Any business that does not create an internet presence is limiting its ability to find new potential clients. This applies to CPAs, and in fact, the services they provide are perfect for internet marketing if you know how to design your website and exploit it’s full marketing potential.

Just building a website is not enough. A website alone will not attract new customers. If you don’t use the proper internet marketing techniques, very few people will find your website.

By far, the most important method for driving traffic to a website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). However, driving traffic to modern accounting websites is not enough. The traffic must be targeted to attract visitors to the specific products and services being offered, and then calls to action on the website must convert them into customers.

The first step in effective SEO is creating website content that interests your target market, and is both relevant and valuable to them. In the case of CPA website design effective topics are financial planning, retirement planning, and running or starting a business. You’ll be taking tax regulations, accounting regulations, and audit standards and translating them into practical information that people can apply to their daily lives.

Be sure to use relevant keywords when you write. The best keywords are words your leads will use when conducting internet searches. When leads create internet searches using keywords relating to accounting websites, the search engines serve up sites which are best optimized for those keywords. The higher the site ranking, the higher the site will appear at the top of the search engine results pages.

A high ranking is the ultimate goal. Quality CPA websites are always built with this goal in mind. The first thing you need to do  to achieve this is to build sites that load fast and are easy to navigate. The pages should be linked with relevant keywords in the link text. The higher the rankings, the more likely potential customers are to click on the accounting websites from the search results.

External links are also very important in overall search engine rankings. Accounting websites should have as many external links as possible. The more they can get, the better off they will be. These links tell search engines that the websites are both authoritative and popular, resulting in a higher ranking. Avoid link farms and other link building schemes. The best ways to get links are guest blogging and submitting articles to article submission sites. Only submit high quality articles. You will only get links from an article if people publish it on their blogs. CPAs should also create blog posts and articles themselves.

Authoring and publishing articles and blog posts is also important for establishing your expertise in the area of accounting. Always make sure people who use your content also use a link to your website as this is also a great place to showcase CPA expertise.

Published documents are another good medium for this. Write and distribute white papers that will help business owners identify accounting problems and position you as an expert to turn to for help.

Quality accounting websites must have website content that is both interesting and notable for visitors, as it entices them to come back over and over again and eventually convert to a customer. When a lead clicks on a website, the site should either convert them into a customer, or encourage them to return another time. This is done through effective calls to action. The majority of first-time prospects won’t convert to clients, so the process of lead nurturing helps entice them to return. Newsletters and interactive financial calculators are great tools for encouraging return traffic.

The rules for getting good Rankings in Google haven’t really changed much, but for advanced practitioners of SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization”, the means have changed completely.

The biggest difference between SEO now and just a few months ago is that cheating isn’t really working any more. I’m not saying there are no longer any cheats or exploits available. There are, especially if you’re not above spamming foreign language websites, but exploit these loopholes at your own risk. Google is not just discounting spam links any more, they are actually penalizing websites receiving these links. It’s only a matter of time before Google starts running Penguin updates on foreign language sites, and I suspect they will not be kind to people who tried to evade the update by simply moving their spam.

So… Does this mean SEO is finally dead?

Not likely. But it does mean changing the way we look at SEO.

First of all, for the first time ever Google has shifted the balance of power away from links and back towards “on page” factors. A lot of SEO experts are suggesting Google has actually turned the clock back about ten years. This isn’t really true, of course, but the sense of nostalgia is understandable. For years designers and marketers have effectively ignored meta tags and page content in favor of building incoming links. Those days are over and, like “back in the day”, on-page basics are coming back into their own

But the rules have changed.

Ten years ago there was a simple formula to getting a good ranking. You would get a domain name with your most important keywords in it. You would then put the keyword or phrase you wanted to rank for in your welcome page meta tags, specifically your keyword list and page title. You would then write 500 to 750 words of content for the page and use your desired key phrase a few times, write a page header with your keyword in it, and finally add a few images with keyword rich alt tags.

Voila… you would rocket to page one of Yahoo!

