The first question I’d like to talk about is your business background; where did you go to school, what did you study? What did you do after graduating that led you into starting your practice?

Well, after I got out of the Air Force I went to college and started studying computer programming in 1981. That morphed into accounting for ADP, auditing and the like. From there I got a job with Comprehensive Business Services. That’s where I got my first exposure to small business accounting, I got to see how their system worked, which was using telemarketing and outside sales reps to go get accounts. From there I finished up more schooling and worked as an auditor with the city of Jacksonville for seven or eight years. Following that I decided to open up my own firm in 1994. I attended the NCI Practice Development Seminar during that time and used your system to grow the firm myself. After three to four years of building that business I had a client with an idea for an internet business so I sold my firm and helped to develop this internet retailer selling clothing around the world. I did that for about a year, we worked on going public and did the whole dog and pony show. Then the bubble burst and I went back to managing the firm that I had built and sold. I did that for another year, decided it was time for a new change and I bought some cell phone stores and operated them for three years. Then I sold those. I laid around for about a year after that and then bought a truss plant and built trusses for houses and metal roofs. Then the housing industry fell by the wayside as you may have heard rumors about that (laughs.) I bought a CPA firm in 2008 that had been around since 1946. I took it over and started improving the systems and bringing them into the modern world. When I got things more or less settled down I knew I needed to grow it which brought me back to New Clients. I had attended the seminar and that had worked out great. I followed your methods to build my first practice.

That practice that you built up using the seminar, you said you sold that and went on to other things but do you remember the size of it when you sold it?

The practice was grossing about $225,000 a year. We probably had close to 100 monthly write-up accounts.

Was most of that a result of the marketing program?

Yeah, I had actually hired an outside rep to go out and get new accounts for me too and that worked for me. He had already had experience doing it too.

He had experience selling monthly accounting specifically?

Yes.

Interesting, it’s very rare to find a sales rep. that has experience selling accounting services.

True. It worked out great because he had actually built up the Comprehensive Company that I worked for and another firm in town, so he was an expert at it and he had great perseverance as a sales rep.

That’s incredibly important, in sales you have to stick with it and be a real self-starter. I’m not surprised he did well between experience and his drive. So after trying your hand at a lot of other businesses, you ultimately went back into business for yourself as a CPA and wanted to grow it. You had a good experience with the NCI program going back a while, when was it that you bought your current practice?

March of 2008. I have a lady that works for me answering the phones and probably a year or so after buying the practice I put her on the phone setting appointments for me and I was going out and signing up clients using the NCI system. I can close them but after a while I just couldn’t do it all myself.

You’re only one man.

At best! (Laughs) So once again, I knew what New Clients does and how you do it so I thought “I have to get somebody in here and we need to get a plan, a system.” And NCI provided what I was looking for.

How big was the practice when you bought it?

About $750,000.

You undertook the NCI Plan II Program, the Client Acquisition Program almost exactly a year ago. At the time did you have any reservations about upgrading into Plan II from your Seminar experience?

No. It all gets down to cash flow really. You have to make it work; you have to pay your bills. That was the biggest thing for me, making this thing pay for itself. And how fast can I wrap it up, how many people I need to add on. That’s all part of our different support features within the system to keep it flowing smooth. I know the program works, I just know because I’ve done it before. So there were no concerns about it there other than cash flow.

Since starting with the practice a year ago, how much billings have you been able to add through the marketing?

It’s going to be right at $150,000 or so.

Right at the guaranteed mark. (Editor’s Note: for those that don’t know, the Plan II program guarantees at least $300,000 in new billings within two years.)

Yeah, there’s no issue there.

Great. What advice could you offer somebody considering engaging in a marketing program like this? Keep in mind that there are a lot of people out there right now that I feel are hesitant to undertake something like this. Whether its money reasons or they’re worried about the economy, there’s not enough business out there, things of that nature. What would you say to somebody who’s thinking about ramping up their marketing with an NCI program?

Well, it works. I have no doubt about it working. There are certain times of the year when it works better, but it does work. There is business out there, no doubt. The program will work and you will get business. If people don’t know about you, they can’t use your service. You have to be in front of people for them to give you a chance. You can go the other traditional routes of referrals and what have you, and you might starve in the meantime. It’s an aggressive world out there – if you think that these larger firms aren’t doing the same, they are. They have their marketing consultants out there as well. If you want to compete, you have to be out there. That’s just the way the world is. Maybe people can survive on referrals and just building it organically like that, but I’m the kind of person that doesn’t want to wait for it to come to me. I’d rather go after it.

I agree, I think while that does work for some people, the problem with referrals and organic growth is that you have very little control over it. You’re at the mercy of your clients, family and friends giving you referrals. That may work up to a point but usually you hit a wall with it.

Yeah, we get referrals, we have a large client base but I don’t want to be at their mercy. I want to control my own destiny.

Exactly. That’s one of the other nice things about the program. Through growing the practice with the marketing, being aggressive and pro-active, you build up a large base of clients and from them you can expect more referrals than if you hadn’t done the initial leg-work of the marketing.

Especially with the downturn in the economy you have to replace clients. We had a lot of construction clients, people going out of business. So you have to have a program to replenish your client base.

That’s very sound advice. What is the most challenging aspect of the program in your experience?

The most challenging aspect is probably getting the right personnel. I think you need a unique individual that can multi-task. You’re multi-tasking on top of multi-tasking. It takes someone with a strong memory, capacity for detail and the minutiae of interacting with various different clients just to keep it together. You really want superstars. That’s the key to longevity and sleeping at night and not carrying everything on your own shoulders. You have to have the best people you can get out there.

You have to trust them.

Absolutely. If you get the best people you can delegate to them and that’s how you really want to build your business, because you can’t do it all. This all depends on the size of the business – if you’re just starting out, you’re going to be doing the returns. But my role right now is to develop the personnel and grow the business that way, to be a support as opposed to being in the trenches. That’s where my head is right now, but at any stage you have to have intelligent people that can grow with you. You have to get the best, I think, because it just does wonders when you have somebody that is a superstar.

Sure. That’s what everybody wants, the right people. We tell our clients that it comes down to the people that are implementing the program. As you mentioned earlier, the system is sound. We know that, it’s worked for 25 years. It all comes down to who your sales rep is and are they capable? Are they the right person for this job? It’s an important role because they are the face of the business, the driving force behind the marketing and the growth of the firm. You need somebody who can, like you said, multi-task and be organized with the sales skills to be social and close appointments. They have to be able to deal with the day to day paperwork and working with the appointment setters. Obviously the appointment setters have to be solid too because without appointments you’re not getting anywhere.

The processing is always a challenge. That’s why you have to get the work in. You need to get the best employees, and if you have to pay more it will ultimately be money well-spent. The system is designed to reward productivity.

Exactly, that’s what it’s all about. If you have a salesperson and they’re not performing, they won’t be making their commissions and won’t last long in the position. What would you say has been the most rewarding aspect of the program?

Well you can certainly see your numbers increase, and the bottom line as well. You can monitor it monthly and watch it happen. As far as scorekeeping goes, that’s a good thing.

What about for somebody who’s running the program like you are? Do you have any advice for somebody who’s in the midst of running it, as you are?

For me it was just having a good time and billing system. I want to know how much time we’re spending on these accounts. And the accountants, how well are they doing? Are they struggling or keeping up with the monthly fee structure? For us those things are very important, to keep note of all our due dates and what have you. To me, that’s all part of building a business. That was one thing that helped us out a lot, a good time and billing system.

Just making sure you get the most from your employees from a processing standpoint with handling clients and monthly work. Especially with a lot of new clients coming in, you want to get them into the fold and set up properly and quickly.

That’s right. Also you need to make sure services are being priced properly. Are the accountants spending more time on a particular account? What’s the problem; do they understand how to process it? Is there a communication issue? It opens up the ability to ask those questions and manage the staff. If you don’t get it into a format where you can easily visualize what the status of the account is then I don’t think you’ll be able to manage the practice as well.

From a pricing standpoint, you mentioned making sure the price is right which has its own set of issues sometimes, how have you found that to be with the CSR out there quoting clients? Is that something that you had to work on with them in the beginning? Have they gotten to a comfortable point with that?

If they get too hungry they’ll want to drop the price down so you’ve got to have guidelines. Sometimes in sales they just want to make a deal, but we want to make sure it’s a deal that works for everybody. It can be unfair to the accountants because they’ll have a monthly rate that’s not appropriate for the level of work. We want to make sure it’s fair all the way through the system. That’s the thing that you really need to watch out for.

Do you have a monthly minimum fee?

We’re around the $200 mark as far as a minimum.

That’s fairly standard for many of our clients, maybe even on the higher end but that’s a good thing.

We want to move it up as much as we can.

Being established helps you do that, setting the bar where you want it to be. Are you surprised at all by the results the program has been able to generate given the economy? I know you had faith in it from your prior experience but that was a long time ago.

