Welcome to the Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast. It's a podcast to help accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers escape what we call the accountants trap. It's where you're stuck working with low value and high demanding clients. But at the same time, you can't raise your fees because you have a ton of competition. Well, how do you escape the trap? One way is the topic of today's episode, and that's having a system to get high value clients.

To help me with the discussion. I've invited Saleem Omar, a bestselling author and mentor to CPA firm owners who himself has transformed his practice from one that was deeply in debt to one that's been consistently profitable over the past two decades and has offered the freedom that he really wanted from his practice. Saleem, welcome to the show. Great.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to get into this topic because I talk to a lot of accountants, a lot of bookkeepers that they say they really want ways to get clients. I mean, there is a lot of competition out there, but but let me ask you this. What are the most common challenges that you hear from CPA firm owners, you know, to attract high value clients?

I mean, you know, the trap that we often fall into is commoditization, where we know our prospective client does not see what makes us different, what makes us unique, what makes us stand out is a firm. And when the prospective client does not see that, then they are going to question and they're going to look for the provider that can do it for the least amount of money, or they're going to go towards who can do it, you know, in in the least costly way for them, okay.

And that's not a good place to be. And it's it's for positioning because the prospective client is in control. They are in the driver's seat, not us is a professional advisor is a professional CPA from. So we're going to change the dynamics of how that is. We want to be the ones that that you know, that dictate what our services are, what our fees are, so that we have a client, you know, a roster full of clients that are the right clients.

Okay. So you mentioned the word commoditization a lot of a lot of firm owners, whether they're CPAs, accountants, bookkeepers, whatnot. I guess it doesn't matter. They they're creating this commodity type service. Explain what you mean by that. So the commodity type services, you know, finding, you know, prospective client, a prospective business owner, finding a CPA, a bookkeeper, an accountant that can provide that service, preparing tax return, preparing financial statements.

It's become a commodity service. And then you're competing with not only other service providers, other CPAs and so forth. You are competing with QuickBooks. You're competing with TurboTax. And and this is companies, Intuit that has a very heavy a very deep marketing budget. And and so you've got all that competition as well. Yeah. And, and you know, when you have companies like Intuit, they have the click of the button, the really simplified accounting.

It's simply, you know, they've helped, you know, people prepare their own taxes with the click of a button. That's how they market. And and and the product. There's some you know, to some extent it does that. But you know, then that's where the CPA firm needs to come in and identify what is it that makes them different and who is right for them, who is the right type of client for them, and what is it that makes them valuable, makes them unique to that group of people?

Okay. And that's what you're saying is where the positioning comes in. Use the word positioning as the solution to not being a commodity. Explain what you mean by that. Yeah, positioning is being the perfect provider. It's being the obvious choice for a certain group of people. Okay. And that certain group of people is your ideal client. It's the target market.

And so becoming clear about who you want to serve, who is it that you want to make a difference for. Who is it that you want to have an impact. And so you identify the ideal client that target market. And then you created positioning so that the firm that firm becomes the obvious choice for that. Duncan market. I love the term obvious choice because that that implies that when a prospect sees or hears about your company, your firm, it makes sense that they need to work with you, which is almost the opposite of a commodity.

So how how does a how does a firm, whether somebody owns an accounting firm or a bookkeeping firm, how do they do that? How do they become the obvious choice? It's really understanding the market. You know, it's understanding the market. It's understanding the needs, the problems, the challenges of that market. Because when we understand their needs, then we can communicate.

Yeah, from their standpoint. So we can from a state from the standpoint of their problems. Right okay. So essentially you're saying that that the first the first key is finding a target that you want to really seek to understand what motivates them. So so there's almost like two parts. They're finding the so so a firm owner needs to be able to find a target client that they say, I want to craft the perfect obvious choice solution for.

So so step one is defining that target. And then the step two is actually getting, you know, putting themselves in that person's shoes and speaking to them. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Oh okay. So let's start with us. Let's talk tackle the the the attract the target market, the target client, how you know, it. We've talked to a lot of accountants and bookkeepers over the years, and we asked them, do you have a target market that you're going for?

And it seems like half do and half don't. You know, a lot of accounting firms out there say that. Well, we can help anybody, which of course they can. But I think what you're saying is that of course you can help any business owner, but to attract them, you have to be able to be hyper focused. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yeah. You know, there is and, and and I see a lot of people getting stuck there because, you know, and they get stuck in the way that they're indecisive. They come to make a decision. And it takes them a long time to become to identify who that market is, because they are in this process of I gotta find who my target ideal target market is.

