Marketing, Sales Process and Selling Skills for Accounting Firms – Marketing Machine Webinar Part 3

10 Steps to Building a
Marketing Machine for
Growing Your Accounting Firm
Your Marketing Machine | Part 3: Steps 7 to 10

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10 Steps to Building a
Marketing Machine for
Growing Your Accounting Firm
Michael ‘MC’ Carter - Director of Practice Paradox

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Introduction | Your Packaging | Your Pipeline | Your Oil | Your Control Panel | The Plug | Questions |

Today’s webinar
• Quickly recap first 6 components of Marketing Machine™ model
(covered in last two free webinars)
• Next 4 components of your firm’s Marketing Machine™
• Your Packaging: When does (and doesn’t) ‘bundling’ services work?
• Your Pipeline: Introduction to Opportunity Management
• Your Oil: The art and science of ‘soft skills’ in selling
• Your Control Panel: Marketing KPIs to monitor
• The plug: Announcing Marketing Masterclass for Accountants
3-day marketing workshop in November on Sunshine Coast, QLD
• Question & Answer time

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Resources section

Free Videos area

practiceparadox.com.au

Access recordings of
past webinars for free

Slides also accessible in
blog posts on the site

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Introduction | Your Engine | Your Conveyor Belt | Your Filter | The Plug | Questions |

Why do we call it a Marketing Machine?
1. It works! No mystery. Predictable performance.
2. Structure and design to it. Understandable.
3. Works without you. Flick the switch. Duplicatable.
4. It’s scalable and adjustable. Turn it up, turn it down to suit.
5. You can learn how to run it. There is a manual!

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Your Marketing Machine

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1. Your Radar

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2. Your Hopper

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3. Your Fuel

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4. Your Engine

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5. Your Conveyor Belt

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6. Your Filter

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7. Your Packaging

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Service Level Agreements? ‘Bundles’?
• Defined services grouped into named levels
• How you name the levels/options isn’t crucial
• Different price points on each level
• Clearly defined scope on each level
• Clients know what is included
• Clients know what is ‘outside scope’

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The Purpose of Packaging Your Services
• Give clients clear choices
• Let client know you can do more than the basics
• Structures the conversation with a client
• Aids the sales process
• A ‘which option suits best’ close
• Not a ‘will you go ahead’ close

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The Purpose of Packaging Your Services
• Educates clients as to ‘where they sit’
• Pricing of top level provides contrast
• Makes middle level seem affordable
• Provides clients with development path
• Allows you to build in exclusivity
• Special events for your top clients

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When Packaging Services Fails
• Thinking that ‘having some’ will make it work
• Being inflexible
• The goal is to make a decision easier
• Not to shoehorn clients into slots
• Tailor levels to suit
• Is not a replacement for a full
‘Needs Analysis’ process with a client

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Complex Development Monthly
Needs Advice Contact

$ Moderate
Needs
Monitoring
Progress
Quarterly
Contact

Focus on Infrequent
Simple Needs
Recent Past Contact

Complexity Focus Frequency

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$ Moderate
Needs
Monitoring
Progress
Quarterly
Contact

Focus on Infrequent
Simple Needs
Recent Past Contact


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$ Moderate
Needs
Monitoring
Progress
Quarterly
Contact

Focus on Infrequent
Simple Needs
Recent Past Contact


31



$ Moderate
Needs
Monitoring
Progress
Quarterly
Contact

Focus on Infrequent
Simple Needs
Recent Past Contact


32



$ Moderate
Needs
Monitoring
Progress
Quarterly
Contact

Focus on Infrequent
Simple Needs
Recent Past Contact


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8. Your Pipeline

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What is ‘Your Pipeline’?
• The flow of opportunities for new business
CONTROL

• A record and system for tracking opportunities
• Allows growth projections to become
more predictable through ...
FORECASTING

• Statistics on conversion rates and sales
cycle times (how likely, and how quickly)
• Treating process as a numbers game
• Reduces time and emotion/stress involved