No, I expected it.

I think that mindset takes you a long way too, you believe and you achieve.

Yeah, that’s what it was supposed to do.

So that brings you up to, in terms of your overall growth with the practice, $750-$850,000?

Yes.

Do you have an end goal in mind?

I’d say $1 million.

A nice round number, run the program for another year or so and you’ll be there! That’s a big milestone. You’ll have to let us know because then you’ll be a part of the NCI Million Dollar Club! Hitting that mark is a pretty special achievement. Is there anything you’d like to add Tim? Sum up your feelings about NCI?

One thing I will say about New Clients is that they’ve always done right by me. Bruce is a super guy, a real classy guy, and I’ve always enjoyed working with your company and I knew that NCI would deliver.

Again Tim, I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to sit down here with me. I’m glad that the program is doing so well for you and I hope for that to continue so you can hit that $1 million mark and beyond.

Chris Clark

Chris:  Adil, please tell me about your business background. What led you to starting your own accounting firm?

Adil:  Up until 2006 I had been doing everything from a senior revenue manager to a controller to a director of finance. Right before I started my practice I was doing independent contracting and I had a pretty lucrative contract with Freddie Mac. My contract was almost over and I was getting ready to go over to Fannie Mae. At this point I looked at the financial picture and realized I was only making half of the job’s compensation because there was a middleman taking a good chunk of it. So I thought, why don’t I have something of my own where I can work with people directly instead of worrying about going through middlemen. I felt that I could provide a much better service at a better price. At that point I decided I was going to start my own practice.

Then I was looking to come up with a plan. Where do I go? What do I do? So I did some Google searches and stumbled upon NCI. I searched terms like “practice management” and “how does a CPA start his business?” I called NCI and was given an overview of the marketing programs. I wanted to start and grow a business but I didn’t know where to start. I was looking for someone who could walk me through and guide me on how to set up my business and grow it. In researching NCI I looked over your money-back guarantee and your guarantee to increase billings. It was too hard to resist. I attended the Plan I Practice Development Seminar in December of 2006. I liked the program very much but my problem was my professional skepticism, which comes with the territory as an accountant. I wasn’t sure about upgrading to the Plan 2 CAP program because I wanted to prove to myself that it works first.

I got home from the seminar and I hired my first appointment setter in early January 2007. By January 10^th we had signed up our first client, who to this day is my client. We started out charging him $225 a month and now he’s up to $2,200 a month in fees. He has grown and we have grown, so it worked out pretty well. In that first year by around July, I knew that the $150,000 billing guarantee in a year included with the Plan 2 program was very achievable. We were already billing around $150,000 after seven months! At that point I had all the work I could handle, plus my skepticism in the program had been resolved, and I had the money to invest. I saw no point in waiting so in October of 2007 I upgraded to Plan 2 and with NCI’s help we hired our first Client Service Representative. He did not work out. The second CSR also did not end up working out, although he did bring in a lot of business. The third one worked out quite well.

I think it’s good for our readers to hear about something like that. We don’t always hire the right CSR out of the gate. No one could make that claim without lying. It’s not an exact science. The key is persistence.

Now here’s the part I don’t know if you want to mention or not. Things have worked out well for me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way and I love things the way they are. About two years ago I realized that there was a reason I wanted to go into business for myself. I wanted more time for myself, and I wanted to be able to spend more time with my kids and just have time for all the things I’ve wanted to do. So about two and a half years ago the business just kept coming in and I was getting busier and busier. I was already up to five employees by then. Things were going great but I didn’t have enough time for myself. I was comfortable where we were with the business and I didn’t want to keep growing to the point I couldn’t sustain it. We have clients that have come to us with horror stories from their experience with a previous CPA firm who didn’t have time for them. That is an opportunity to us. So I decided to take a break from the marketing and stop bringing in new monthly clients.

That’s fine, Adil. What you just described really covers the majority of our Plan 2 clients. Everybody has that point that they reach where they say “okay, I’m comfortable here. Growth is no longer a top priority.” At that point it doesn’t really make sense to continue to market.

Yeah. So I said I’m at about $350,000 in gross billings I bring home a nice income from that amount. That has allowed me to do the things I always wanted to do. I took cruises with my family, I took vacations with my kids, and I bought the car that I always wanted. So I’ve been doing all of that over the past two and a half years. Now this year, I said let’s pump it up once again. If I get to a point where it’s too much, then I can do what I did before and shut it down.

That’s another great thing about the program. You have it available to you when you need or want to grow.

Absolutely, so what I did to prepare was hire another CPA. All the new business that comes in is going to go to that CPA, plus I’m transitioning some of the existing business that I have over to him. I still interact with all my clients, they know me, but if they have general questions they know they can just call the office to get those answered. If they aren’t satisfied with that answer they can always call me.

So that is where I am.

I would like to grow the practice a bit more, keep it at that level for about ten more years and then sell it. There was a very nice office close to my previous location in a much better area. Our old building was a C-category building, were in an A-category building now. I had been in the old building for five years so I wanted to stay close to that location but upgrade the building and be in a much nicer place so that it will be more presentable to larger clients. So I bought this new office, I just closed on it.

Beautiful, congratulations.

Thank you. So I own the building now instead of renting, it’s a much larger office than before, with a nice conference room. I also started taking my own advice: I tell my clients to develop passive revenue streams on the side. I got together with a couple of friends and we started a construction company. That takes some of my time which is also partly why I hired my new CPA. That way I can check in with him and he can run my office, instead of me directly managing all of my employees.

You don’t want to spread yourself too thin. It sounds like you’re handling the growth of your practice very well. To recap, you said the program had generated about $350,000 in gross revenues from start-up and it took about two and a half years to get there?

Last year we grossed about $350,000+. Let me say it this way to put things in perspective, I made almost double last year what I was making at Freddie Mac as a consultant.

Wow, that’s excellent.

I drive a GL450 Mercedes Benz, which I always dreamed of and which I never would have thought possible before starting my practice with NCI.

That’s great. It’s a very special feeling to achieve a life-long goal like that.

Exactly, there are things we would all like to have where we say “one day I’m going to buy that” and it ends up on the backburner. Then all of a sudden you are able to make it a reality.  There is nothing like that feeling. It is an excellent feeling.

Did you have any concerns before upgrading to Plan 2?

The only concern I had in my mind was, at the end of the day it would be a salesperson I’m sending out into the field to make the sale. The product he is selling is basically my name, my reputation. That was my only concern. I wanted to be very comfortable with the salesperson that went out and represented me.

That’s understandable. This person is going to be the face of your business, essentially.

That was really my only concern. I knew that the package of service you recommend was unique. No other CPAs offer a monthly package of services where you get practically everything for one price. All of the items might not be applicable to a client today but when it is applicable to them tomorrow there is no additional cost. No other CPA firms do that. The way that I was able to sell the package of service under Plan 1, I knew that anyone could sell it as long as the person knows what they are selling and they have faith in that product. One of my previous CSRs, Sidney, religiously brought in four new clients a week. Every Friday he would bring in four signed agreements and four checks. That went on for quite some time. I’m at a point now where if I wanted to, I could just work January through April and take the rest of the year off. That would mean shutting down the office, letting everyone go and just working from home, which I don’t want to do.

Sure, your employees depend on you, plus you’re helping to stimulate the economy, creating jobs. These are all good things, especially right now. Can you tell me a little bit about the initial misfires we had with the first two CSRs?

The first one was a very nice, sweet lady. She demonstrated all of the qualities you would like to see in a salesperson during her interviews. The problem was that she could not close. Every sales call she went on came back as a TIO (think it over.) She would take “no” for an answer without an issue. So that didn’t work out. NCI then helped me hire my second CSR, Sidney. He started out and brought in all kinds of business. Then what happened was, Sidney’s significant other teaches piano or something like that and I had an acoustic music retail shop as a client. Sidney apparently was trying to setup some kind of side business with this client. He called me up and was very uncomfortable with the situation. After that some other things came to the surface and I had to let Sidney go. The third CSR that was hired was Jerry Israel. Jerry also brought in steady business but not to the level of Sidney. It got to a point with Jerry where I was ready to shut the program down and Jerry was ready to move on as well. Jerry is an excellent person, I think he is 82 years old now and he still works, for an insurance company now. He still calls me every once in a while. So the timing of it worked out for both of us.

What has been your biggest challenge in running the program?

Keeping the appointment setters motivated can be a challenge. I’ve gone through quite a few appointment setters. They get burned out very quickly. My appointment setter, Alisha, has been working with us for a while now and we are at a point where if she schedules me an appointment, I know that I have a 90% chance to go out and close that client.