And I mean, there's big opportunities, you know, when you have a business. And that's how I grew my firm straight CPAs is my ideal client, was a business that was doing half a million in revenues to 5 million. So I kind of identified the revenue size. I was. Yeah, I wasn't thrilled to working with smaller businesses. And they would come and we would work with them.

But 90% of our clients would fall in this range, half 1 million to 5 million in revenues, because we were able to then provide this as a set of services and so forth, make a difference for them. And so identifying, you know, it doesn't have to be industry wise. You know, it doesn't have to be. It's nice if it is, but it doesn't have to be, you know, it can be a half 1 million to 5 million located in a certain geographic area or located anywhere in the country, whatever that is.

So we can kind of create some demographic and psychographics surrounding a broader thing, like small businesses and bring it down. Right. Bring it down to the people that we want to work with. That is a great start. That's how I've built my firm and I've helped others do do the same with with theirs without necessarily going into. Yeah, I only work with construction business owners or only work with dentists or, you know, you you don't have to.

It's great if you do, but you don't have to. So it doesn't have to be industry specific. It could be as specific as I want to work with, you know, business owners in this particular geographic area. So my home town or yeah, yeah or whatnot. So okay. So and then the other is and and criteria in, in my, you know in, in, in my ideal client in my target market is, you know, these are people that are growth minded.

You know, so I kind of added that criteria because I don't want to work with somebody that stuck in their ways and somebody who's like, I made $700,000 and that's where I want to be. It's like, no, you're going to bore me. We're not. We're not going to. You just want the status quo. Find an accountant that can just do compliance, because that's probably what you want.

But if somebody was, then you begin to like, yeah, I would say want anybody, I want to get to a million or I want to get to 2 million, your business in revenues, then that's a that's one of the criterias for us is, you know, having that. So so is it the is the key part of the key finding out what the business owner really wants and then making sure you're positioning your firm to speak to that.

So is that is that what you're saying. Yeah. Because a growth minded, you know, a growth minded entrepreneur who wants to grow that top line, that wants to grow their net income, they are going to want a CPA firm that can help them do that. So then the messaging is going to be around, do you want to get your cash flow, you know, in a better place?

You want to double your net profit, like that type of messaging is going to resonate with that business owner because they want to grow and they're looking for that firm. If that firm talks the language and you are your profits not growing as much in the growth minded business when it says, you know, yet you know they're not.

And I'm looking for somebody who can help me take it from, you know, from X2X. Or X to Y rather.

So if I mean they crack me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like a CPA or a bookkeeper should market their clients. Who should, should, should market to or position using your words position their, their offering in a way that speaks to the business owner that they want to target without actually talking about the services they perform. In other words, a CPA shouldn't market by saying I do better tax work, or a bookkeeper shouldn't market by saying I do better bookkeeping.

Because that's not what the business owner cares about. They care about doing the thing that that you now know that you're that they want. And so in your case, you wanted to target growth minded business owners that are doing between a half 1,000,005 million in revenue. So that's what your positioning was around, not around doing being a better tax person.

Is that correct 100%. Yeah. Yeah okay. So and that's a that is a very they say that again that's a commodity. Yeah. And that's a commodity not the lingo. You know that's not what resonates with that business owner. Right. Their day and night is filled with thinking about profits and growth and cash flow and so forth. And it's not about financial statements.

It's not about tax returns. That happens to be what you and I think of it is. CPA is totally. Yeah. So you can't you can't differentiate yourself from all the other bookkeepers, all the other CPAs, all the other technology software out there. You mentioned QuickBooks. We cannot compete with them by just saying we're we'll do a better job, but for cheaper, because that's your position yourself as a commodity.

You're positioning yourself so that that you charge less, which means you have to in order to make a lot of money, you have to work way more hours. And, you know, it's a recipe for burnout. So how I guess the next question is, once you've identified who you want to target and you've positioned them the right way, how do you actually do that?

How do you attract, how do you actually attract those people? How do you once you know, here's who you want to target and you've crafted this positioning statement, how do you go about go about doing it. So it's crafting that positioning statement right. It's really articulating that message okay. And it's going to get clear in our head.

And then it's got to get on paper because once we capture it on paper whatever that is in a word document or in a notepad or whatever it is, but then we've captured it, then we know this is it and we can stay consistent to it. Right. And one of the best places to to capture it is a website.

Right? That's one of the best places to capture our messaging and really work on it and hone on it, hold it down and really articulate it in the best way possible that somebody gets on a website, they read that messaging and they get it. It's like, oh wow, this guy, these guys get me. Wouldn't that be a great feeling?

