In the words of Max Bygraves “I wanna tell you a story” and for readers too young to remember here he is in action.

So, here’s my (true) story:

A friend recently moved herself, family and online B2B business from one end of the country to the other and asked my advice on how to find a good new accountant.

I owed her a favour, so I downloaded a database of all 100 incorporated practices in that county, deleted those without websites, leaving 44 (yes!), then used software to identify the personal email addresses of all 60 partners.

I wrote her an introductory email headed “New business enquiry” which contained information about her and her business, explaining the services she was seeking (compliance, admin, management accounts) and she sent it out.

After 5 days we checked the CRM to see what was happening:

23/60 addressees had opened it.
18/60 practices in all.
1 responded to say he was busy but had delegated it to a junior.

After 10 days:

The junior got in touch to say he too was busy but could manage a phone call in 4 weeks’ time if she would set it up.

So, thinking we had got something wrong we emailed them all (bar one) again and received no responses. And we checked this time that they had all been delivered.

My friend has decided, unsurprisingly to stick with her original accountant.

True story number two

Because this sad experience reminds me…

A few years ago, I decided that we needed a better resourced practice than the nice little team of bookkeepers we had used when starting up.

So, I went onto the ICAEW website ‘Find a Chartered Accountant’ service, put in our specific postcode, the filters for the services we wanted, and 110 names appeared. Rather a shock. So, I spent an afternoon visiting their websites (where they even had one) and whittled it down to 30 that looked relevant. Most had enquiry forms instead of email addresses, so I pasted my enquiry details into these along with my contact information and waited.

Over the next week I had responses as follows:

3 emails said “Thanks for your enquiry. Please be advised that our day rate is £xx. Give us a call if you’d like to discuss”.
2 emails said “Thanks for your enquiry. Please book an appointment with my PA to attend our offices. Be sure to being with you the following information xxxxx.”.
1 phoned and asked to visit me.

Over the next month:

2 more phoned me to explain their charges and services, in that order.

In all:

The ICAEW website gave me 70/110 irrelevant practices
8/30 responded to my enquiry
6 told me what they were prepared to give me and the price
1 visited me, asked what I wanted, responded with a fair proposal and are still my trusted accountants today to whom I have made many referrals (https://www.reddysiddiqui.com/)

Conclusion

Since I’ve encountered this twice in different parts of the country, with near identical statistics, I reckon it’s general.

Most of the accountants who contact us daily want to use our technology to find more clients so I’m wondering if they couldn’t solve their problem for free:

Recommendation

Have a clear website about what you do and the ROI you provide
Keep it up to date
Check the web enquiry forms daily
Check new emails daily
Phone every enquiry personally and straight away
Encourage existing clients to refer friends
LinkedIn presence with website and personal contact links
Use the Microsoft junk filter it’s very accurate once it learns
Scan the junk folder daily until it settles

Yes, I know that’s all a pain because accountants are heavily targeted by marketers of all sorts and it’s become common practice to set email filters to only let through email addresses that are in the contact list.

But look what’s being missed. The stats speak for themselves…

And finally, the Runagood® solution

If that doesn’t do the trick, and you still want new clients because you’ve already done all that, congratulations!

Your next step needs to be a chat with us to take look at these marketing resources:

How accountants are (not) dealing with enquiries