She’s at a point where she now understands everything so well that she practically makes the sale before I even get out and meet the client. To keep her motivated I moved her to full-time. Sometimes she helps out with payroll and during tax season she helps with bookkeeping. She has started going to school and taking some accounting classes as well. So her motivations are quite different now. She spends four hours a day on the phone and the rest of the day she helps out in other ways which she likes because she is learning. She’s salaried now so she doesn’t have to worry about what hours she works. She’s been with me over two years now.

You’ve found a way to overcome that challenge. It can be tough to find someone who really “gets” that job so when you do find someone like that you need to find ways to keep that person motivated and happy because it is a very difficult task.

Absolutely. I feel that in a year’s time she will be ready to transition out of the appointment setter role completely. I will feel very comfortable bringing someone else in who she can train and supervise.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering engaging in one of NCI’s marketing programs?

I think that I should have started the NCI marketing program five or six years earlier than I did. Anybody that wants to do this needs to get up and do it, because once you go into the field and you start presenting your services to business owners you will find that there are many people who desperately need the help of a good CPA. Getting business for a CPA using the NCI program, believe it or not, is a no-brainer. It’s not a big deal to go out or send someone out and sign up business consistently. The big challenge is keeping up with the work. If your concern is not being able to find enough business then you need to speak with NCI. There is business out there, I don’t care what is said about the economy, there is a lot of business out there.

I think that it’s good to hear something like that for our readers. A lot of people are afraid right now; they don’t want to make any changes to their current approach due to the uncertainty in the financial market.

Right in the middle of the situation, when everyone was saying the economy is in shambles, the sky is falling two and half years ago I had to stop marketing because I was getting so much business! I got more than I could handle.

Can you offer some advice to someone currently running the NCI marketing program drawing from your experience?

I think looking back at the way I’ve run and managed everything so far, I would say it is as important to take care of your existing clients as it is to bring in new clients. One thing I have seen is that there is a tremendous opportunity to get more business from your existing clients. The reason is there are so many things out there that people want to do but they don’t know how.  A very simple example is a small company with five to six employees without a retirement plan or medical insurance benefits. Small business owners may not realize the benefits they receive by giving the previously mentioned types of benefits to their employees. When you put that out there and set that up for a client they will want to keep working with you on other projects. There is a tremendous opportunity to get more work from your existing clients. You must take good care of all your clients, there is a lot of hand-holding in the beginning but once that phase has ended don’t forget about those clients. That is something I struggle with; I try to stay in touch with all of my clients as much as possible. It’s obviously not possible to stay in touch with all of them constantly but at least let them know that you are accessible to them. Also keep an eye on who is sending you more business and who have been your long-term loyal clients.

I can see it being a real challenge to manage a large client base and to try and make sure that everyone is happy. That’s why you reach a certain point and you have to delegate to competent employees, which is what you are doing now with your new CPA.

That’s another thing for anyone currently running the marketing program. I got to a point where I became my own bottleneck in the business. Things would sit on my desk for up to two weeks before getting sent out because I did not have the time to get to it and everything had to go through me. Now when there is an IRS audit, I have everything ready and I don’t even look at it because I trust my employees to do good work. It has made my life so much easier. Having a good profit margin is nice but it’s not everything.

Plus at the end of the day you are only one man and there is only so much that one person can accomplish.

Every single small business person in this country, and I’ve worked with a lot of them now, are burning themselves out. They all have the same problem, working 12-15 hour days, crazy hours. Then they sit down to do their taxes and “I owe $25,000. Where did all the money go? What happens now?” You forgot to live along the way. Remember that.

You have to remember to enjoy the fruits of your labor; otherwise, what’s the point? Like you said earlier, taking vacations with your family, buying nice things, as a business owner you should have the flexibility and infrastructure to do those kinds of things.

You have to decide, do you want to be the handyman or the technician in your business or do you want to be the owner of your business? You cannot be both at the same time. The thing is, in the beginning business owners are very hesitant to hand over work to employees for fear of mistakes being made and their reputation being damaged. The key is finding the right people and spending time with them early on to train them properly. Yes, you will probably spend more time on that than by doing the work yourself but that is only temporary. Once your employees learn the job and really get going you will see a lot more getting accomplished than you could ever do on your own. It takes time to transition from being an accountant to being a business owner. Once you learn that and once you fill that role yourself then it becomes so easy for you to actually sell that point to your clients. You are able to be a much better business coach for your clients.

That makes sense, you have practical experience in running your business and you can apply that to your clients. Were you surprised by the growth you have been able to achieve during a terrible recession?

When I bought my car, I think it was last year on December 20^th when congress passed the law on special depreciation of luxury cars. On December 21^st I pulled my new Mercedes into my garage, I got out and looked at the car and I said to myself, “who knew?”

Chris Clark

As a follow up to my interview last month with Javier Goldin, CPA this month we are featuring his CSR Hamoon. This is a fairly lengthy interview but it’s full of phenomenal insight from a CSR who is growing his CPA’s firm rapidly over the past several years during this tough economy. Enjoy the interview and feel free to respond with feedback which is always appreciated.

Please tell me about your business background prior to going to work for the Javier at the Goldin Group.

I graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1995 with an economics degree. Out of college I got a job at a stock brokerage house. That taught me a lot, things like how to work in a team environment and learning patience and persistence through a high volume of cold calling. I also worked for a satellite office of Minnesota Mutual Life. There I did more business-to-business selling. In 2005 my mother became ill, so I stopped working to take care of her for two years. Then in January of 2008 I went to work as a CSR for Goldin Group.

So you’ve been with Goldin Group for almost four years. How much new business have you brought in during that time frame for him?

When I went to work for Goldin Group I believe he had around $60,000 in billings. By the end of 2008, the firm was up to about $250,000. We’ve been able to grow at a rate of $150,000 to $200,000 each year since and are now right at $600,000.

That is impressive growth, especially considering the current economic climate. Can you offer any advice to other CSRs in the program who are out there trying to sell in a tough market?

Knowledge is very important. You have to know the product. You have to understand that it is an intangible product being sold. You have to understand the services and what you are offering. You have to know what bookkeeping covers. Why are financials important? What are the five primary features and benefits of the service? That knowledge is key; you need to know the product inside and out and it takes time. When I started out I thought I was just going to be selling tax returns. I didn’t know about write-up and bookkeeping work. I wasn’t aware of all that goes into it between the bookkeeping, the financial statements, the consultations and tax planning and why it is all so important and needs to be done throughout the year. The bottom line is you will learn that over the first three to six months.

I have to say that your weekly coaching program where I participated in an hour long coaching call each week was a big help to me early on in grasping all of this. Another benefit to those calls was learning from and in turn helping my peers around the country. We would share ideas and address common problems, for example; how do you get the back work when it’s late in the year? How do you get them to sign up now versus waiting until the first of the year? I found that to be very, very helpful in overcoming all the roadblocks and objections you’re going to come across in this job. We also discussed developing rapport when you first walk into a sales presentation and asking open ended questions to do fact finding to find their pain and offer to solve those issues through the service and provide peace of mind to the prospect.

In doing this now for a few years I’ve learned that you have to play it by ear, you can get a sense of the energy in the room when you first walk in, if they have time for you or not. You become good at reading prospects and people in general. You get a sense of how comfortable or uncomfortable they are in the situation. I’ve gotten much better and much faster at figuring these things out.

I also make it a point to pre-qualify leads before going on appointments. What I mean by that is to go through all of the questions on the appointment report provided by NCI. Sometimes I discover that there really is no need for the service and so I don’t waste my time on that appointment. Pre-qualifying is a very important part of the process. When you walk into an appointment you know is of high quality, it instills you with confidence.

Is it you that makes these calls or do the appointment setters typically cover this information when they set the appointment for you?

It’s interesting. When we started the program we had two appointment setters and they would ask all the surface level questions. How long have you been in business? And so on. They aren’t really qualified to dig deeper and I didn’t expect them to. Once I had a good grasp on product knowledge I started doing pre-qualifying calls to dig deeper than the appointment setters could. Now we don’t have any appointment setters so now I do all of my own prospecting and closing. I cold call, I go to a lot of networking events plus we are working on search engine marketing through the company website and also on our social media presence. We get a lot of referrals now so the overall quality of appointments is much better then it had been when we started. We’re getting enough leads from these other methods that at this point in time we don’t need appointment setters.

Can you elaborate on your networking methods for our readers?

I started networking last year. I’m part of a group, Javier’s a member of BNI, and so we get referrals from these two groups; about one or so a month from each group. Plus I’ve networked with some banks. I have a really good contact at a bank who’s given us several referrals who have become clients. I network a lot with these types of people and companies because that’s where it’s complimentary and we can provide referrals back and forth. Networking has been crucial over the last year. We’re getting some contact requests on our webpage recently and we’re going to optimize the website to take full advantage of those. We understand it’s critical to have your website hunt for you because if a prospect expresses interest via your website that’s a warm lead.