Ironically most of these techniques are still valid (don’t bother with a keyword list), but there’s a new twist. Google is applying penalties to sites that appear “over optimized”. A lot of SEOs are sticking to the old formula, but are not adding “relevant” title tags. Others are still adding title tags, but are easing up on the keyword density and not using alt tags on the images. The point is, on-page optimization is becoming increasingly important but don’t overdo it.

There are also some new on-page factors to consider that are a little more esoteric but still completely within your control. Google is calling them “user signals”. They are tracking users as they conduct searches and factoring their behavior into their results. Sometimes, for example, a searcher will click on a listing, take one look at the landing page, decide (for whatever reason) that it’s not what they want, and then leave. Google calls this a “bounce”. If this happens frequently Google will penalize the site on the assumption that it is not offering a “positive user experience”. Another user signal they are tracking is called “blocking”. When a user conducts a Google search they have the option of blocking results they don’t like from appearing in future searches. If a site gets blocked by a high percentage of users (particularly if these blocks are coming from older, active Google account holders) they will make a similar assumption that the site is not giving searchers what they want and they will penalize it in future searches.

The key to keeping your user signals positive is simple. Offer a GOOD website. Don’t hide your content and make visitors search for it, or twist their arms by forcing them to give you information before they can move forward. Just give them what they want.

Please… don’t get the impression from this article that links no longer matter to your online marketing strategy. Links are still very important, but Google is being much pickier about which links are relevant and which ones are not. Only high quality links are likely to offer you any significant benefit now. The best way to get links is currently “guest blogging”. Find blogs relevant to accounting and try to get them to let you write a few articles for them. Include a link to your website in your author description. Other valid ways of getting links include article submission and press release distribution, but the rules have changed here, too. The links from these sources will be worthless. They will only offer value if the articles are picked up by outside sites with at least some authority. Being active in forums and commenting on blogs are still valid strategies also.

One last note… back in the old days we used to preach a lot about “anchor text”. We encouraged you to use your keywords in your incoming links. Don’t do that any more. Well… don’t do that all the time any more. It’s OK to have some keyword rich links, but if every link to your site is an exact match to your primary on-page keyword it won’t take long for Google to figure out your link network is artificial. Most organic links have generic anchor texts like “click here” or a company’s name. Start using these. Google will use the content of the both the linking and landing pages to determine the page’s relevance to specific keywords.

Google has just handed all of us a serious reality check. We all need to stop procrastinating on our search marketing strategies!

If you’ve been thinking about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, for your CPA website but you just haven’t gotten around to it yet I have some bad news for you. You snoozed.

Look, I’m not saying, “abandon all hope” or anything like that, but you really did miss out on a huge window of opportunity. Just in the last few months Google has made radical changes to the way they rank sites, and the process of Search Engine Optimization has become MUCH more difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

These types of changes are nothing new to Google. In fact the history of search is riddled with radical changes like the ones we’re seeing now and in the end the results have been pretty much the same. The quality of search results have improved, and the process of getting a good listing has become more difficult.

There was a time, not too long ago, when all you had to do to get a good ranking was fiddle with your “meta tags”. These are invisible tags embedded in the header of your page code that tell the search engines what your page is about. You could rank a page about zebras #1 for “Fort Lauderdale CPA” if you had the right meta tags.

Then search engines improved their results radically by beginning to look at the actual page content and comparing it to the meta data. If it didn’t find matches between the keywords in the meta tags and the keywords on the page, your ranking would drop. Now if they wanted to rank for the keyword “accounting” the pages would actually have to be about accountancy (or at least have the word “accounting” on it in a few places).

In the end this wasn’t good enough, though.

The problem with these techniques was, of course, the ease with which they could be manipulated. Because all of the metrics used to determine a site’s ranking were, in fact, ON the page to be ranked they were all entirely under the control of the website’s owner/designer. There were a variety of cheats designers could use to hide keywords on a page. Cheaters prospered and because the rankings were all determined by what was really a pretty basic mathematical formula the web quickly took on a cloying sense of “sameness”.