Like coming to a website and reading, you know, the prospect coming, you know, reading it and say, well, these guys get me. They understand me. And I've heard that so many times from a business owner, when they come to the right spot, to the right site and it's a yeah, you get I mean, because, you know, you get what I have, what I'm going through because that's a great way to then start the conversation and take them from being called to being one to becoming a client and then lifetime value loyal client.

So the website's not necessarily to convert a client from being a cold prospect to a to a paying client. The website you're saying is, is really just there to, to get a cold prospect to understand that, you know, what they're going through and is to take the next step. And absolutely it is okay. It is so. So what does describe the perfect website then?

For a firm owner. So it's, you know, you know, we want to get their attention. So they come on the website and we if we start talking about us, you know, if we start talking about the firm, the accounting firm, then we're not talking. We're losing the focus on the prospective person. So we got to keep the conversation to the prospective customer.

Right. You know, it's it's much like going to a barbecue you or a picnic or an event and you meet a stranger and that stranger, that new friend, potential friend, all they do is talk about them. It's like the most boring conversation to have. Yeah. Isn't it with you? We've all been through that and I've been to the one too many times.

I'm like, man, I need to get out of here, right? I need to get out of this conversation and find somebody who is interested in me as well. Yeah. And so and the way to make it, you know, make, you know, for us to feel that somebody is interested in us is we've got to they've got to talk our language.

And from a business owner, from prospective clients coming on a website, we've got to talk about some of the problems that that prospective client is having. It's prospective business owner is having. And if we can get that on our website and capture that attention, like, are you looking to double your profits? Are you looking to, you know, minimize your taxes?

And if we can do that and capture their attention there with the headline. And then the next is the subheadline which gets the purpose of the Subheadline is to get them to take to go from the headline to the subheadline. That's it. And then from the subheadline, we've got to get them interested enough where they get into the first paragraph and we take them step by step and they start entering our world.

And we start this conversation with something that's going on in their mind. And we can take somebody from what's happening in their mind. They'll feel appreciated. They'll feel that they're understood so that you take them through that process. Yeah. Because people want to work with somebody that feels that they understand them and that can help solve their problems, which is why the positioning is so important.

The so in the first place, because it's something happening in their life. Yeah. They've got an account and but it's something's not right. Something is you know, there's some deficiency. Right. That's why they're out there looking, searching, doing something on Google search CPA yummy or what have you. And they've now landed on a website. Now we gotta take that from where they're at to the next stage.

So I guarantee you there's somebody listening that says, okay, I get it. I completely agree. And I have a website and I think it's pretty dialed in. How do I get somebody to my website? Great question. Yeah. All right. So now we, you know, we've got a storefront that's amazing. You know, it's got all the right things, right.

And there's so many right things. Minimum is 12 is like 12 or 12 point checklist that we have been designing a website. So there's like 12 things within this many, many more. And this website's got them all. Person comes on to their website. It's like how do we get as many people on to the website as possible? It's distributing.

It's putting the message out. It's getting found. It's being in places where our ideal clients are hanging out. Yeah, they're on social media platforms, on, on other platforms where there's forums happening, where they're doing searches and saying, hey, is there an account in here that can help me? And they come across the link to the website, the CPA firm's website, and they say, let me go and check it out.

And there's something a lead magnet some people value that we've created that gets on the web. That's on the website. Somebody says, yeah, let me check this out. You know what? I want to see if my current my eggs in my current account from existing account. And he's helping me with these seven tech strategies. So they, you know, and that's kind of the hook right.

Yeah. You know and it's it's a value add that we create. It's a lead magnet. We put it out on the website and we we publish it. We post it, we announce it. We we make people aware about it. Right. It's content marketing. It's education based marketing. So we create content. Put it out there. People say, yeah, let me check it out.

Let me read this. And they do. They come on the website and in the like the the article, the content like yeah, this is interesting. Let me check them out more. And so so this is the this is the type of stuff that you in your company help accountants with. Correct. It is. Yeah. Yeah okay. So what's the best way for people to reach you.

So the website CPA marketing genius.com okay. Right. That's a good place to go to. There is a couple of opportunities there. Contact us page scheduler call and so forth. To really start the conversation with my firm with my CPA marketing genius, to kind of see if they're the right to do the right fit. We can help you and so forth.

But essentially, you're doing the same thing that you advise the CPAs and and other accountants to do nothing. Yeah, 100%. All right. So CPA marketing genius.com. Excellent. Well, Saleem, thank you so much. I mean, this conversation I had 20 other questions I would love to ask you. Maybe let's schedule another podcast episode. But this has been, a lot of gold in this past 20 minutes.

Thank you so much for being on the show. My pleasure. And to everyone watching or listening, thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with Saleem and myself as we discussed how to escape the accounts trap. Bye for now.