You mentioned the importance of learning product knowledge. How did you go about that when you got started in this job?

When I went out on appointments for the first month or so Javier came out with me. I went on a couple appointments with Steve, the NCI representative who trained me the first week. Then after I signed up a client I would go with Javier on the client set-up meetings. Doing so was a very good learning tool because we talked about the structures of business, why you’re a C-Corporation rather than an S-Corporation, what are the tax savings, what are the liabilities. You learn all these things that over time make you far more confident when you’re presenting. I also spent time reading the NCI newsletters and on the NCI coaching calls for the first six months, both of which were very helpful. Of course I also asked Javier questions as I went along.

I think one thing is especially important: you yourself have to be sold on the product that you are selling. I am 100% sold on this product. For instance, if I were to go into business for myself, there’s no way that I would start my business without a CPA firm in my corner from day one. There’s no way, knowing what I know now. I tell prospects that if you don’t have a good financial structure in your business, if you’re flying by the seat of your pants, you are likely going to fail. That is the bottom line. I’ve become a lot more blunt on appointments because people actually appreciate and respond to that. Especially when we’re offering services at such a reasonable price, at 2% or 3% of a company’s gross, it’s still very reasonable and we even charge less than that in many cases. So to not put a relatively small investment into such a critical piece of your business is just foolish. That’s the number one core principle I’d like to relate to all new CSR’s. Learn the product and believe in the product because it gives you conviction.

Another important thing to remember is that if a prospect says “no”, it just means “not now.” It doesn’t mean, “Never.” I remember that coming up during one of the NCI coaching calls. I’ve had a number of clients sign up 6+ months after our initial meeting where they said they were not interested. If you go into a meeting sporting a nice appearance and you’re professional in presenting your product in a clear and concise manner and they don’t buy, you have still left a good impression. They will remember your professionalism; we’ve had prospects that didn’t go with us but have given us referrals. They gave us referrals because we were professional; we weren’t pushy or high pressure.

My pipeline is large. I’ve had plenty of people say no to the service and then call me out of the blue months or years down the line. Over my four years I’d say it happens at least four times a year. People that I thought had no interest in working with us call two years later and say, “Look, things have changed” and now they want our service. Things change and you have to keep that in mind. Always stay positive and professional and good things will happen. Be persistent, be patient, always follow up, but be respectful.

The equation goes: too much time on too few prospects equals not enough sales. You have to understand that there are so many, many businesses that need this product. There’s so much opportunity, but we all have our slumps, every salesperson goes into slumps. However, what gets you out is believing in the product, having the abundance mentality that there’s a need for what I’m selling and believing that your firm is the best and will deliver on your promises.

What would you primarily attribute to your great success over these past three years in obtaining so many clients during a very difficult economic period?

What I can tell you is that the recession and the economy are factors I can’t control and you can’t control. What I can control are several things: I can control my activity level and I can control my knowledge. The key is being active and understanding that this product that we’re selling, recession or no recession, you need it, you have to have it and you have to intrinsically believe this. So it’s going to be difficult because of the fact that the economy’s in a bad place, but when I’m talking to clients I tell them, “When business is slow, and expenses are still rising, you need a good accountant to maximize your deductions and lower your tax burdens so you keep more of your gross.” At the end of the day it’s not what you make, it’s what you get to keep. If you don’t do any tax planning throughout the year, right there you’re missing out on opportunities to save money. That being said, you have to stay active and try different methods or reaching prospects – the bottom line is activity, if you stay busy good things will happen for you and you will continue to learn.

That’s really good advice. Like you said, the economy is out of your control – why even think about that?

As you know in sales, most of the time they’re really buying you. So you have to dress appropriately, have the right image, be very empathetic, and be human. You can’t just go out there as a slick salesman in a seersucker suit. They have to know that you can help them and be personable.

It’s relationship selling. You’re starting and developing a relationship.

The relationship starts from that first call, the first cold-call. When you speak with even the gatekeeper, you have to understand that there’s a reason why they are answering that phone; they’re trained to get rid of telemarketers, they’re trained to not let you talk to someone. But if you build a relationship with that person, you’re nice and professional and follow up respectfully, you’ll get through. And I have, many, many times. When I bring a prospect to the office I think of them as a friend that I brought in for Javier to help. When you have that in mind that you brought a person in because he or she has a need and I know that we can solve it, you’ll see that people can genuinely tell.

What advice would you give to other accountants that are thinking about doing this kind of marketing program? Keep in mind that a lot of people right now are tightening their purse string.

This is a marketing program. Marketing is an investment that you must have. If you don’t have a marketing program, if you don’t take 3-5% of gross and put it into marketing, get out of business. The bottom line is this, to those that are tightening their purse strings: don’t tell me you’re not going to put any money into marketing. You have to be willing to invest in marketing that works, so decide what your marketing budget is and start this program!

If somebody’s in business they want to grow and make money, obviously. That’s what people get into business to do, and there are other reasons but it’s mainly to grow, make money and bring in more clients. Even now, to replace lost business, you need to market effectively, aggressively, and consistently, I think. It’s not an expense, it’s an investment.

It is an investment. I tell them, “Don’t think of it as an expense, think of it as an investment. No matter what your purse strings are, tighten it up to the level you can, and start. Don’t even think twice, start! You have got to have it. If you don’t have a marketing plan you’re not serious about succeeding, if people don’t know about you how can you help them?

What’s your favorite part of this job?

I enjoy the freedom of it. I can control my activity, I can do what I think is right to get business, to get results. If I think I should go out and do networking instead of cold-calling, I’ll do that. If I think I should go talk to some clients to get referrals, I’ll do that.

What’s the most challenging aspect of this job?

I would have to say the slumps. Especially at the beginning, though now it’s starting to get more consistent for us, it’s kind of feast or famine sometimes. You have times where you’re selling 5-7 accounts per month, and then some months, typically in the summer where it can be slow. That can be brutal and it can kind of get you down. Lo and behold, the seasons change and people start thinking about taxes and accounting again and all of a sudden you’re flooded.

That’s where we are right now; this is the best time, heading into and during tax season. Traditionally this is the best time to market and bring in new clients.

Yes, this month has been great for us with six new clients from a mix of networking, referrals, and cold-calling.

At this point you have the pipeline built up, and that’s another nice benefit of being there for a few years. You put in the hard work, learn everything and set it all up and some of the process becomes more automatic and you end up with more leads coming in then early on.

I just wanted to add about the pipeline that is such an important piece of any sales job – if you don’t build a good pipeline it’s difficult to succeed. What I want to say is that when I was doing marketing training for the first six months on the NCI coaching calls, one of the things our instructor said is, “Look, we all have pipelines. We have people who said, ‘no, I’ll call you later.’ It’s been six months to a year, resurrect some of these people! You never know. Call them six months or two years later, whatever. Just ask if anything’s changed. You will not believe but you’ll resurrect 4 out of 50 and that can make half your month.” The bottom line is, if people told you they’ll call you or to follow up, a random e-mail or a quick call and you never know. At the start of each New Year especially I go through my pipeline and see what I can resurrect. It’s far easier than planting a new seed and trying to get it to grow.

I’m not surprised that you’ve been as successful as you have been, Hamoon. You say a lot of the things we emphasize in the training and you have a lot of the characteristics that we look for in a sales rep. It’s a lot of work, especially in the beginning, but I think you’ll agree if you put the work in and you have the right work ethic, it pays off.

It really does, and this is the kind of business where if you stick with it over time you really start to see rewards. Especially if you’re getting some sort of trail on the work that you’re doing, the residual income over time if you stick with it and you’re getting a lot of new clients can be very helpful. Keep that long-term mentality in mind.

I appreciate it Hamoon, good luck moving forward and through this next tax season. Thank you so much, this has been great.  

CEO’s Note: Having read all of the interview articles conducted by NCI regarding successful CSRs along with my experience having worked with hundreds of these individuals over the past 26 years I offer the following:

Hamoon, in this five page interview, has provided a blueprint for success as a CSR that has larger implications in business and life in general. To anyone selling accounting services keep this article handy and read it when you need a lift or to reinforce the habits and procedures that will help make you more successful.

To your success,
Bruce Clark

Success Stories
Javier Goldin in Bethesda, MD

My interview this month is with one Javier Goldin. Javier is a very well spoken and articulate man as you will see shortly. He has been able to grow from start-up to having a $600,000 practice over the past three years. Javier gives some great insight into how the NCI marketing program has made him so successful, despite the terrible recession we have been faced with. He also talks about the personal touches he has added to the program to enhance his success. Javier understands the tremendous importance of having and following a marketing program right out of the gate when starting a new business. He started with the Plan I seminar program and quickly upgraded to Plan II in order to make his dreams a reality. Read on to learn more about Javier’s amazing success.

Please tell me a little about your business background before you started your CPA firm?

