Responding To Fear

The Dow tumbled the other day, the jobs numbers from today STINK, and a whole new round of fear is gripping the marketplace.
What will you do about it for your business?
Well, here’s a simple place to start: You have a veritable goldmine of profits available to you, and you may not even know it.
Here’s why — if you are like most of my clients when they first start with us, you are so busy handling client work, dealing with running the day to day tasks, and managing your team…that you can’t see the forest for the trees.
I’m here to help you clear up your vision and show you the inside secret most in our industry are missing–and that’s what my note this week is about.
The bottom line truth is that there is a simple, easy way to uncover the mountain of profits that are currently lying dormant in your firm. When it comes to making money and freeing you from the struggles, frustrations, and fear which comes with financial doubt, what I’m about to reveal to you could make this the most important email you’ll ever read.
You may be thinking that you’ve heard this before, so why is this different? Well, because although it takes very little effort on your part, it does take time and patience to reap the maximum reward.  Not every great profit-producing idea comes with instant gratification. Oftentimes, the most dependable path to revenue surges is by slowly and incrementally increasing your client-flow through a variety of methods.
Before I reveal the “forest” to you, let me ask you a question: Did You Know That It Is 16 Times More Expensive To Attract New Clients Using External Marketing Than It Is To Get Referrals From Current Clients, Increase Retention, & Have Your Current Clients Choose More Services?
Yep, it’s true…and it’s potentially scary, when you consider the possible sunk costs.
Let’s just focus on one aspect right now — retention & viral referrals. You may think that just because you do great client work, that your current clients are plenty happy with you and that they would never think of going anywhere else for their tax or accounting tasks.
Well, you’d better change your thinking.
Accountants and tax professionals are getting more and more aggressive in their advertising and social media presence, and they have absolutely no problem giving your clients special offers to lure them away.
What’s even worse is that studies done by large direct marketing organizations like Direct Marketing News, have found that for every month you DON’T make a meaningful (read: “non-pitch”, non bill) contact with your clients and prospective clients … there is a 10% reduction of their psychological relationship with you.
So if you’re ignoring your client for months at a time and you have an aggressive, competitive accountant or tax pro in your area, then you are in big trouble. The only way to ensure client loyalty is to NURTURE the relationship you have with all of your clients.
But how can you do that, if you only see them once or twice a year?
If you know the answer to that question then you have seen the forest. Good. If you don’t know the answer I’ll give it to you now: You MUST send out an entertaining, educational, response-driven Client Newsletter each and every month, and in this increasinly online age–a weekly, conversational email, as well.
You CANNOT send out a typical, tax-tip newsletter or email that bores your clients to tears and makes them wish they were watching paint dry instead. Your clients don’t care about the technical aspects of their tax work–they want to be entertained, encouraged and educated, not bored and preached to.
Those are the hidden acres of diamonds, my friend. And they’re the key to sustaining growth (and even surviving) in this online, yet economically-scary world.
So, it’s up to you to get a’mining.