Take Your Bookkeeping Business to the Next Level

By having a strong alignment between your sales and marketing strategies you will be able to generate and close more client leads while shortening your sales cycles, retaining more ongoing client work for the long term while assist in allowing your business to grow faster. Marketing your bookkeeping business successfully will help you to flourish. Not only can it make your business grow in size, but if that isn't what you are after, it helps you to refine who you work with. Sound interesting?

How to market bookkeeping

1. What is a Sales Strategy?

A sales strategy is a plan created by a business on how to go about selling products and services and increase profits. It typically involves ‘sales pitches’ and key points of interest to position yourself to your ideal clients in a meaningful and differentiated way.
There are two types of sales strategies; inbound and outbound.
– Inbound Sales: The potential client contacts you.
– Outbound Sales: You contact the potential client.

Here are three reasons why you should implement a sales strategy into your Bookkeeping Business today:
1. A Sales Strategy allows you to address the needs of customers at every stage,
2. It improves the Return on Investment (ROI) of your sales efforts, and
3. It enables you to hire the right people.

By having a planned out pitch and sales strategy bookkeeping business owners can clearly communicate their business’s products, services, and deliverability to differentiate yourselves from your competitors and win clients. By doing so you will also be able to research the pain points of your ideal clients which will assist in creating rapport and understanding your clients’ needs. This will not only increase your deal closure rate but it will help you better understand what your business does assist in creating a clear picture on how to successfully grow your business.

2. How to Successfully Use Your Sales Strategy

When creating a sales strategy, it is vital to remember the importance of sales follows up.
Follow-ups are exactly what they sound like; planned actions to follow up on a potential client to see whether they are ready to work with you. This process can be as complicated or as simple as you wish.
To best organize your follow up strategy as a serious bookkeeping business owner, it is highly suggested to enlist the help of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

CRMs are platforms that are specifically designed to manage all your business’s relationships and interactions with clients and potential leads. The use of a CRM is to improve your new, existing and future business relationships to continue to grow your business.

Some of the most inexpensive CRMs perfect for sole traders and small businesses include:

– Monday.com

– Freshsales

– Pipedrive and

– InfoFlo

Some larger CRMs for medium to large companies include:

– HubSpot

– Salesforce and

– Insightly

Here are some tips and tricks are lessons anyone willing can learn and master when considering follow-ups:

3. Don’t Take It Personally

Everyone is busy doing something these days. If a potential lead is rude or quick to get off the phone or says NO to you; move on and don’t take it personally. Remember, there are more than enough leads out there for Australian Bookkeepers. Marketing your bookkeeping will take effort, but the results will be worth it when you are working with your ideal clients.

4. 5 Stage Follow-Up Call Process

In this 5 Step Process, you can confirm whether the potential client is an ideal or dead lead very quickly to save you time and ensure you aren’t ‘hounding’ an uninterested lead. It includes 5 calls and email points-of-contact. My rule of thumb with this process is you haven’t been able to get in touch with a lead within the first 5 calls and emails, you never will.

Step 1: First Call/Voice Mail
Step 2: Follow Up to First Call/Voice Mail
Step 3: Confirmation of Needs Call/Voice Mail
Step 4: Confirming Lead Still Needs Your Help Call/Voice Mail
Step 5: Close of Deal or Close of Lead Call/Voice Mail
After each step, you must follow up with your contact via email to summarise the conversation you just have had or the message your left. This is my top rule for follow-ups as many of us are unreachable on our phones or perfect to speak via email these days.

5. Treat a No as a Future Yes

You read that right. In the world of bookkeeping, you never know what will happen. Therefore, treat each lost lead as a potential future lead. Once you learn they have gone with someone else or simply don’t want to work with you to try and learn why so you can learn from the experience.
Moreover, ensure to send them a closing email thanking them for their valued time and offer them a free value-added gift such as a free 15-minute consultation, your top bookkeeping tips for business owners or whatever comes to your mind.
This goodwill and business sense will help them remember you in the future if they are in the hunt for a new bookkeeper again.

