The Lowest Hanging Fruit During Tax Season

One of my best friends is a business turnaround expert.
He’s worked with some of the best — from universities to Agora Financial (Porter Stansberry, et al) to golf courses, smaller businesses and industry coaches — and I had him in yesterday for a special private webinar for all our top-level clients here at TaxProMarketer on “doubling your revenue per return”.
And there’s an interesting thing which he shared — across industries, the single easiest profit breakthrough comes not from “getting more clients” … but in doing MORE with the ones you already have.
I get asked (almost weekly) by tax pros about what is the single most effective way to grow their firm — and, honestly THIS is it.
There’s this “80/20” rule, which you’ve certainly heard bandied about, but it’s probably more immensely powerful than you realize when you actually put it into practice in your firm. I will be sharing much more about this in the following weeks.
But allow me to start with this, as you launch into your more earnest preparations for the tax season:
If you do not have “higher-level” services, for which you earn high-level fees (and I mean separate from “more expensive” return prep), then you are failing to harvest the lowest-hanging fruit available to you in your business.
And, conversely, if you DO have these high level services, and you aren’t seeing an 80/20 proportionate split within your client base (i.e. about 20% of your clients opting for higher-level fees and services, whatever they might be), then you are simply not marketing or selling these services properly.
THAT’S the pocket of profit which you need to target this tax season.
So, if you don’t have a working system in place to “upsell” your clients into these services, spend next week putting THAT into place.
If you DO have a system, and it’s not working … fix it.
And, if you don’t have additional services to provide your clients, find some. Our industry abounds with ideas, ranging from tax planning to financial services to college planning … the list is long.
The main point here: don’t go chasing the butterflies of trying to churn after tons of new clients UNTIL you’ve addressed this first, low-hanging fruit in your business. Go on a treasure hunt in your client list over the weekend … and make this happen.
Lastly, if you’d like some ideas on that front, or want to speak with someone about applying this 80/20 rule in your business … shoot me an email, and I’ll put you in touch with someone on my team who can help you do this.