Indirect Strategies To Grow Your Practice

Written by Monika Miles | Posted in Tax Advice

Welcome to the “Rainmaker Series” Friday blog. Hopefully you’ve noticed that I’m dedicating Fridays to tips for accounting and financial professionals in the art of rainmaking. We’ve discussed that bringing in revenue (“rainmaking”) is not magic, but is essential to growing your service based consulting practice. Last week, we focused on direct strategies (meeting people in one-on-one networking situations) to begin developing relationships with potential clients and leads.

This week, I’m going to share the benefits of using indirect strategies in conjunction with the direct strategies to continue building that relationship at the potential customer’s leisure!

Indirect Strategies

Building the relationship at the customer’s leisure? What the heck does that mean? Quite simply, it is about allowing your potential target customer to find out about you, not in a face-to-face environment, but virtually, when it fits into their schedule. I’m talking about things like a robust website, informative newsletter, interesting blog, and catchy social media, to name a few. The key is that these items are still generated by you to send the messages that you’d like to deliver, but they can be viewed passively by your audience when they are ready to consume them – on-demand, if you will. Obviously, the more compelling the information you put out there on your own behalf, the better the chance to grow your audience, and ultimately, your client base as you are viewed as a subject matter expert.

Since there are various ways a potential client can consume the information about you, it’s also important to use a variety of these methods.

Website: It is important to regularly review your own website to see what others are seeing, and also to ensure that the information on it hasn’t become stale. Does your homepage accurately reflect what your company does? Is it easy to navigate through the website? Is your value proposition clear? Have you added calls to action to various sections? Have you incorporated videos? Is it easy for someone to find out more? If the answers to these questions are all “YES”, then you are doing a great job. If not, consider what it would take to get to yes. Maybe an overall website analysis is in order.

Newsletter: A friend and colleague told me many years ago that the key to a newsletter is consistency. Provide quality information in a format that your customers or targets will begin to recognize and expect at periodic intervals (preferably at least monthly). That will get them into a habit of reading your content. The content should also be somewhat consistent. As a consultant or service provider, a good newsletter layout may be to offer a useful technical article related to something you consult about, plus a guest article from someone in your network, plus a “what’s happening” section to talk about your upcoming speaking topics or other items of interest. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be very long. I’ve learned over time that consistency and short (but compelling) content are more important than length!

Blogs: What is true for the newsletter is also true of the blog. Consistent blogging (for instance, posting every week on Wednesdays) is also key because it keeps your website fresh with new content. While search engine optimization is a very complicated science of its own, there is evidence that regularly updating your website (by way of posting blogs) is a way to keep the search-engine-gods coming back regularly as well – and that’s always good! Also, blogs are a great way to multi-purpose your written materials. Blog articles can become fodder for your newsletter, or a great way to build credibility with your client about your industry trends.

Social media: With so many choices out there, it’s hard to want to spend a lot of time on social media when the images and posts disappear so quickly. However, it is amazing how many touches you are likely to get just from people seeing your name and an article or interesting fact or link to a relevant story in your industry. A combination of different social media tools is also a good idea. Where do your clients and targets “hang out”? Is it mostly Linked-In? Facebook? Twitter? Google+? Instagram? Something else? Hanging out there with them will get you noticed.

We’ve just scratched the surface on these indirect strategies, and there are several other sources of indirect touches, including podcasts and recorded webinars (particularly those that can be accessed for several weeks or months after the live event has taken place). If you are fortunate to have been interviewed on camera and have a short video feed of that, it can be prominently displayed on your website, as can published articles or other media quotes. The key with indirect strategies (and direct strategies as well) is to determine what works for you and is fun. If it’s not fun, you won’t do it consistently. And that will undermine your own best intentions.

Sign up for our December Rainmaking Webinar Series “Jumpstart your Rainmaking.”

What will you learn?

A linear plan to increase your Rainmaking skills;
How to define your ideal target market so you can stop wasting time chasing the wrong leads
How to create your own unique strategies to attract great clients quickly
The step-by-step exact process to achieve your goals
Within three weeks—you’ll have a plan to carry into your 2017 Rainmaking efforts!

When?

Wednesday, Dec 7 / Dec 14 / Dec 21

1:00 PM – 2:15 PM PST

How?

Webinar format; live instruction with Q&A

Sessions will be recorded and available for playback

How Much?

YEAR END Special! You will receive the entire three part series for $99!

Monika Miles

Monika founded Miles Consulting Group which focuses on multi-state tax consulting, helping clients navigate state tax issues such as sales tax and income tax in interstate commerce, including e-commerce.

Prior to forming the firm, Monika worked for 12 years combined in Big 4 Public Accounting and private industry. Monika has provided such services as federal and state income/franchise tax compliance and consulting, sales/use tax consulting, audit support, and credits and incentives reviews. She has served clients in a variety of industries including manufacturing, technology, telecommunications, construction, utility, retail and financial institutions.

Monika graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) with a BBA in Accounting/Finance and has a Masters in Taxation from San Jose State University.