I was in upper management in the Finance Department for a large multi-national called The Organization of American States. It’s about a $350 million a year company. I worked there for 23 years.  Basically, what happened, is I had gotten to the top at a relatively young age and I had a choice of remaining there and getting a good salary without doing much or striking out on my own and finding something challenging.

So you decided to take matters into your own hands and start a practice at that point. Where did you go to school initially?

I have a bachelor’s in accounting from George Washington University, and an MBA also from GW.

My father, Bruce, told me you’re a black belt in Tae Kwon-Do? He wanted me to ask you if you’re still training, and how has the karate training helped you in terms of being a successful business person?

I am still training although the training is far less intensive now that I’m not a kid anymore. The answer to your question is yes. How has it helped in business? You know, martial arts, and every sport to some extent develops discipline and discipline is a very useful character trait as a business person. So has it helped? Absolutely, when you own a business you need a lot of discipline, consistency and patience.

It’s no easy task to start and effectively run and manage a business and I can see discipline being immeasurably important in that process. I know it has been for Bruce.

As a matter of fact, Bruce invited me to speak at one of the seminar a couple of years ago and we found the martial arts training to be a common denominator.

Yes, we like to have our successful clients to talk about what they’ve been able to accomplish through the program.

So what I brought forth at that meeting was the result of a survey that had just been done by the University of Pennsylvania that tracked various Ivy League students to see who had succeeded as a business person. The result was that those who succeeded were not necessarily the most intelligent but rather those who kept at it, those who had consistency, patience and grit. It was a great study. So the moral of the story is that in business, although a minimum level of intelligence and technical knowledge is required, it is mostly about consistency, having clear goals, a business plan and following it.

Very true, that study brings to mind a quote from Calvin Coolidge; “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

Were you doing any marketing prior to your relationship with NCI? If so, what kind of marketing were you engaged in?

We had taken the Plan I with you guys, and that was the first initiation into marketing our accounting services. We had implemented and we were actively executing Plan I.

So before the seminar you really hadn’t done any marketing?

I began the firm and immediately took the Plan I. The business plan included learning how to market. The marketing strategy from the beginning was to partner with a large national marketing firm, learn an effective system of marketing and then execute it.

I see, so it was part of the plan from the beginning. What was it that made you choose NCI? Do you remember when you were doing your research and looking at companies that could help you with your marketing?

I came to know NCI through a colleague, another CPA who had struck out on his own after leaving the corporate world. He had built his business with NCI so it was on his recommendation that I undertook the NCI Plan I Seminar.

Can I ask you who that person was?

Yes, he just took Plan II program with NCI. His name is Miguel Zavaleta.

How much in billings did you have when you started the Plan II program?

I opened the company sometime in May 2007, by the end of 2007, I had between $50,000 to $60,000 in billing. Then, in January 2008, I began Plan II. By the end of 2008, I was around $250,000.

Wow, that’s excellent. So, within one year you added close to $200,000 in new billings under Plan II. From there where have you gone since the end of 2008 in terms of practice growth?

This year we’re going to be over $600,000.

That’s some tremendous growth at a rate of about $200,000 added per year.

Right, in addition I’m finalizing the purchase of a small firm so that will translate into a tremendous jump for the next year

What’s the size of the acquisition that you’re thinking about?

They have billings around $170,000.  We are getting a good price and a great opportunity.

Do you still work with a CSR?

Interestingly enough, it’s the same CSR that NCI helped me hire under Plan II. He has been with the company for three years running.

Have you made any adjustments to the program now that you are three years into running it?

We have clarified and defined the services we are providing to a far greater degree. We have a buffet of services that clients can choose from. For example, when we talk about providing accounting services, it includes just accounting and compliance. It does not include tax planning. That is a different option that they have to choose.  Tax planning is packaged with tax return preparation. I’ve gone to great lengths in parsing the services and that’s been tremendously helpful in boosting revenue.  We have also added additional services like payroll, processing of payables and business coaching.

What has surprised you most about the results that you’ve been able to achieve through the program, Javier?

If I had to point to one item, it would be the fact that it works both in an up and down economies. It’s a technique that works in every economic cycle and does not need much tweaking

That’s interesting, and obviously given the fact that you’ve been growing at such a tremendous rate over the past three years, it’s a testament to that fact seeing as we’re in the middle of a terrible recession.

To be fair and we are constantly supplementing the program, trying different things. We are exploring social media, search engine marketing and increased networking. We have created new packages of services that are provided on an as needed basis. These changes have worked well for us.

You have to stay sharp and fresh and I think change is a good thing when it comes to that. With marketing a lot of it comes down to trying different things and carefully tracking your results, adjusting accordingly. What were your major concerns before you upgraded into the Plan II program, or if it makes more sense, before you signed on with the seminar program?

What every businessman is concerned about; will the investment pay off? This is always the greatest concern.

What has been the most challenging aspect of the program in the three years that you’ve been running it?

I think the most challenging aspect has been the need to integrate the marketing to the processing end of the business. There have to be processes in place to make everything run smoothly. This is a seasonal business, so if you bring five clients in any one month, the challenge is how do you integrate them in such a way that nobody falls behind. It is the integration of the marketing with every other aspect of the business; making sure all the new clients are taken care of.

If you can’t deliver on the promises that your sales rep makes then you’re probably not going to have that client very long.

Right, and if you have a few clients coming in at the same time and they happen to be large, then it’s extremely challenging. It’s a lot of work all at once, especially when you factor in back work. Getting the client set up and getting to know them and their business is a lengthy process.

That’s definitely one of the more challenging aspects judging by the people I talk to. Conversely, what have been the most rewarding aspects of the program for you, Javier?

I would point to a couple of factors. One is that it works in every economic cycle as we discussed. This is very comforting; you have a system that is time-proven. The other aspect, which is more specific to Plan II is the fact that it was very personalized and customized approach to teaching our company how to market well. With the Plan II, one of the greatest advantages is that you have someone from NCI who comes to your office for a length of time and takes you step-by-step through the process. That adds a tremendous degree of confidence. It’s one thing to take a class; it’s an entirely different thing to have someone here that’s coaching you.

Absolutely, that’s certainly a big selling point of Plan II is that one-on-one interaction with our senior account executives who have a lot of experience both in selling accounting services and training others to sell those services.

That’s a great thing that you guys did, it really appeals to the more psychological aspects of the business rather than the merely technical and it’s very important to make that distinction.

You guys are technicians so a lot of the time I think the marketing side in a typical accounting firm gets a short shrift, which is a mistake. You need to market no matter what business you’re in.

I agree completely, any accountant that does not understand that this business is about selling shouldn’t be in business. It’s that simple. One should be selling all the time.

I feel like it gives you peace of mind having that system in place, where if you need to replace some lost business or grow to the next level, you have the means and tools and structure to do that. How has the success of the program improved your overall quality of life?

One of the main concerns that we all have is financial stability and security. The more the business grows, the easier one can breathe and concentrate and enjoy other aspects of life. To be able to place one’s financial life in the proper context by virtue of the growth of the business is just a tremendous thing in life. You don’t have to worry every day about where the next dollar is coming from because you know the business is doing well. The point I’m trying to make is that the more the business grows, the more your life improves because financial concerns are not first and foremost.

Having that financial security provides peace of mind knowing that your financial needs are being met. That’s something a lot of people are struggling with right now and when you’re struggling there it bleeds into all the other aspects of your life. Ironically you can’t put a price on that peace of mind you have when your bills can be paid easily every month etc.

One final question, in talking to accounting firms all over the country, we know that a lot of them are worried about spending money due to the recession. Everybody is scared and hesitant to make any real changes to the status-quo before things get resolved with the economy. How would you categorize the return on your investment from the marketing programs you’ve invested in with NCI and how would you counsel those firms that are tightening their purse strings?

When we sell our accounting services we tell everybody that this is not a luxury, it’s an investment. Every business must have accounting services or else their chances of growing and succeeding are greatly diminished. Inversely, they’re greatly maximized once you have a CPA on your side and the financial infrastructure that we can provide. Similarly, marketing is an investment – it’s not a luxury item. Every company should have a marketing budget in every economy. Granted, depending upon the economy, you can choose different mediums for the marketing and invest different amounts. But marketing should be an ongoing budget item in every company. If you observe the well-run companies, the largest companies, McDonald’s, Dell, Apple, the marketing never stops. You get marketing year-round, regardless of how the economy does.

Massive amounts of money, time, effort and staff are devoted to marketing in those massive successful companies.

Right, for example, Dell is currently not doing great and yet still invests tremendous amounts of money in marketing. The advice is that marketing is a budget item that should be on every business plan just as accounting should be.

Very well said, I imagine it’s safe to say that you are pretty pleased with your return on investment at this point?

I’m very pleased with the return on my investment. I would do it again if I had to do it over.