The search engines made minor improvements to this system, mostly ferreting out cheaters by identifying hidden text, but things took a radical leap forward when Stanford University graduate student and Google founder Larry Page came up with the concept of “Page Rank”. Page Rank, or “PR”, was determined by crawling the web and examining links. In it’s raw form Google would look for places where sites would link to one another. The concept of PR was both simple and effective, and in short order it rocketed Google into it’s current position of “King of Search Engines”.

The idea behind PR is that websites naturally link to one another. If you crawl these sites and follow these links you can count them. Naturally the best sites will have the most links, thus these sites would be given the highest “Page Ranks”.

Of course it didn’t take long before SEOs figured out how to game that system, too, and over the last dozen years a virtual arms race has taken place between the SEO industry and Google in finding ways to artificially manipulate links to improve a websites ranking. First a tactic called link swapping came and went. Link farms sprung up and were squashed. Wave after wave of attack and counterattack occurred as SEOs honed their craft. Words like “duplicate content”, “anchor text”, “relevance” and “domain authority” took on meaning as the process became more and more sophisticated. Soon there were private link networks all over the web being fed by webspam software that could bring in hundreds of links per day.

The heart of this process was a technique called article spinning. This meant creating link-rich randomized articles and distributing them as widely as possible using automated software. You’ve seen the results of article spinning. The pages it creates are often completely unreadable, and most others read like the author speaks really bad English. Properly programmed, however, spun content could be completely readable and almost indistinguishable from an actual article.

Until now, the system could be easily gamed.

This is no longer the case. Google has come up with some new updates that make artificial link manipulation ineffective at best, extremely risky at worst.

The moral of the story is that it’s time to get started on your SEO strategy. Getting a good listing in Google is only going to continue to get harder as time passes.

Next week we’ll get a little more specific about the nature of these changes and what you need to do to give your CPA website a ranking boost with this “new” Google.

We talk about it all the time. Custom features will entice prospects to your site and make your firm stand out from your competitors. We’re proud of the product we offer, and we will continue to provide these features as the industry evolves. We’ve noticed, though, that many of our clients aren’t taking the time to modify the sites we offer, and in so doing their websites aren’t representing them as well as they should. More importantly they aren’t making as much money as they could.

Let’s take a look at a few places where you can make modest changes to your website that will make big differences in the site’s marketing potential.

Every site should have a distinctive tagline, email, domain and web log. These features might not be as electrifying as other elements of the site but they are of great consequence.

You need to prominently exhibit the firm’s email address. If you’re an established CPA firm, you probably already have a tagline. Include it prominently on your site. A tagline is your slogan or catchphrase. Make it singular, easy to remember and most meaningfully, offer real benefit to the prospective client. A web domain name might appear to be straightforward. Still, you’ll have to put some consideration into it. Your web address is what your clients and prospects will type in each time they visit your website.

Modify your most important pages. Rewrite them completely and change the photographs to better represent your practice. The more unique they are the more likely they are to draw visitors from the search engines so having a unique welcome page is crucial. You’ll also want to rewrite your tax prep page and any other service pages you consider particularly important to your practice. Modify your “Firm Profile” page and/or add an “About Us” page that will give visitors a chance to get to know your firm and your staff. A few personal details will go a long way to easing peoples natural fear of strangers.

A blog is also an imperative element to include on your website. Blogs provide your guests with helpful ideas. You could jeer at the idea, but it is an imperative promotional tool. A blog is a piece on a site that keeps it up-to-date, and helps bring your site to the top of the list during a Google search. Consistent blog updates will boost your Google rankings. Make the blog articles different and pertinent for first-class results. High search positions are imperative, particularly to websites for accountants. Prospects will more easily discover your site if it is in the top Google results.

Just like in traditional promotional materials, white space is your friend. Keep the website neat. Cluttered pages are excessively distracting and tough to peruse. Internet viewers have no patience for Jumbles of content and will happily search somewhere else. Don’t be afraid to look at other websites for accountants. A basic web search will provide you with a extensive mixture of results to compare. Assess what you’re partial to and what find gaudy. Make an informed decision about what parts to add to yoursite. You’ll gain knowledge of what to do and what not to do by examining your competitors. Images are a great way to highlight your additional articles. Just don’t include too many. Content is king, and the graphs and photos should enhance, not take from it. Your viewers have a short attention span. Keep your text in brief and concise blocks.

