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Tax season is often referred to as “the busy season” for accounting firms. Everyone is exceptionally busy managing the flow of paperwork and digital files, preparing returns, meeting deadlines, and researching questions and problems. Unfortunately, this intense focus can be harmful to the health of the practice. When the focus on tax season is too intense and there is no practice development plan and process in place, the firm is missing what is arguably the most significant opportunity for practice growth. Tax season is the most fruitful time of the year to market your firm. Take a peek at the waiting room or lobby during tax season. Look at all of the people you have the opportunity to speak to with your message about other services you offer to meet their needs. Count the people who sit in your waiting room and think about how your practice would grow if one in five of those people made a referral of a friend, family member or co-worker to your firm. How many of these clients have other work you could do for them? How many opportunities are you allowing to walk out the door with only a simple tax return? Perhaps most of your clients send you their information and you mail out the returns instead of taking advantage of the face-to-face opportunities. You might carry a visual image in your mind of stacks of papers in each accountant’s office or of exploding email inboxes approaching their size limit. No matter how busy your firm, you cannot afford to miss all of these opportunities to win new clients and to sell these current clients additional services or products. There will be obstacles to overcome as you bring your entire firm on board with your plans for practice building. You will need to plan the kinds of conversations that will be most effective in convincing all staff members of their vital role in the growth of the firm. You will also, of course, need to convince them that it is possible and a worthy investment of time to take appropriate practice building steps during tax season. The most important point you need to make with them is that once the process is in place and the planning is complete, they will be able to use tax season to set up their practice development for the rest of the year. To help you and your firm get started, here are six things you can do to use tax season to set up your practice development program for the rest of the year. 1. The first step in any successful practice development process is to listen to your clients and identify their needs. For an accountant who is preparing an income tax return for a long-term tax preparation client, paying attention to what is happening in the client’s life is a key to growing your practice by offering the right additional services to the client. For example, if you know your client recently had twins, you know it is probably time to start planning for college for the children – especially with twins and two sets of expenses. If your client is approaching the age of 35, it is probably time to start talking about and setting in motion a retirement plan. If your client mentions that he is socking away money in savings accounts for an inheritance for each of his children, perhaps you could help him understand ways to make that money work more effectively to create a larger legacy to leave to his children. If your client plans to start a business when her children are all in school, perhaps you should help her understand why, in light of the massive small business incentives becoming available from the government, now might be the time to start that business. Any of these situations, and thousands of others, could open the door to additional advisory and accounting services you could provide to each client.  2. Identify clients who operate small businesses. Provide for them information about small business services offered by your firm. Talk with them about meeting in May and June to discuss other ways you can help their firm.  Also consider the kinds of personal financial management assistance the small business owner might also need. Don’t assume that any client knows what you do about accounting issues for personal or business needs. Don’t assume that you know all of their financial needs until you have engaged them in a discussion of ways in which you might be able to help them. The services you might highlight could include risk analysis, succession planning for partnerships, business taxes, annual business reports, auditing, etc. You might approach this by preparing a brief summary brochure about the small business services the firm offers or about lunch gatherings you sponsor to discuss changes in laws or new opportunities for small businesses with your clients. The brochure could then be highlighted for the appropriate service and a quick hand-written note attached suggesting a free consultation about the service. This could be attached to the completed income tax return. 3. Create a referral reward program for the firm or just make a commitment and prepare to ask for a referral. When a client says you were great – that is the time to ask! Build a process for requesting and following up on referrals by your current clients. If you are an accountant, for example, your program and process might look something like this. Create a quick survey requesting feedback about the service you have provided to a client. Attach to it a statement along the lines of, “We hope we have exceeded your expectations. If we have, we hope you will refer your friends, relatives, colleagues and co-workers to us. We know that a referral from a client is the highest compliment you can pay us.” Your process once a referral is received might look something like this: Immediately email or call the client making the referral to express appreciation. Call the person referred and schedule an appointment as quickly as possible. As soon as the person referred purchases a product or service, send the reward and a handwritten note of thanks.4. Sell related products or services. If you constructed an accounting process and system for a new small business, you might want to have a conversation about the importance of succession planning with your client. Or, depending upon the size of the business, offer a package deal of preparation and filing of monthly, quarterly and annual financial reporting for the business. Prepare a digital business activity and cost tracking document that you give clients as part of the package. If you work with a number of small business clients, you might sell subscriptions to a quarterly or monthly insight newsletter in which you discuss changes in accounting or tax laws, government incentives for small business growth, or how other changes in society or key markets offer new opportunities for your clients. 5. Plan a monthly breakfast for some top clients in a particular industry. Make the breakfast an opportunity to share concerns, observations, needs, goals, and challenges. Have the person in the firm with the greatest knowledge of the industry become an industry expert and host the breakfasts. Offer your insights on the issues (after doing sufficient research). Use the discussions as a time to help everyone identify industry trends and how they will impact each business represented, to anticipate challenges or risks and offer risk mitigation ideas. Consider the series of breakfasts an ongoing course in risk management for these top clients. Encourage them to invite other leaders in their companies and with others who are critical to the industry (suppliers, customers, contractors, etc.). Always include in your breakfast conversations, clear messages about how your firm can help the clients do a better job of trend analysis, goal achievement, management of challenges and stress to the company, and risk analysis and management. 6. Follow up, follow up, and follow up again. No matter what actions you decide are appropriate to sell new products or services to your clients, the key to the sale – and to future sales – is in the follow-up. Reinforce your message of the need you perceive and how you can help the client meet the need and become more successful. Continue to follow up, providing additional information about how the product or service works and how it will meet a need or solve a problem for the client. As you follow up, you should continue to build a relationship with the client and identify other ways you can help the client become more successful or succeed faster. These six steps will help your firm get started in using tax season to lay the groundwork for your practice development program for the rest of the year. Keep in mind that the goal is to build relationship with the client, understand more about the client’s business or personal financial needs, identify pressure points and find solutions you can offer that will help the client succeed or that your colleagues can help the client manage more efficiently or effectively. Keep the focus on the client and how you can help the client. Then build the messages, the programs and the process that will build your firm’s practice throughout the year on the foundation of your sales efforts during tax season. Copyright 2010 by David Wolfskehl