6. What is Lead Generation?

Before you even start thinking about your follow-ups you need to first create a lead generation strategy. Lead generation is the action or process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business; basically, it ties in with a Sales Strategy.
If you are looking to expand via marketing your bookkeeping business, you need to first understand that lead generation can be difficult and can take time but is always an ongoing process for businesses wanting to grow. In this digital age here are my top tricks for creating and implementing lead generation for your business.

7. Have a Business Plan – this will flow into your Bookkeeper marketing!

I know, I know; how often do you hear business experts saying this? Want to know why… because it’s true. Having a consistent and concise business plan will not only help you better understand your business goals and objectives but a properly made business plan will lead you in the direction that best suits your business’s growth.

8. Create a Marketing Plan

Again, shocker. But seriously, even though you’re ‘just a bookkeeper’ doesn’t mean you don’t need to market yourself and business to get clients. Take a look around, all the successful bookkeeping businesses have a niche market, consistent branding and easily communicate their services. This is because they are a comprehensive marketing plan.

9. Know Your Market

Where are you, ideal clients? Are they on Social Media, Google, service websites such as Oneflare and Airtasker or business networking groups such as BNI and Meet Up? It’s so important that you know the answer to this question; without it, you won’t know where to put your time and financial investment into to successfully generate leads and grow your business. Marketing your bookkeeping needs you to target your efforts in the right locations. With some research, you will get yourself in the right area to do so.

10. Get Online for your Bookkeeping marketing strategy to win

Did you notice something about that last trick? Most of it was all oriented around online outlets. You can’t ignore it anymore; the internet is here to stay and it’s time for bookkeepers to catch up with the times and get digital before they are left behind. Set up your website. Set up your social media. Set up your Google Business Listing. AND USE IT. Marketing your bookkeeping requires you using modern methods, to attract people who use technology. Your bookkeeping marketing strategy will work well when you embrace the current technology and do it well!

11. Follow Up

Once again, following up with potential clients is vital for any business; especially bookkeeping businesses. Most of your clients are small business owners who are too busy running their businesses to worry or care about their bookkeeping. That’s why they need you to follow up with them to get the ball rolling to help them continue to grow their business. Marketing your bookkeeping business does require you to be proactive. It isn't that you are not a great bookkeeper. Your ideal clients might not even realise you exist…!

What to learn more about creating a Sales Strategy?

Make sure you listen to The Bookkeepers' Voice!

• Episode #060 Sales Strategy Part 1 Creating Your Bookkeeping Marketing Sales Strategy With Angie Martin and

• Episode #061 Strategy Part 2: Marketing for bookkeepers Follow Ups and Being Found Online with Angie Martin

to learn all the ins and outs of promoting your business to potential clients.

Marketing your Bookkeeping Business requires an overall strategy that you must implement to see success.

• Develop and use a Sales Strategy
• Don’t take rejection personally
• 5 Stage Follow up call process
• No doesn’t mean no forever
• Business Plan
  
• Marketing Plan
• Know You Market
• Get Online
• Follow Up

That is our take on marketing your bookkeeping business. Over to you…

Thank you for reading our post. We hope it has been useful for you. And given you things that you can do for yourself! Not every Business Owner understands or likes doing Bookkeeping and what Bookkeepers offer their business. Likewise, not every Bookkeeper understands or likes doing Marketing. Good thing we do! If we sound like we can take your Bookkeeping Business to the next level, be that larger, more profit, or even increasing sellability, please get in touch. Marketing your bookkeeping business is something that we would love to journey with you over.

We look forwards to hearing from you.

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• If you are a Bookkeeper who otherwise needs help with Savvy's Marketing your Bookkeeping services, such as; Sales, Marketing, Website, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Business Logo and more, please get in contact.

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