Marketing For Accountants In Practice

November 2003a- Each month this page will be updated with new tips and ideas and the previous content archived. As time goes by our archives will grow. These will always be accessible, and always without charge. Enjoy.

Welcome to the free tips page for November 2003

Beating the ‘Big Firms’ in a competitive market place.

If you work for a practice that competes against the ‘big boys’ such as ‘The Big 4’, Collins Barrow, BDO, PKF, Grant Thornton and the like, the age-old story of David and Goliath might come to mind.

You’ll recall that the giant, Goliath, is beaten by David (later to become King David), even though David was substantially smaller, because of the boy's ability to outsmart the giant, and the use of technology (the sling shot).
However, in today’s hypercompetitive, risk-averse market, it’s Goliath that often has the advantage – such as an all-embracing web site, fancy marketing brochures, well-trained personnel and a state-of-the-art database.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If you're the David in this scenario, read on.

When a person doesn’t convert a prospect into a client it’s usually for one of two reasons:

· They didn’t properly qualify the opportunity, or
· They were outsold by the competition.

There is no third alternative.

Let’s take a look at these two outcomes and explore specifically how to improve your effectiveness when ‘selling’ (yes, you ARE selling) against a much larger competitor.

Qualis
The word qualification shares the root, qualis, with the word quality. Qualification is the process through which we determine if it is worth our time and effort to continue to pursue an opportunity with a prospective client.
Qualification is a process rather than a one-time event. It determines the quality of an opportunity. That means you don’t qualify your prospect only once, when initial contact is made. You’ll need to qualify vigilantly and continuously. Why? There are many reasons.

Prospects have been known to mislead us – when asked “how do you feel about…‘X’” they might say “Fine” when what they really mean is “no way!” Things change during the course of the evaluation. In fact, these days, things change a lot, and often. Budgets disappear. Influencers take on other responsibilities.

Prospective clients who say they’ll buy from a smaller company today — no problem — sometimes feel different tomorrow.

Every practice must have a set of appropriate qualification criteria by which they determine (1) whether or not to pursue an opportunity and (2) how to pursue it. For most firms, these criteria will differ somewhat for each service they offer and for each prospect as well by geography and competition.

When you are qualifying your prospect, you are asking them and yourself many of the same questions again and again, such as:

· Who is the real buyer, the person who is going to make the final decision?
· When are they going to buy?
· What services are they going to buy?
· Why are they going to buy?
· Where in the company is the decision finalized?
· Do our services fit their requirements?
· What is the decision process?
· Who is the competition?
· How will they pay for our services?
· What is my unique value?
· Why are they really going to buy from me?
· What prompted them to start to look around for new Accountants?

Qualification criteria for smaller firms who compete against bigger firms must contain questions about the prospect’s preferences. For example, you need to ask yourself, “What evidence do I have that the prospect will do, or even more importantly, has already done business with a firm of our size?”

Does Size Matter?
It’s hard to ask these questions, but it is irresponsible not to. You want to be certain that if you meet or exceed all the prospect’s requirements, that size—for size’s sake—does not matter. You may have the best-qualified people in their field, and as such are a better alternative than a ‘name brand’ firm.

However, to some prospects, size does matter.

It doesn’t matter to them if you have the most innovative services, the most committed people, stellar client satisfaction levels, a reputation for top quality work, or anything else that you consider of value. If size matters to the prospect, then little else will measure up.

Maybe they have ambitious plans to go public, bring in a Venture Capital Investor or something else that they feel compels them to use a name brand CA/CPA firm, and you can’t convince your prospect fairly quickly that it shouldn’t matter, you're out of there—and quickly on to another opportunity.

You’ll need to be careful here. Sometimes the size issue is less obvious. For example, your prospect may have a requirement that their auditors attend the inventory count (if it’s a material asset) which would require a presence at thirty-five of their sixty plants, all on 31 December.

Unless you have sufficient size to accommodate that then you already know it’s bye-bye!

What all this means is that there are certain opportunities for which you should not compete, because you can’t win them. Sorry, but that’s a fact. If you do spend time trying to win business that you can’t win because your company is too small, you are squandering time and resources from those opportunities you can and deserve to win.

So They're Qualified. Now What Do You Do?
Here is where competitive selling comes into play.

You’re going to need to influence your prospect’s decision criteria, so that the perceived value of your competitor’s size as well as other size-related capabilities are diluted, neutralized or, in the best case, seen as a disadvantage.

Many professionals are uncomfortable highlighting a competitor’s weaknesses. In the situations where you are competing against a bigger company, you will (professionally and subtly) have to attack their size in order to turn a perceived strength into a definite weakness.

Here is a simple, well-used example.
Let’s say I am pitching for the audit of a not-for-profit organization in my hometown, and that I have a reputation for excellence in this field.

The assignment is put out to tender and I am invited in to make a presentation (after a fact-finding meeting, of course). I am up against a major player (let’s have some fun, we’ll call the ‘big firm’ that we’re competing with Priceywaterhouse Bloopers!).

Based upon preferences and needs of the prospect, I may decide to use the “small-fish-in-a-big-pond” approach.
It goes like this:

“Ms. Prospect. There are few people who would not be impressed by Priceywaterhouse Bloopers’ size, global reach and resources. They're an excellent firm, no question.

I’m sure they proudly presented some very prominent not-for-profit clients as references. However, you might consider that a project such as yours, although highly critical for you, might very well not have the same level of importance for them – due to their very size - and therefore may not generate the ongoing attention at the Partner level of their firm that their public company clients’ projects would, where they might be charging half a million dollars for any given project.

It’s only natural…but at <name of your firm> you would be guaranteed my own personal attention, and our most senior people (many of whom came to us from Priceywaterhouse Bloopers and similar sized firms) would each be assigned certain responsibilities for your file.”

From that point, you would discuss how you would meet their technical requirements and establish a business relationship going forward, stressing attention that would be paid to the progress by you and your senior staff.

You’d need to convince them that your company’s success would depend directly on their success, not the other way around. You’ll be portraying them as big fish in a small pond, with the driving message being how important their business is to you.

If you have subscribed to our ‘Towards Awesome Client Service’ program, you might want to bring that into the equation too as another important differentiator.

If you are effective with this approach, you will have moved down the importance of firm size in the matter and up in importance the attention paid to them by your team as well as your firm’s interest in their success.
It is also important to know your prospect’s history regarding doing business with other smaller professional firms, for example, who are their Lawyers?

It may mean nothing to them, since they do it all the time. On the other hand, you may be the first and may have a long, bumpy road ahead, but one that CAN be successfully navigated, with the right help.

Contributed By Dave Stein, Author of How Winners Sell

http://www.howwinnerssell.com

Towards Awesome Client Service - Module Three. The Success Story Continues..

After the success of Modules One and Two, we look forward to continuing the journey towards awesome client service with our subscribers, old and new, with the launch of Module Three in September, 2003.

It's packed full with new ideas and approaches to develop closer working relationships with your clients, and a better yield on your investment in your staff and yourself. The price is held at the introductory rate of $249.95 per module (US funds) so join us now, and if you haven't yet signed up for Module One, you can still do so at the introductory rate.

Module Four is released in December this year, more details will come in next months free tips page.

Find out more at: www.awesomeclientservice.com/details.htm

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Thanks for visiting.
Have a great month.
Until next time.

More free tips to come as we next update our site in December 2003.