Tax Liens HQ

If you are a licensed tax professional (EA, CPA, attorney), and you specialize in tax resolution, then this is the article you are going to want to save. Bookmark it, print it, star it.

As a solo practitioner, you are on your own. You are the marketing department, sales department, client services department, all wrapped up into one person. Building your practice is going to take work, and you must also successfully manage your time between case work and marketing.

In general, I would suggest you plan to spend at least one to two hours per day working on your sales and marketing.

Marketing is not a 10 minute per week activity. In fact, most business consultants will tell you that you should spend at least half your day on marketing…even more if you are just starting out. With the simple, yet effective, marketing plan I will outline here for you, you’re going to need to commit one or two hours per day. However, using the plan outline here, you will be successful and make a living, as long as you commit to following the steps.

Do note that I am not addressing fee structures, technology setup, list building, and other such concerns in this post, I am simply addressing the marketing and sales plan. So, here we go…

Step 1: Write a weekly article about a tax topic of interest to your target audience. This article should be posted on your blog, and also sent to your email list. The middle of the week is generally the best time to do this.

Step 2: Every day, preferably first thing in the morning, cold call 15 tax liens (a free script is available for download in our login area). These can be old liens or new liens (our customers have equal success with brand new liens and also 3 to 9 month old liens), they can be local to you or geographically dispersed. You may want liens of a certain amount that will justify higher fees, or you may want smaller liens that will produce cases that can be turned around faster. You may want to sift through lists and find certain kinds of companies (such as restaurants, construction, etc.) and have your sales system specifically set up for them. There are many possibilities, the choice is yours, but don’t overthink it, don’t spend too much time worrying about the “perfect” criteria, just get it done and CALL.

Step 3: Send a letter or postcard to your 15 new prospects, every day. If you reached them on the phone, then send them a thank you card to thank them for their time. If they were interested, send them your marketing package or proposal package. If you didn’t reach them, got their voicemail, number was disconnected, etc., then send them a letter inviting them to call for a consultation, or inviting them to an informative free local seminar or a webinar. Mail them something!

Step 4: If you’re licensed, you already know that the IRS works on a 30 day notice cycle. As such, you should be, at a minimum, on the same followup cycle. Within 30 days of your initial contact via telephone and mail, you should make another contact. Make another phone call, send another letter. Again, 30 day interval is a minimum. Also, you should go through a minimum of 5 followup cycles, but preferably 12 or more.

You can use CRM software, spreadsheets, or index cards to track activity and know when to follow up with people. How you track it doesn’t matter — doing the activity is what matters, because that is what gets clients.

Is this going to cost some money? YES. Is it going to take time? YES. Calling 15 new people per day is going to take 30 to 90 minutes, depending on how long your conversations go (but remember, the purpose of the call is to sell the consultation/proposal, NOT sell your services!).

At 15 people per day, you are adding 300 people per month to your mailing list. If you do the 5 month minimum followup, that means you’re eventually going to have an 1800 person per month mailing list (1500 followup, 300 new). That is a $600 to $1,000 per month direct mail budget, plus the time for follow up calls.

Remember, you are running a business here. As such, you need to realize that it will take an investment of your time and money to grow a practice. However, this marketing cost is incredibly small compared to the amount of money you’ll be making from new clients after just a couple month of doing this.

I will reiterate: Making this work simply requires DOING IT. You’re not going to build a practice sitting on your ass, but by working a plan, no matter how simple it is. This plan is about as simple as it gets, but requires you to take the actions to make it work.

To your success,

Jassen Bowman, EA
TaxMarketingHQ.com

The cliches regarding business success are as plentiful as the failed businesses that failed to follow them. “Successful people do the things that unsuccessful people are unwilling to do”. “Success loves speed (of action).” These and a thousand more popular business sayings are used as opening chapter quotes in countless books about success and achievement.

The problem is that they are all true. No matter what, building a successful tax practice requires DOING, not just planning, thinking, and hoping. In general, sitting on your ass accomplishes nothing.

In every business I’ve ever been in, lack of action is the single biggest failure point I come across.

A perfect example, ironically, is the infrequency and irregularity of these exact article updates. In order to provide you, my reader, with the best resources, tools, and maintain “top of mind awareness” about my products and services, I really should be writing to you at least once a week, if not every day. This would help me in a number of ways, including search engine rankings for the web site, keeping you abreast of the latest marketing developments, and building goodwill with you as a regular reader. But, more often than not, I end up going a month or four without writing. In short, shame on me.

But you don’t need to fall victim to the same trap. Each and every day, each and every week, there are specific things you should be doing to build your tax practice. Basically, just do them. The cumulative daily actions you take, most of which take very little time, add up over the course of a year.

The most critical action items you should take, of course, involve marketing. And I’m not just saying that because I sell leads and marketing materials, or because writing about marketing is my favorite thing. No, it really is true.

Just as writing to you daily (or at least weekly) should be my most important task (because for me, that is my marketing), the same applies to you. Are you sending out weekly mailings? Do you have a weekly email newsletter you CONSISTENTLY send out?

Author and sales trainer Steve Schiffman has written over a dozen books on the subject of cold calling and sales, and I’ve read them all (his stuff is worth reading). He has two consistent ideas that he repeats over and over again, and which have quite frankly formed the basis of his entire career. These two ideas are quite simple. One is his “ledge” technique for use when actually on the phone, and the other is the fact that each and every business day he makes 15 cold calls to businesses that his research indicates would make good clients.