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What is Opportunity Management?
• Where do you and your team record opportunities:
• For potential new clients?
• For additional services for clients?
• Is this information centrally stored?
• Does it make it easy to see:
• How full/empty ‘the pipeline’ is?
• Details of individual opportunities
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What is Opportunity Management is not
• Having only one or two ‘hot prospects’
on the go at any one time, and
• Pinning your hopes on them,
• Then wondering where they’re at
with their decision making,
• Then getting disappointed at missing
out on these prospects, and
• Letting that affect your confidence
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The Opportunity Management Mindset
• It’s simply a numbers game
• I/we have a realistic conversion rate
of getting proposals across the line
• “We don’t win them all”
• I/we have a realistic timeframe we
work to, from initial conversation
to a decision being made
• “It doesn’t happen overnight!”
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Elements of your Opportunity Pipeline
Process % Probabilities
Linked
Milestones of Winning

Enquiry Received 20%
INA Completed 40%
Request for Proposal 50%
Proposal Discussion 60%
Verbal Conﬁrmation 80%
Signed Agreement 100%

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Linked

Lead 25%

Opportunity 50%

Solution Proposed 75%

Formal Approval 100%

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Linked

Expected Expected
$ Amounts Close Dates

Opportunity Client/Prospect Opportunity
Names Names Owners

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Opportunity Pipeline Management Tools

• Whiteboard
• Spreadsheet
• Excel
• Online Apps
• Software

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Spreadsheet

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Spreadsheet

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Capsule CRM

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Smartsheet
Standalone or
can work with
Google Docs

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Then what do you do?
• Train your team in how to update the pipeline
• Review your own pipeline every day
• Review your team members’ pipeline
on a regular basis
• Formal weekly Pipeline Review
meetings one-on-one
• Ask, ‘What can I do to help you move
this opportunity to the next stage?’

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Poll
Does your ﬁrm have a
formal Opportunity Pipeline
system and process?

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What is a lack of Opportunity Management costing you?

• Missed opportunities …
• ‘Falling through the cracks’
• Lack of prompt follow-up
• Opportunities going stale
• Fewer clients
• Reduced revenue
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9. Your Oil

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What is Your Oil?
• Makes your Marketing Machine
work to its optimum level
• Without it your pipeline won’t
flow to its optimal level
• Understand that this is a
MASSIVE topic ...

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What is Your Oil?
• The ‘soft skills’ involved in selling
• Sales process structure
• S.P.I.N. Methodology - Neil Rackham’s
book, ‘SPIN Selling’:
• Situation
• Problem
• Implication
• Need-Payoff
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Selling is mainly about asking questions
• Seek first to understand
• Questions steer the conversation
• Open questions
• Question lead-ins
• ‘Tell me more’ prompts
• Selling is about solving problems

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Toula Portokalos:
Ma, Dad is so stubborn. What he says goes.
“Ah, the man is the head of the house!”

Maria Portokalos:
Let me tell you something, Toula. The man
is the head, but the woman is the neck. And
she can turn the head any way she wants.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

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We are all in sales!
• Asking clients to take a course of
action is selling
• Anyone with client contact must
get formally trained in sales
• Client Relationship Management
is a sales process
• A neglected skill by most firms

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Tips on structuring client meetings
• Always set expectations and scope in
advance of the meeting
• No ‘ambush selling’ allowed!
• After initial chat/small talk:
1. Purpose Statement
2. Time frame
3. Ask, ‘Is there anything else you’d
like to cover today?’

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Tips on structuring client meetings
• Always BAMFAM!
• Book A Meeting From A Meeting
• Even if it’s not for a few months
• Always clarify next steps for both parties
• Always maintain control of next steps
• Don’t leave ball entirely in client’s
(or referral partner’s) court
• Gain permission to follow-up by
a certain date

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Objection handling tips
• Pre-empt objections
• Raise them in advance - e.g. “Some clients
have told us that initially they thought
they couldn’t afford to pay for our
Cash Flow Monitoring service, and
[not ‘but’!] what they found is that the
added peace of mind and better
management of cash, actually meant they
had more cash and less stress than before.”

