New Clients

Just looking for advice on what many of you have done to get new clients when you started your practice?

Thanks,

JE

1) Started with about 10 clients from where I worked before. My boss was going to fire them so he threw them to me.

2) Referral, Referral, Referral. That is the only way to organically grow in my opinion. I tried direct ads. Success was very limited and the relationship was transactional.

3) Purchased the book of business of a retiring tax preparer. That was the quickest way to gain a bunch of clients real quick. Attrition rate was about 30%!

Get out a meet people. I did this through civic organizations (Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, etc). I also wrote tax articles for a local newspaper that conveyed information but with a humorous take (I don't do this anymore but it did help to build my practice). Meet with the local bank managers, local ADP and Paychex representatives and even local insurance agencies. Convey to them who you are and what you do and ask for referrals.

Follow Atsman's advice ask any client that you have for referrals and thank them when they provide you with a referral. I also tried direct ads and for me it had a very low success rate.

Have a website. It will make you easier to find.

Have a website. Make sure that your website is clean and inviting. And for god's sake, don't do anything stupid like add an autoplay video. It's also a good idea to avoid flash altogether. Weebly will allow you to make a very good, stable, "drag & drop" website for about $4.00 a month. I actually have 10-15 websites through Weebly and I'm not a programmer, so anyone can use it.

Specialize.

Stay away from EITC clients, unless you are in a depressed area and that's all there is. Remember, $50 clients refer other $50 clients. $500 clients refer other $500 clients.

Use targeted Adwords and set the ads to only work in your geographical area. It's fairly easy to do this, I manage all my Adwords myself. Bing ads are pretty much useless. Make sure you do NOT allow the ads to run on phones--those cheap "within a game" ads will only get you a lot of useless clicks. I set our phone ads to zero and now the quality of our ad referrals is way up, and the costs are down.

I did write a book on tax practice marketing for enrolled agents several years ago. I interviewed about 10 EAs and asked them what they did to jump-start their practice. Everyone had a different answer, and there are lots of ideas to grow your practice at the beginning.

For my business it has worked almost completely from people finding my web site and online reviews. I found virtually no benefit from networking.

I started from scratch in late 2011 with zero clients. Picked up one or two from Craiglist and then a number from Thumbtack. Thumbtack has a widget which you can put on your web site to show the reviews you have.

I also asked clients to post reviews on Google, Yelp and any other review sites they were active on. That was the biggest thing that kicked me up the search listings on Google such that I am now usually first or second on searches for tax preparation in my city.

For the past two tax seasons I also got increasing numbers of clients from Angie's List, again on the back of having good reviews on their site and qualifying for their Super Service Award.

I am now pretty close to full capacity and only taking on limited numbers of new clients.

In my experience most accountants/tax preparers having a poor web presence so with a bit of work getting listed on various directories and getting online reviews you can get yourself well positioned to pick up new clients from the web.

AZUKHiker, just curious what percentage of your clients that you got via websites are repeat clients? Do you get a lot of people dickering with you on price? How do you bill them (pay upfront, pay after return in prepared prior to filing, a combination)?

Thanks.

For last tax season I had an 88% retention rate from 2012 tax returns to 2013 tax returns.

Overall the quality has been good with most of the clients being those with an increase in the complexity of their tax position i.e. extra state returns due to moves, starting businesses and starting rentals. The poorest quality were those from Craigslist which I did not use at all last year.

No problems with fees as I charge fixed fees so the client knows up front what the charge will be. Also no problems with collecting fees as I get a check at the end of the meeting or for the remote clients payment by credit card. Touch wood no bad debts yet.

i agree Craigslist is the worst. I see prices like $65 to $100 quoted for 1040 with Sch A?

88% retention rate is good!