Beautiful, that’s all I have for you Javier. I must say, you are an incredibly articulate gentleman and it’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

Thank you, it has been my pleasure. Thank you for calling on me and asking me to talk about my company.

Can you just sum up your feelings about NCI and our marketing approach?

NCI has refined a marketing technique that is time-tested and I would recommend any other accounting firm to invest the money in a technique that works.

Again, thank you so much for your time, kind words and insight.

Chris Clark is the oldest son of New Clients Inc. founder and CEO Bruce Clark.  He has worked as a Senior Account Executive at NCI for the past four years.  During that time he has presented at the Practice Development Seminar on Internet and Email marketing and he also plays the prospective client during the seminar role play sessions.  Chris also edits and contributes to the NCI newsletter, New Client News.

This month I interviewed Lorraine Greenwald, one of Joe Pancerella’s appointment setters. We chose Lorraine to interview because she has been with Joe for over two years now (about a decade in appointment setter time…) and has been an instrumental part of the tremendous success the firm has seen over the past two years (over $430,000 in new business billed and collected!). We have already interviewed Joe, himself, and last month I interviewed his CSR, Tim Kline. To complete the picture, we decided to do our first-ever interview with a successful appointment setter.  My goal was also to see if Lorraine could provide some tips on how to be successful in the difficult field of appointment setting. Read on to hear what she had to say.

Chris: Can you tell me a little bit about your background.  Were you working for Joe before you started in the appointment setting role?

Lorraine: No, I worked 20 years ago for a CPA firm but my background is in banking. Well, first of all, I’m a nursing school drop-out. That was my background. After two years of going for my RN, I decided I just didn’t want to be a nurse. So I went into banking as a bank teller and worked myself up into credit; I had 16 years in the banking industry. That was my forte: banking. I traveled extensively; I’ve been to and lived in for three years. So I was back and forth and, after banking, I worked for a friend who was a CPA. Then, I didn’t work for a while and I took a job at Progressive Business Telemarketing. We tried to sell CD-ROMs to corporate businesses. It was not for me but I did it at the time to get back into the working world.SwitzerlandEurope

That probably gave you a decent understanding of the importance of accounting work and the financial aspects of it.

I’ll tell you, though; bankers and accountants are like dogs and cats. They do not get along. Debits and credits to a banker are totally different than to an accountant. It was tough for me in the beginning. I help Joe out with the taxes during tax season, as well. Once the return has been reviewed and completed, I package it up and contact the client to let them know it’s ready.

Were you one of the initial appointment setters selected by Pete Borrelli?

No, I recently found out that I was actually Pete’s third choice and Joe’s second choice. About six weeks in, one of the original people hired wasn’t working out, so I got a call. The other original appointment setter, Sarah, was the one who trained me. The training and approach was strictly by the book and we don’t deviate from what has selected for us to say.

What was the most common objection that you heard, and how would you handle that?

“I already have an accountant,” is by far the most common objection. In the beginning, that was sometimes difficult to approach.  I would use the rebuttal in the script and I would do my best to listen to and acknowledge whatever the prospect was telling me. I also make it a point to stress that not all accounting firms provide the same services; they vary widely, which many people don’t realize.  Then, the next key words are, “Does your accountant offer QuickBooks consulting?” We are experts in QuickBooks, so if I have an opening there, that will sell it.

So this would work for someone who was using QuickBooks but their accountant wasn’t interacting with the client’s QuickBooks files directly.

Exactly.  I really have my rebuttals down at this point; that was difficult in the beginning. I have noticed in the past year that due to the economy, the new business lists are not as golden as they had been, because people do not have the money to invest right now. The objective, if I can give some advice, is to listen and acknowledge. You start to get a feel for whether they’re listening to you or not. In the script, when I say we specialize on the needs of small- to medium-size businesses and we have a program that could potentially help you control costs, pay less tax, and improve profits. I always make sure to emphasize those last items. The key, though, is to listen and acknowledge whatever their circumstances may be. Also, you can’t do this job more than maybe five hours a day. You won’t even notice that you’re faltering, but the person on the other end of the phone will hear it in your voice. You also have to get comfortable with the script; at this point, I know it so well I don’t even have to look at it, but it takes time and practice to get to that point. You also have to know your product, know what is being sold.  I know what everyone does here in the office.  I know we have great accountants. Our clients come back to us because they know the work gets done meticulously. If somebody says, well, my accountant did this to me, there’s no way you should lose that one. If they are disgruntled or unhappy with their accountant, that’s who we’re looking for.

What were some of the main reasons people agreed to an appointment?

Right now, I would say, because we’re in the fourth quarter and we’re heading towards tax season, I’ll get people saying it’s going to hurt their budget and they have back work. So I say we specialize in getting them up to date on their back work. One of the keys is getting through the gatekeeper, which can be very difficult. Sometimes no matter what you do, you won’t get through, so in those cases, I usually ask to be transferred to voice-mail.  In that way, I can at least try to make an impression in my message. I leave a detailed, articulate message and I always end it with, “I look forward to hearing from you.” If I do get the decision-maker on the phone and get them talking, maybe they’re curious or a little interested. I always try to emphasize that not all accountants provide the same services, so doesn’t it make sense to compare?  People also would respond to other elements of the script: “improve profits” will jump out at most people. If they tell me, “It’s not a good time right now,” I always push to try and get their e-mail address to send additional information. Between the messages and the information that we send out, people do call back. Plus, our website is phenomenal.

Yeah, I’ve seen Joe’s website; it’s very nice. He uses all the NCI-recommended bells and whistles and it shows. Would you give out the web address to prospects?

No. I was told not to do that; I try and get their e-mail address and either e-mail or mail information. If someone were to ask for the website address, I would, of course, give it out.

So, the idea was to get information to them rather than relying on them to take their own initiative and go to the website, which makes sense. What kind of success have you had calling on new businesses?

In the beginning, it was great. Lately, with the state of the economy, it has become more difficult.

How do you keep yourself from getting discouraged on tough days where you don’t set any appointments?

You have to be focused. If you aren’t focused, the time will just drag. You have to go on to the next call because somewhere down the line someone will hear what you have to say and be interested. It’s a numbers game. The rejection itself doesn’t bother me at all, though. I’ve heard it all at this point (laughs.)

To what do you attribute your success and longevity in the position?

I think part of the longevity is because it’s only four hours a day. I can handle that. I tend to get in the zone when I’m calling and go straight through the four-hour shift; I don’t take a break. I know that eventually I’ll find someone who will hear me out and be interested. I don’t let myself get distracted and I make sure to keep my enthusiasm and energy levels high. I’m offering a terrific service; you can’t beat it.

What were your interactions like with the CSR, Tim Kline? How did he help you with your job and how did you help him with his job?

Well, we both had each other’s back. We would try to work out any mistakes in the process early on. He critiqued me in the beginning and he wanted me to be more aggressive.  He also made it a point to have us explain that the appointment would last between 30 minutes to an hour and to be clear on some of those details, because, otherwise, the appointment quality isn’t there. We had a few appointment setters who would set appointments and then Tim would show up and they wouldn’t know what was going on. To Tim’s credit, when he got a foot in the door on a quality appointment, he would most likely get a sale. Tim is fantastic.

What kinds of questions would you ask a prospect who was interested in setting an appointment?

Early on, we missed some important questions and Tim helped us work that out. Some of those things will come back to haunt you. Sometimes prospects will not give you all the information you need. As an example, maybe I spoke to “Anne Smith” and it turns out she is not actually the owner of the business. Or it’s an LLC and there are partners who have to get involved in the decision-making process. Tim had us ask the prospect, “Are you the decision-maker or can you please make sure all the decision-makers will be present at the appointment?” I would also go through the questions on the appointment report, like, “How long have you been in business?” I also made it a point to always double check the address and e-mail.

I love that about the e-mail address. I test appointment setters for NCI and, in all the tests I’ve conducted so far, I think I’ve been asked for my e-mail address maybe one time. It’s important, too, because if they aren’t interested now, that’s fine; we’ll get the e-mail address and stay in front of them that.  Down the road, something very well may change in your favor, but you have to stay in front of people or they forget all about you.

That’s true. Another thing that I think worked in our favor is that, in our area of PA, people were shocked by the approach. You’re an accounting firm that wants to send a sales representative to meet with me.  What? Huh? It was practically unheard of around here and it has worked out quite well.

What advice do you have for all of our appointment setters out there doing this tough job?

The days can feel long sometimes. My best advice is to take a deep breathe, listen and acknowledge. You’re going to get very frustrated if you allow yourself to become frustrated. The key, though, is to listen and acknowledge, and it’s not easy. A younger person is probably going to be thinking 300 different things while trying to do this job. You have to be able to focus on the task at hand for those four hours.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by listen and acknowledge?