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• Write each objection down to:
1. Show you are taking each objection seriously
2. Reflect them back to the client/prospect
to ensure you understand each clearly
• Feel-Felt-Found reply
• “I understand how you feel about that,
and I know a lot of clients initially felt
the same way, and what they found was”

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• Parking the objection
• Ask, “Imagine just for a moment that [timing]
wasn’t an issue for you, then you’d go ahead
wouldn’t you?”
• Often the first objection is not the real
objection? - e.g. Client might add, “Well,
actually, I’m not sure that the business
can afford that at the moment.”
• If they reply, “No” without adding anything,
then add, “Well there must be another
concern for you then …?” [Pause, await reply]

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• Keep in mind that a thorough Needs Analysis
conversation at the start of the process will allow
you to either pre-empt or detect/hear any
objections well ahead of the ‘close’ stage
where you ask for the go-ahead
• If you get a lot of objections, that’s a symptom of
a poor front end on your sales process, resulting
in you not fully understanding the client’s
Situation and Problems, and not getting them
to speak about the Implications

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• By the time you get to the Needs-Payoff stage,
the courses of action should feel like a mutual
conclusion and joint decision …
• Which is why the number of objections you
get at this stage should be very low

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Poll
What percentage of your team
members who have client contact
have undergone formal sales training?

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10. Your Control Panel

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Monitoring the performance of your firm’s Marketing Machine
• “What you can measure, you can manage”
• “What you measure, improves”
• “You get more of what you focus on”
• So what you should you measure and focus on …?

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Results KPIs for Marketing and BD
Key Performance Indicator

1 No. of New Clients Acquired

2 Annual Fee Value of New Clients Acquired

3 No. of Existing Clients Up-Sold to Additional Value-Added Services

4 Increase in Annual Fee Value of Existing Clients Up-Sold to Additional Services

5 Clientshare™ - Average Number of Services Provided Per Client Per Year

6 Increase in Average Annual Client Fee

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Results KPIs for Marketing and BD

7 No. of New Referral Partners Acquired

8 No. of New Subscribers added to Marketing Database

9 No. of Articles and Interviews in Local Media

10 No. of Clients Attended Seminars and Webinars

11 No. of Client Referrals

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Activity KPIs for Marketing and BD

1 Meet individually with Top 6 Referral Partners each quarter

2 12 client email newsletters produced per year

3 2 printed and mailed client newsletters per year

4 4 client seminars per year

5 4 client webinars per year

6 4 media releases per year

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Activity KPIs for Marketing and BD

7 24 new blog website articles per year

8 2 in-house rainmaking skills workshops per year for existing team members

9 2 Client Advisory Boards (client feedback and market research) per year

10 4 “How’s it going? How can we serve you better?” client visits each month

11 Monitor and respond to Post-Job Client Feedback Survey responses

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How do you monitor these KPIs?
• In a spreadsheet
• Put it in your firm’s knowledgebase (centrally stored)
• Control editing rights
• Marketing Coordinator keeps data up-to-date
• Sources of data
• Practice Management system
• Opportunity Pipeline
• Email Marketing System
• Event booking system/records

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The Plug

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Your Marketing Machine Tuesday 14 Sep
Announcement Webinar
Marketing Masterclass
for Accountants
3-day workshop, Sunshine Coast QLD
Sat 13 Nov - Mon 15 November 2010

Crank it up!

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Your Marketing Machine • 3-day intensive, hands-on workshop
• Day 1: Strategy
• Day 2: Communication
• Day 3: Change
• Very interactive and hands-on
Crank it up! • Special pricing for booking in Sept

• Special bonuses for booking in Sept

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Your Marketing Machine • Structured for CPE/CPD hours
• Certificates of Completion provided
• Designed for Equity Partners and
Marketing Team
• ‘365x3 Money Back Guarantee’
• 3 times ROI on ticket price
Crank it up!
• Guarantee open for full 365 days

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Questions?

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Next Webinar - 12pm Tuesday Sep 14 - Marketing Masterclass Announcement

Complete Evaluation Form
grow@practiceparadox.com.au
www.practiceparadox.com.au

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