Differentiate Your Accounting Firm From the Competition

Bringing in new clients is a growing challenge for accounting firms of all sizes.

Tax filings and accounting are increasingly perceived as low-value commodity services.

This has increased pressure on fees and lowered margins for many firms.

This means that focusing only on traditional accounting services is no longer enough.

 Time to Reposition Yourself?

Clients and prospects are looking for more in-depth business advice. Offering them a broader bundle of services that add real value for them will increase their dependency on your firm and build loyalty for increased client retention.

But getting their attention requires a big differentiator, not another “me too” accounting pitch – especially when the Big 4 are able to offer so many more services.

Now more than ever it’s imperative to differentiate yourself – to become what Seth Godin has called a “purple cow” standing out from the throng.

If only there were a proven successful, highly ethical back-end system you could adopt – maybe even white-label as your own – to do just that…something only Big 4 firms are able to offer, with six-figure price tags.

Well, now there is…and it’s even better than the Big 4 offer.

Your New Tax Recovery and Expense Reduction Division

If your business growth has stalled – or worse – maybe it’s time to think about repositioning your firm for a more rewarding future.

Of course, it would be nice to be able to do so without without disrupting or compromising your existing business.

The idea, after all, is to enhance your current income, not trade it for something else. Even better would be adding services that are synergistic and amplify what you currently do.

Broadening what you offer from traditional tax services to tax and vendor savings for  routine business expenses is one way to do that.

Think of it as adding a “Savings Division” to your business – and the engineering and other experts conducting the back-end work for you as bridging the gap between accounting and engineering that’s required to capture these added tax savings for your clients and prospects.

This means these are synergistic services that nicely complement what you currently offer.

In addition, offering businesses savings outperforms selling by ten-to-one, especially when you’re able to offer them via a company with over a decade’s experience saving over $350 million in client savings to date.

And here’s the best part…all of these tax-saving and expense reduction services are provided on a completely risk-free basis.

In plain english, this means…

“No Savings, No Fee”

If the audits and studies required to document your clients’ and prospects’ eligibility for refunds or tax credits fail to produce savings for them, no payment will be due. This further removes this process from traditional selling and eliminates a major source of buying objections.

Actually, you’re not really asking your clients and prospects to “buy” anything, but rather are empowering them to collect repayments of previous expenses.

You won’t need to be masters of selling for that to prove persuasive for new client prospects – or for existing clients either.

And you won’t have to worry about recruiting qualified professionals to do this additional work for you.

All of the back-end work is done by trained professionals with extensive experience and success in securing refunds and credits for both tax and vendor overpayments.

And the net cost to clients will be far less than any of the Big 4 can match.

Here are some of the businesses that have benefitted from these services…

These risk-free tax and expense reduction service channels currently include:

• Income Tax Refunds – Based on IRS-sanctioned engineering-based Cost Segregation studies that reallocate clients’ building components to properly accelerate depreciation. This has yielded rapid P&L and cash flow benefit for 70% of our clients (for more, see this article in the Journal of Accountancy);

• Property Tax Refunds – Appeals to local and state assessing authorities have produced average recurring  savings of 15% in local property taxes;

• Manufacturer Tax Credits – Even better than tax deductions, of course, with a full 100 cents per dollar falling to the bottom line. And vastly more businesses are eligible for credits that have been liberalized over the years, including loosening of regulations in 2014. The average manufacturer, for example, receives a $270,000 tax credit and your commission on that would exceed $7,000 – and overrides on those under you would exceed $2,400 per client;

• Merchant Credit Card Overcharges – Businesses that rely largely on credit cards to collect payments realize costly hidden overcharges due to routine errors and misclassifications. Commissions and overrides earned here persist for three years, which means they compound quickly to contribute to labor-free income growth;

• Workers Comp – This is another area where clients routinely experience significant overpayments due to misclassifications and clerical errors; and

• Parcel Shipping – FedX and UPS overcharges are common and also subject to audit recapture. Commissions here are paid monthly for the life of the client.

Open More Doors…Honestly

Property tax and credit card overpayments have proven the easiest door openers because so many businesses are perturbed by them. You’re then able to offer the other cost savings that they’re eligible for, along with your own accounting services.

It’s important to note that none of the expense reduction services require clients or prospects to change their current carriers or providers. This is a major advantage over “switch-and-save” competitors.

And there’s nothing unethical about any of this. Indeed, finding savings for your clients is obviously very much in their interest and consistent with your fiduciary and other client responsibilities.

You can take comfort knowing that the company providing your tax-related studies has walked away from prospects they believed were not the right fit for their services. That’s a level of integrity that should help you and your clients sleep well at night.

Viable Prospects Abound

On average, almost seven out of ten businesses qualify for some kind of savings – and credit card processing audits find savings 100% of the time. Virtually every business in America can benefit from these services – and having no up-front cost for them to find out makes this a much easier proposition than selling traditional accounting services.

This may be the best business opportunity for small and mid-sized accounting firms available today. In addition to the obvious increased income potential, it affords the opportunity to turn yourself from another expense for your prospects into an income-generator for them.

And you already know your prospects are hard-wired to avoid added expenses. But they’re also hard-wired to be always on the lookout for more revenue. The former they avoid like the plague, the latter they’re eager to explore.

Which would you rather be?

Your Five Powerful Benefits

This service expansion opportunity offers at least five core benefits for your accounting business, as summarized in this graphic and described briefly below:

1. Differentiation – This has already been discussed and may be the most obvious benefit to anyone adding these tax and expense reduction services to an existing accounting practice. Prospecting for new clients will only get harder with increasing competition from online and other vendors for your prospects’ limited time and attention;

2. Diversification – It also makes sense from a diversification perspective to add other revenue sources and improve your ability to withstand future slumps in your current business. And you can reduce the risk of that happening by strengthening your client relationships with cost-saving services your clients will love. The easiest and most efficient prospecting comes by expanding the business with your current clients;

3. Reposition – You can substantially reposition yourself and your firm as a business advisor bringing real bottom line value to your clients and prospects. When what you offer prospects isn’t just another expense but actual cash flow benefit – much of it from the government! – you’re seen in an entirely different and more favorable light;

4. Residuals – Some of the half-dozen tax and cost recovery services you’ll be able to offer provide recurring income, while others are routinely renewed by clients happy to repeat the process. This is doubly beneficial in that it first will improve client loyalty (i.e., more recurring revenue) and, secondly, in that some of the cost savings you’ll find will occur over time. Those commissions are recurring for several years; and

5. Leverage – In addition to the 7.5-30% commissions on fees generated from your own business, you’re able to earn 2.5% % overrides on fees generated by those  (non-employees) you bring in with you. This could include other accounting firms in non-competing markets, as well as other professional service advisors with whom you do business.

Business-Savvy Accounting-Plus

In addition to all those compelling strategic benefits, commissions for these outsourced services can exceed five-figures per client for your own business and average in the low-four-figures per client in overrides.

That’s because many businesses will qualify for several of these services, meaning you’ll need fewer client closings to produce these results.

For this reason, the tax services are best offered as a tax-savings bundle rather than individually. Once underway, you can cross-sell the expense reduction services and/or your current accounting services to new clients.

Your firm’s role in all this is simply to screen clients and prospects with a simple online tool, gather documentation, and schedule follow-up interviews with your back-end experts for any services where they’re likely to find savings.

With the training and support provided, this could add significant revenue to your firm. And it’ll be easier to close than traditional accounting services while repositioning you on a sturdier and more appealing business foundation.

If you’d like to learn more about this unique business opportunity, click here.