For those of you who aren’t CPA Site Solutions customers you need to take a close look at your web host.

Hosting companies offer a variety of bundles. Select a service with a package that will serve both your present and extended needs. Pay attention to the details. Know the TOS for your website and find a host that meet your requirements.

Select a service that will let you make edits to your CPA website. Numerous website hosts will charge a fee or require that you pay them to make the changes for you. Your company’s staff will change, be promoted etc., so you have to to be able to update pages as changes are made in your firm and alter your blog regularly.

Lastly, don’t neglect your more traditional marketing strategies.

You make contact with new prospects daily. Consequently your business cards persist as a powerful promotional instrument. Include your web address, obviously. You might even add a quick response code (QR code) to grant smartphone users an easy way to access your site.

Take a little time to design your business cards. If a contact of yours passes your card to someone else, that friend will picture you only as the business card. Prospective clients do gauge your business cards based on appearance, so it will be time well spent.

Don’t be cheap. It doesn’t matter how well designed your cards are if you don’t use them. Give them to everyone. You never know who might become a prospect down the road.

Google’s power over the economy is unrivaled by just about everything shy of the cost of energy, and Google has been changing a lot lately. Love it or hate it, when Google changes the way it does things it’s going to impact your firm. One recent change is altering the online profile of every practice in the country, including the ones that make little or even no use of accounting websites in their marketing strategies. Google Places is being merged with Google’s new social networking service, Google+.

What does this mean to you?

It means the way Google local search works is changing.

Google Places provided the database that drives the local business listings associated with Google Maps. For a look at what I’m talking about do a quick Google search for accountants in your area using the following search term, “my town, state accounting”.

The map that appears is Google Maps, while the pinpoints on the map and the Local Listings that appear in the middle of the page, once driven by Google Places, are now going to be driven by Google Plus. This means that your firm’s position on this page is going to be increasingly driven by Google’s social network.

Google places was already, to some degree, “socially driven”. A big factor in your firm’s position in these listings are member reviews of your firm.

Don’t panic. Google+ is still in its infancy and they haven’t discarded the old database. It’s still underneath the new one, so for now you’re not likely to see any significant volatility in these listings. If you have a good position you’ll likely keep it for the time being, and if you don’t you won’t miraculously float to the top. Over time, however, expect some changes.

Google is very deliberately merging its services (Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, etc.), and Google+ is part of that plan. For the time being not many people are using it, but as Google’s functions merge more and more people will find themselves signed up for it (even if they don’t know it).

Another trend that Google has been working hard on for years is “personalized search”. When you are signed into google, which you very likely are most of the time if you have a Gmail or Google Apps account, Google keeps track not only of every search you do, but also which websites you click on and how long you stay there. This allows them to “personalize” your future searches for similar key phrases by delivering results that are the same as or similar to pages you’ve expressed a preference for already.

Google+ is a natural driver for personalized search, and because Google Places is already socially driven it’s a logical first step to incorporating it into the results. Using Google+, however, Google will be able to deliver results based not just on user reviews, but on reviews submitted by people in your social network.

Amongst Google Haters, and there a LOT of Google Haters, this is further proof of Google’s heavy handed marketing strategy. There is a hue and cry up on the internet that Google is trying to leverage its importance as a search engine to force users to use Google+. This is something of an oversimplification of what’s really going on. While Google is unabashedly trying take on Facebook as a social influencer, they are also sincerely trying to improve their search results. With spammers like Reputation.com out there using automated commenting systems to influence the way reviews are presented in Google Places the old system has been rendered pretty much useless. By using social networks to weigh your reviews in favor of preferences recorded by your contacts this comment spam can be mitigated.

Next Week: What’s a Panguin?

Next week we’ll take a look at some even more significant changes to Google. Two recent updates, Panda and more recently Penguin (often referred to collectively as “Panguin”) are shaking up the way websites are ranked in Google’s organic search results. We’ll tell you all about what these changes are (and perhaps more importantly, what they aren’t) and how they might affect the way CPA websites are placed.

