PR SEO

You know that referrals are the best way to get new clients. To get the best referrals, you need more than naturally occurring word of mouth. You need to have a program to actively encourage referrals in multiple ways.
You’d think that clients would give you referrals because they like you or your service. Nevertheless, it [...]

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Attorneys and CPAs are pricy to more information about their clients’ business affairs than any other professionals. You have the powerful potential to add real value to your client relationships.
One key area in which you can add value is in helping your clients visualize their business futures.
You are uniquely qualified to help clients with business [...]

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The summary close is especially useful when you are offering a new service to one of your existing clients. (Sales to existing clients are the most profitable.)
When you approach the end of your presentation, your client is faced with the task of organizing all the pieces of information into one clear and comprehensive picture.
The summary [...]

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If you are like most attorneys, consultants, and accountants, many of your clients utilize only a few of your services.
Too often, a client engages another professional to perform services that you could provide.
Cross-selling is when you sell a new service to an existing client. Cycle selling does this in a more complete and systematic way [...]

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Recently, I was sitting with a client in a “chain” restaurant. Our waitress was well mannered, knowledgeable, and polite.
We enjoyed our salad, a fantastic steak, and a glass of wine. We were all quite satisfied.
At the end of the meal, as our waitress cleared away the empty plates, she asked, “Any room for dessert?” While [...]

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Pricing is one of the four Ps of marketing and is one that few professionals use. Accounting and law firm marketing has improved over the past 20 years in three of the Ps of marketing (place, product, and promotion). But pricing is still being done using cost-accounting techniques.
Limits of Hourly Billing
Most clients hate hourly billing [...]

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A key marketing technique used by some top firms is the client business review (CBR). The CBR is used only on the firm’s “top 25” accounts, defined by the total size of the annual fees, referral potential, or other criteria.
The CBR takes a business consulting approach to understand and evaluate the systems of your clients.
The [...]

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On a plane from Orlando to New York, I sat beside a meeting planner for PricewaterhouseCoopers. She told me a story that bears repeating.
The meting planner had asked the catering department at Disney World to prepare an event for the PwC partners.
Disney’s caterer priced the affair at $50,000. But the meeting planner’s budget was $35,000. [...]

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The client satisfaction survey is one of the most misused marketing tools employed today. Most surveys fail to obtain reliable information. Even worse, many surveys obtain misleading information.
The single most important reason to perform a survey is to determine client intentions. What your clients say doesn’t always equal intentions.
A few years ago, in a focus [...]

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When a new CEO, COO, CIO, or CFO joins your client, your relationship may be at high risk.
Smart professionals never take a client for granted, but they are particularly sensitive when there is a change in top management.
In many cases, the new chief will not know you and probably will have some level of loyalty [...]

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