What I mean by that is to really listen to what each person is saying. Not just their words, either, but their tone of voice. You need to listen for verbal and vocal cues that will help you to open up a dialogue with that prospect. You’d be surprised. I’ve had people open up to me about some pretty intimate details. You have to have empathy to get them to open up to you like that.

What is the most rewarding thing about this difficult job?

I’m most proud of the fact that the process starts with me.  We have signed and secured a lot of great, profitable clients over the past two years and many of those started with me. That feels pretty good and I know it means a lot to Joe.

I know Joe is thrilled with the amazing results his sales team has been able to generate. Thank you so much for you time today, Lorraine. It was a pleasure interviewing you and you gave a lot of great insight and advice for our many appointment setters across the country.

Our interview this month is with what has to be the most successful CSR working in the program over the past two years. He was so effective, in fact, that he sold himself right out of his job after adding $432,000 (not an annualized number but, rather, billings collected over two years) in new business. That can happen in the NCI marketing program; most accounting firms can only handle so much new business over the course of a few years. Tim worked for Joe Pancerella, CPA, who now teaches the NCI Advanced Processing Seminar, taking over for Duane Gravley. Joe recently decided he’s had enough growth and so Tim Kline, his CSR, was now on the market. We extended an offer to have him work for NCI given his amazing track record and intimate knowledge of the marketing program. Tim has accepted that offer. I got a chance to interview him about the vast experience he has accumulated over the past two years and also his keys to success. Read on to see how a true professional gets the job done.

Chris Clark: Please tell me a little bit about your sales background prior to working for Joe Pancerella, CPA.

Tim Kline: Sure. Primarily I was a principal in an equipment leasing and financing company and basically we secured funding from banks that underwrote for us in order to provide leasing and finance options for business owners who wanted to purchase equipment for their business. I was doing that for years.  I also had a stint with Citizens Bank as a business banking officer. My responsibilities there were to form banking relationships with business owners; lending relationships. I would sell market loan products, checking and savings accounts, that sort of thing.

How was it that you came to work for Joe?

I had gotten back into the equipment leasing and financing arena after my stint with Citizens because there was some opportunity there. When the banks hit the crisis in ’08-’09 and stopped lending, I decided to look for other opportunities and came across the opportunity with Joe Pancerella, which I think was a referral from a salesperson I knew in another field.

How did you benefit from the training that you were given by NCI?

I think it was valuable for many reasons. It gave me a refresher course on some principles of selling in general, but it also gave me a clearer understanding of how to market the accounting service. I really didn’t have much of an accounting background even though in my other position with the bank I was able to read a financial statement. I think the training helped me understand the industry better and it also gave me some nice selling techniques. It was more a review for me where it helped to hone my skills that I had and helped remind me of things I was taught years ago but had not been using consistently.

That makes sense. Obviously, we always look for very seasoned salespeople for these positions and you had that experience and as an added bonus it was within the financial realm.

Exactly, it was a fairly easy transition and I had pretty much always been selling intangibles, and that, again, was pretty easy for me.

What was a typical day like for you when you were working as a sales representative for Joe?

Busy. A typical day would be a combination of starting off with the appointment setter calls and then following up with the appointments, going out and meeting with prospects.  If I was in an area and had a little bit of time between appointments I would drop off some cards to local businesses that I thought might benefit from our services. I would keep an eye open for new businesses and grand opening signs when I was driving or walking. I also had a lot of follow-up – one of the things I had a nice success rate with was the TIOs [Editor's note: TIO stands for Think It Over] I’d look at the TIO as more or less a backburner sale that was going to happen at some point. I kept a pretty nice log of TIOs who I kept after: that was a benefit to me because I was pretty steadfast with my follow-up to them and I got a lot of those businesses to sign up at a later date.

That persistence is hugely important because people aren’t always going to buy right now but down the line things can change on their end. If there’s some interest initially, you plant some seeds, cultivate them, and you’ll more than likely get the sale down the line.

The key is staying with them. That’s where I thought I had a good strength: my follow-up ability, keeping up with warm leads consistently. Even if it was a lukewarm lead, I’d still stay on top of it and try to make sure I’d call them on the days they told me to call them.

It’s a balancing act, you want to be persistent but you don’t want to overdo it and you also don’t want to let too much time go by between contacts.

Yep, that’s a very important skill, too, to be able to do that. You don’t want to brow-beat people but sometimes I found myself saying, “You need this. Whether you decide to do it now or later, it’s going to be more beneficial to do it now and get your ship righted. The people I would see on these appointments were often disorganized. If a prospect has all their ducks in a row and has no problems and everything’s going smoothly, that’s not necessarily going to be a real good prospect. A prospect is one that is dissatisfied with his accountant because of certain reasons, whether it’s a lack of communication or poor advice, or their books are just botched up because they don’t have the time to do it. So you have to impress upon them that they need it, if they’re going to stay successful or want to become more successful they need to work on that. That’s something I always try to drive home.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Fear of losing your business, your livelihood, that certainly will keep someone up at night and you can provide them a solution and peace of mind. What was the most rewarding thing about the position to you?

Well, the compensation wasn’t bad, but when I walked out of the office of a client that I had just signed up, I would say “When I leave, you can take a deep breath and say, ‘I don’t have to worry about all these issues anymore. It’s under control.’” That made me feel really good, the fact that a lot of people who were having problems now felt that things were going to get better after signing up with me.

What was the most challenging part of the job for you?

Probably managing the pick-up week for the clients’ work was the most difficult. That week got to be very hectic for me. We had a lot of clients that I had to see, and with the way I am, I was probably my own worst enemy. I would accept appointments those days as long as they were in my area. I think the most challenging thing was keeping everything organized during this week.

What would you say is the single piece of advice that you could give to other CSRs and accountants who are going to be reading this that would help them to close more business?

I think they have to accept the fact that business owners do not have enough time in the day and, even though they want to be organized, they can easily lose control. It’s difficult for them to juggle all these balls in the air, and our service that we provide eliminates a lot of that problem for them. It organizes a disorganized person. Maybe they’re not disorganized by choice, but they get thrown into this newer business, they enjoy what they’re doing and they got into that business for that reason. But then they start getting notices from the IRS or the state and they lose control. That’s something the CSR has to understand; especially if the business is relatively new, they need this. They need what a good accountant can provide and it is a really good service for the price.

If you truly believe in the value of what you’re selling, it’s going to come across and have a powerful effect on your presentation. When you truly believe what you are providing is worth much more than the asking price, it goes a long way. For a relatively small fee, you can have that financial aspect taken care of. You’ve got the prospects with shoeboxes full of receipts, people who haven’t been keeping their books for a year, haven’t filed a return for a couple of years; they’re really just digging a hole. The accounting service is a helping hand to pull them out of that hole and guide them in the right direction. What would you say is your most effective closing technique that you learned from NCI?

The results assurance program [Editor's note: the results assurance program or the "west coast close" is an NCI closing technique that utilizes a money-back guarantee on the monthly accounting service.] is one that I brought out when I thought a prospect was on the fence. If I sensed that they were pretty close to making a decision but they weren’t committed yet, they were concerned about the outlay of cash or something like that, I would pull out the West Coast (results assurance) close. That one shows them that they have nothing to lose – you have to watch your words but I would try to imply that they’re foolish if they don’t at least give this a good shot, because they have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

It shows you stand behind your product, too, with the money back guarantee. You’re going to be hard pressed to find another accounting firm that has that kind of offer.

Especially if they said they were interviewing other accountants and the one thing I would say is, “You can interview a hundred other accountants but no other firm is going to offer you this.”

I meant to say this before and you had hinted at it, but sometimes you have to be a little firm with certain prospects; they may not even realize the trouble they’re in. You let them know respectfully and professionally but you get the point across and sometimes it’s the only way to get through. You have to be matter-of-fact and show them what’s at stake. I wanted to bring this up, since you mentioned the West Coast close, but I know there are some accountants and CSRs who are hesitant to use it because they’re worried about all these clients wanting their money back. How many times did that happen with you, where people actually exercised that and said thanks, but no thanks, can I get my money back?

That happened fewer times than I can count on one hand. It’s very rare.

That’s what I figured. In our experience 99% of the time it just doesn’t happen. To what do you attribute your tremendous success in obtaining so many clients during a very difficult economic recession?

To put it in basic terms, I don’t take shortcuts and I work very hard. Being willing to work hard and being convinced that your program works for your client. Those two things are a formula for success: belief in your product and that it’s going to genuinely help your prospect and putting the hard work in.

What would you say to any accountants out there reading this who are thinking about doing this marketing program? What kind of advice would you offer to them?

I would say that if they truly want to get their business to the next level, then this is the way to do it. If they truly want to get to the next level, then this is a proven program that will get them there.

This coming from a man who lived it; you’re walking, talking proof of that.

You could say I’ve seen it work personally, yes.

So now you’re moving into a new chapter and you’ll be working with us here at New Clients Inc. We’re very excited to have you as a member of the sales team. How do you see the experience that you gained in helping NCI’s clients translate into this new role of selling that program to accountants?