If you are part of a larger tax resolution firm, you might laugh at the idea of making 15 calls. There are some large tax resolution firms that make thousands of outbound phone calls per day.

However, if you are a solo practitioner, working from home, and you’re scared to death of cold calling (most people are), then 15 calls might sound like a mountain to climb. But, when you have a mortgage to pay and want to eat, you gotta do what you gotta do! So take ACTION, every day.

Tomorrow, I am going to write what I consider the most fundamentally basic of marketing plans for a solo practitioner. If it’s just you, then you’re going to want to read that.

To your success,

Jassen Bowman, EA
TaxMarketingHQ.com

Some tax resolution organizations will choose to use a sales model in which a team of 3 or 4 telemarketers are making the initial contact with tax debtors, and then transferring the calls of people that are actually interested to a sales closer or the licensed person on staff. This is a highly efficient sales model that ensures that the closer or licensed person is only talking to interested people and doing actual consultations, making better use of their time. The telemarketers in this case can be minimum wage employees with some sort of bonus/commission structure for sales made, or even just straight hourly.

Transfers to the closer or licensed professional can be handled one of two ways. The first way is to transfer the call LIVE, which is often more effective. The other option is to have the telemarketer set telephone consultation appointments for the closer. The latter method is often preferential for very small firms and solo practitioners. In the case of a solo practitioner operating only in their local area, these appointments can be physical, in-office appointments to discuss the tax problem, and the telemarketer must screen the prospect using a set of questions developed for that purpose, to ensure that the licensed professional can actually help them and their time is being used most efficiently.

Live Transfers

The transfer from Opener to Closer needs to be done smoothly and professionally! Once you have the call you should have an intro. For yourself that goes something like this…

“Hi (prospect) , this is (your name), I’m one of [FIRM's] [senior consultants, attorneys, CPA's, Enrolled Agents], and the reason (opener) transferred you to me is to take the conversation farther to see if we can be of service for you on the (tax issue) problems. OK? Now, as (opener) explained, [FIRM] specializes in resolving government tax lien problems for companies all across the country. Actually, we have clients in every state in America. Also, as you probably know we get the tax lien info from public record sources. Anyway, (opener’s) notes state that you owe the (IRS / State) approximately ($ amount) in back taxes: does that sound right?”

[Remember, you always want to be asking questions that either get you YES answers, or that ENGAGE the prospect in CONVERSATION.]

After receiving a YES answer, or engaging in conversation about the correct tax debt amount, continue with the script:

“What I need to do now is simply ask you a few questions, and you and I will figure out if we can help out or not, ok?”

From this point, you can ask a series of questions to determine the taxpayer’s real situation and potential eligibility for resolution programs. This consultative selling approach is the ideal way to sell any professional services, including tax collection representation.

In the spirit of getting ready for the end of tax season, and planning for the rest of the year and the Great Big, Scary Marketing Things we’re going to be discussing (and implementing!) over the coming weeks, I wanted to start with a brainstorming exercise. This is a list of things I came up with in a span of about 10 minutes for marketing a tax practice. Go through this list yourself, and think about how you could use these ideas in your own practice.

Heck, just go ahead and print this out (paper…they still make that, right?) and jot down a short note to the right of each idea about how you could use this in your own business. For example, can you use a particular media for getting new clients? For keeping in touch with existing clients? For promoting a seminar? How can you interlink multiple ideas together?

Then, I challenge you to add AT LEAST five things to this list of your own. Keep in mind that while most of what I’ve written here are actually marketing media, don’t limit yourself to just the various media. What marketing message can you think of to use for a particular media? What about different target markets you could go after, and what you could say to them?

1. Craigslist
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Squidoo
5. StumbleUpon
6. Digg.com
7. Internet discussion boards
8. Public bulletin boards
9. Door hangars
10. Post-It Notes
11. Commenting on blogs
12. Direct mail postcards
13. Direct mail newsletters
14. Referral request letters
15. Local newspaper classified ads
16. Classified ads in trade publications
17. Your own blog
18. Your own email newsletter
19. Local seminars
20. Press releases
21. Meetup.com meetups
22. Presenting at local organizations (Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, Board of Realtors, etc).
23. Business cards
24. Ebay (service section)
25. Kijiji (eBay classifieds)
26. Network on LinkedIn.com
27. Post vides on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
28. Host a live weekly web show on UStream
29. Reactivation letters to former clients
30. Radio interviews
31. Flyer inserts in local newspapers
32. Bandit signs
33. Street corner sign wavers
34. Trade shows (collect people’s contact info!)
35. Customer appreciation parties
36. Write articles on EzineArticles.com
37. Join a mastermind group
38. Participate as a speaker at other people’s workshops
39. Write a book
40. Create an email signature
41. Put brochure boxes at other businesses
42. Hold a contest
43. Pay Per Click ads (PPC)
44. Write a 99-cent Kindle ebook
45. Put out a Groupon deal
46. Have customers write reviews for you on Yelp
47. Make sure you’re listed on Google Places

What ideas did you come up with?

To your success,

Jassen Bowman, EA
TaxMarketingHQ.com