Sometimes advertisements really miss the mark. I saw an ad online earlier today by a major accounting firm that really made me stop and think – but not in a good way. The ad depicted a young professional with a serious expression working on her laptop. She had a smartphone and an iPad sitting next to her computer. While it may be representative of a modern accountant at work, it really didn’t do a good job of showing the benefit to the prospective client.

It was clear that the advertiser wanted to show that their firm was modern and in-touch with the latest technology. At the same time, they wanted to show that they valued tradition. Unfortunately, they missed the mark. Prospective clients need to see a clear benefit in an advertisement in order for it to be truly effective. The advertisement failed to show how the use of technology streamlines the client experience or how tradition translates to professional, reliable services.

Be careful not to alienate a large portion of your prospective market. Not everyone will be comfortable with technology and not everyone will value tradition. The best thing to focus on is showing prospects what problems you can solve for them.

Some accounting firms focus on their services and get caught up in talking about their company so much that they forget to talk to their clients. It is nice to provide a brief snapshot of your accounting firm on your website, but the main part of your content needs to be centered on your clients and their needs. Explain to clients that the technology you offer can provide them with real benefits such as optimizing revenues and organizing finances to maximize tax benefits. You should also make it clear that this technology will allow them to have secure access to their information from anywhere, day or night and ask their accountant questions or request advice through an interface on your website.

Technology makes life easier for you and your clients. Instead of offering an address or written directions, you can provide your clients with an interactive map that will direct clients to your office. Appointment scheduling can easily be integrated into your website with a scheduling program. These are the benefits you want to highlight that will show your clients you are current with technology and understand how to use it to serve them better.

Think of your services as solutions. Each service you offer should provide your clients with a solution to a specific problem. Explain each solution and the problem it will solve clearly. Use technology to make the solution better, more convenient and affordable. If you find yourself using technology just for the sake of using it, then don’t waste your time or your client’s money. Go through your entire website and make sure that every piece of information on it, whether it is in the form of text, image or video and make sure that it serves your goal of demonstrating your solutions to real world accounting problems.

A lot of companies follow trends when it comes to marketing their business. However, keep in mind that people who need an accountant aren’t going to look for the trendiest accountant. They may want that quality in their barber or clothing store, but when they people look for an accountant, all they want is a smart professional who can get their solve their accounting problems.

Many CPAs and accountants have often wondered if having a salesperson is the right move to help them grow their practice. After all, most other industries and professions utilize salespeople to bring in business, so why can’t you? The answer is you can and, in my company’s 27 year history, we’ve learned there is no better, faster or more cost-effective way to obtain clients than this method. However, you are probably not the best person to do the selling; the reasons for this are many. First, when doing your own sales prospecting, time becomes your greatest enemy. Very few business owners have the time necessary to actively search for new clients, meet with them to explain their services, and then follow up on those prospects who have not made a decision right away. Many accountants are not comfortable in the sales role either, which further complicates the process. After all, if you don’t like doing something, chances are you’re not going to be very good at it. Finally, assuming you like selling and are good at it, is this really the best use of your time when you have a business to run and existing clients to manage? These issues start to really suggest that you should look into acquiring a professional salesperson to market your firm on a full-time basis. If I have you nodding your head as you read this, let’s take a look at some of the important aspects of doing this successfully:

1- All salespeople are not created equal, so selecting the right person can be a challenge. I suggest you look for someone who has at least three years of sales experience selling intangibles such as insurance or financial services.
2- During the interview, make sure they have a valid driver’s license, as they will need a car to drive and meet with potential prospects. Do not assume they do. It’s a big mistake to find out later that they don’t, and your salesperson becomes a potential legal liability to the firm if they have an accident on company time.
3- Perform a background check to ensure your candidate is who they say they are and that they haven’t just been released from your local penitentiary. Also, Google them and see what comes up.
4- Training is critically important, as you will find very few, if any, sales candidates with experience in selling accounting and tax services. If you expect them to succeed, they need to know what they are selling, how to prospect for new business, how to price the services, how to overcome the various objections they will receive, and how to close the sale and get an upfront commitment.
5- You should develop an incentive plan that ties directly to productivity. Great salespeople are motivated by commissions. I suggest a small base salary of around $500 to $600 per week, depending on where you are located in the country, along with a commission equivalent to one times the monthly fee being charged to the client.
6- What gets measured gets noticed, so it’s important to have a system to track results each week and month to determine how many leads they created, how many presentations resulted from those leads and how many sales were made.
7- It’s equally important to have a system to keep track of follow-up on each prospect. Many people who said no to your offer today could very well end up as clients down the road. Why? To put it simply, things change. So a system to keep your name in front of prospects who have previously expressed interest is invaluable, as it will lead to more sales in the future.

If all of the above seems like a daunting task, it is. But here’s the good news: if you’d like learn about how to accomplish having a salesperson hired and trained without having to reinvent the wheel, all you need to do is contact my company at 1-888-New Clients (that’s “888-639-2543”) or visit us at newclientsinc.com. Do so and you’ll find out how we’ve helped over 4,000 accounting firms nationwide add new clients that have resulted in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in growth for their respective firms through the effective employment of sales professionals.

Sincerely,

Bruce J. Clark
Chief Executive Officer
Author, NCI Effect, Explosive Client Growth Plan for Accountants and CPAs
www.ncieffect.com

There’s no doubt that websites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Myspace has have become an important resource for business. Believe it or not, any serious business needs to be active in social networking. People visit their social networks each and every day. They actively participate in discussions and pass on personal thoughts , ideas and stories. This is excellent news for businesses who want to to attract prospective clients.

Social networking websites allow professionals such as accountants to interact with their clients. They can also supply them with relevant facts throughout the season. There is genuinely no reason not to establish a social media profile for your CPA firm. It is economical, easy and quick. It is considerably cheaper than sending out newsletters.

Social media is a terrifically compelling way to boost your company. You just have to be able to do it in the right way. It will help you market your business and lead people to your accounting website. If you haven’t already, you should think about learning to employ it effectively. Social media is not difficult to learn and can really improve your business.

As you are now aware, social networking is a cool way to market great CPA websites. You will be doing your firm a disservice to disregard its countless possibilities. In the modern world of high-technology, pretty much nothing can help spread information about your company like social media. It has an incredible reach and everyone is taking advantage of it. Consider though, social networking is in reality only as effective as the CPA exploiting it. You need to use clear strategies in order to usefully market your practice. So here are a number of tips of the reasonable ways to fruitfully use social media. They will help you to stay competitive in an increasingly socially connected business world. These ideas can help you be more successful with your social networking. In addition, they will help groom your accounting firm for tomorrow.

Think about your options. There are loads of social media websites online, so it is important grasp how they can be utilized to add value to your firm. Find out as much as you can about social media and marketing techniques. This will let you make the most of your efforts market your accounting firm websites.

Select social networking sites that are suitable for promoting accounting websites. There are a lot of social media sites available on the web but it is vital that you find the websites that will let you reach out to a bigger population of your desired prospects.

Select quality when joining social networking sites. It is advisable to join just selected sites and be an a dynamic participant rather than to join numerous sites and not be able to be included fully amongst your groups.

Make confident your online profiles feel professional and material to the CPA business. Choose your messages sensibly so as to not repel prospects who may not concur with your political or social positions.

Social networking is all about distributing information and ideas. Share something interesting with folks in your social media groups. Don’t just pour out spammy promotional messages. Submit comments that will enlighten and entertain your followers. If people relate to your ideas and enjoy your posts they are much more likely to pass them on to their friends.

Be real. Web savvy people can make out Hollowness with ease. There is no faster way to lose prospective customers than by being dishonest.

Stay engaged on your social networks. Due to advanced technology, your social media contacts will expect an expedient response to their posts. Visiting your accounts once a day isn’t going to cut it.

Social networking websites are becoming a big part of daily life and are an excellent way for accountants to pass on information about their CPA website templates. You can easily have a enjoyable time and also gain unexpected benefits if you use it the right way.