It’s going to give me and any prospect I speak with an insider’s view. When they speak with me, they’ll be speaking with someone who lived it, implemented it recently and knows it inside and out. I was out in the street seeing people face to face, I know what they say and expect; I know what they want. They’re going to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. To me, a very important facet for an accountant to hear is how it works, from a person that did it.

Also, I understand you’re going to be contributing some articles for our newsletter as does many of our staff. I’m the senior editor of the newsletter and I’m curious, do you have any ideas for articles? I know it’s early in the process but I’m sure you have a wealth of knowledge that you can provide based on your experience and success.

I think I could help CSRs out there with a sales tip of the month to help them close more business. “Tim’s sales tip of the month” or something like that.

That would be great. Also, from time to time I’m sure we’ll have you lead or contribute to our weekly CSR coaching calls as well. That’s all the questions I have, Tim, thank you so much for your time and all of us here are excited to have you on board and look forward to working with you.

Chris Clark

Chris: Can you give a little background on yourself and your practice?

Susan: I was in accounting for 28 years. I started as an enrolled agent, then I finished my CPA and I went to work for Ernst & Young for a while and then became a partner in a small local firm in IndianapolisSan FranciscoNCI client so he told me how great the marketing program is and how he had been able to grow his practice through that. After a couple years, I decided I may want to do the same thing and build my practice before I sell it. , so I purchased a firm from a retiring CPA here in the bay area that was at the time about a $650,000 practice. He had been an . Eventually I started my own business.  Then my husband got transferred to

I see. What were some other deciding factors in your choice to undertake the NCI program, Susan?

It seemed to me that once the economy got bad, the referrals weren’t coming in as well as they had been. I was looking for a way to jumpstart the growth of the practice.

Can you tell me how much growth you were able to add via the program and where the practice was when you got started?

Yeah, I purchased the firm in 2006 and I went through your program in 2009. During the period before that, we were able to stay pretty even but it wasn’t growing like I hoped it would.

So you were around the $650,000 number?

Yeah, we were still there.

How much growth were you able to add with the program?

We added about $180,000 in the first year. Then we sort of backed off. I didn’t run the program at all during tax season this year, and I took my telemarketer and made her an admin. She helped with answering the phone, filing and scanning, things like that. Now we have started up again and we’re doing really well. I’m amazed; we did $30,000 in new business in January. In addition to that $30k from January, we’ve added another $20,000 since tax season ended. So we’ve added about $50,000 in those six weeks alone. That’s in six weeks.

That’s fantastic.  In about 2½ months you added $50,000 in new business. That’s amazing. One thing that’s a little different in your program is that you were the one doing the selling as opposed to a CSR. How have you found that process to be? Why did you decide to go that route, and how has it been?

Well, I’m 60 now so I was getting a little tired of all the number crunching. I’ve always been pretty good at talking with clients in the advisory role that we play as accountants. So I just thought this was something different for me to do.  I’ve got a good enough staff that they can do all the number crunching. It was just something I wanted to do.

What was your biggest concern before you signed on to do the program?

Definitely the cost, the investment required. Even though you’ve talked to other people who have done it, you don’t know if you’re going to be successful at it. It is a big investment, but the guarantee helped a lot.

Okay, so that helped in making your decision,.  Also, did you talk to any references?

Just the guy I had bought my practice from, and that was a pretty good selling point right there.

That was a good endorsement, sure. What’s been your biggest challenge in running the program?

The first initial challenge was finding good telemarketers. I’ve done that now, I have the best. I have a girl that worked for years as a telemarketer for a charitable organization and she’d done very well with that. She’s very good at what she does, so I just have the one. She was a terrific find. I should also mention that the very first person NCI hired turned out to be terrific, too. She was so good that I ended up hiring her full time. She’s what I call my marketing director now; she’s in charge of getting the lists for the current appointment setter Judy and doing the thank-you letters and following up with phone calls. She does part of my job and also works for us full-time so she’s not technically on the phone anymore. I’m very happy with the system; you just have to keep tweaking it until you find the right combination.

If you’re willing to work the program, then you get the results. That’s what we’ve seen time and time again, and it’s a matter of bearing down and getting after it. If changes need to be made, you have to make some changes, but the general system will lay the groundwork for you. How does your sales presentation typically play out?

I try to structure it more as a conversation – my presentation is about five minutes long, tops. I tell them about me, I tell them about our team of people, and I tell them about all the services we provide. Then we just talk, and this might not work for a non-accountant CSR, but it works for me. I just talk to them about what’s going on in their business and what they’re looking for. I don’t try to sell them really; I try to show them what their options are: you can do it yourself, you can pay somebody to come and do it, but anyone can say they’re an accountant. I bring them around to the point that even though it may be more expensive, you’re better off with an accounting firm where somebody has your back; where somebody is keeping you away from late-filing penalties and things like that. Even if I don’t get the client, I almost always come away from a meeting feeling like I met somebody who lives in my community and is doing what they do, and now they know me and I know them. It’s amazing how often the ones that don’t come through right away will come back 6-10 months later and say, “I kept your card and now I’m ready,” or, “you were right, it’s not working the way I’m doing it.” I do use the Client Service Agreement [Editor's note the Client Service Agreement is NCI's version of an engagement letter.] which is awesome. It highlights all of the advantages they have to offer people.

Yeah, Client Service Agreement is a sales tool in the arsenal. Do you have any sales tips for our clients?

Well, one thing that I find very helpful is having a good website to shorten my presentation. I have a one-page presentation and it has our mission statement at the top and a little bit of bio on me, then the names of our team members. I just say, “If you want to know more about us, you can go to our website.” So many people will call back later and say, “Hey, I went to your website and it was really cool. I especially liked your newsletter.” We have the standard website from CPASiteSolutions and one really nice feature is the newsletter that they send out on your behalf each month. I think that can really help you, particularly with the younger clients, who are so computer savvy and want to get all of their information online. I guess the only other thing, which is just common sense, but in these economic times, I have really hit on the fact that when revenue’s down we can’t always control what’s coming in, but we have to control what’s going out. Cost management becomes so much more important in tough times and people really respond to that and ask me for my ideas on that.

With the marketing system in place, you have a larger degree of control over generating new business coming in, like in your case you were steady at $650,000 for a few years and now with the program in place you’ve been able to add some nice growth on top of that.

Yeah, I’m really hoping we’ll come close to $1,000,000 this year and hit it next year.

What’s the size of the practice now?

There are nine of us, including the part-time telemarketer and my daughter, who logs in from Seattle half-time so she can be home with her kids. So I have seven full-time and two part-time employees. We have two CPAs, two CPA candidates, sales-tax specialists and payroll specialists, and the girl who I mentioned who was my first telemarketer and who’s now my office manager. In terms of the billing number, this year we’ve already billed about $500,000 so I’m assuming it’ll be around $850k to $900,000.

Then it’s on to a million.

If we get there next year, that would be 40% growth; we would be going from $650,000 to $1,000,000 in about three years of running the program. And I will take tax season off again next year. I worked through tax season and still had marketing appointments but it was stressful. There’s assimilation, too. We don’t lose a lot of them but it’s not an easy transition sometimes, and I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job of keeping track of them in the first 3 or 4 months to make sure that they’re getting what they expect to get and we’re getting what we expect to get.

One of the more challenging aspects is all that work coming in and growing the business and making sure you stay on top of that and don’t lose clients to attrition when you can avoid it. Actually I did want to ask you a couple questions about the Advanced Processing Seminar. You had attended that with Duane Gravley, as well, correct?

I did.

Before we get into that, I wanted to ask you, are you surprised at all by the growth that you’ve been able to achieve with the program?

No, you guys told me to expect it! But we’ve added a team member or two, and it’s been tough at times to keep up with the workload but we’re getting better at that too.

Did you have any reservations before you attended the Advanced Processing Seminar?

Well, I wondered if I would learn anything because I love that kind of stuff and I do a lot of my CPE with MAP stuff, Managing and Accounting Practices. I’ve been to a lot of seminars and conferences on that topic, so I thought I might not learn anything but I’d go anyway. But it was really good; I got a lot out of it.

What was it that compelled you to attend that seminar in the first place?

Probably just that I like that kind of thing and I always feel like if you get one good idea from a conference that it’s worth it. I always want to hear what other people are doing in terms of that.

So what would you say you did gain by attending? Hopefully, you picked up more than one good idea.

Oh yeah, I got several good ideas from it. We’re doing a better job of measuring our results. I did get into the suite of products that he recommended, the time and billing software and that kind of thing. We haven’t quite got to his 50 clients per bookkeeper; I don’t see how we could do that. I think maybe our clients are more complex, but my people work all the time and they don’t seem to be able to get up to that. But we’ve got about 30, and I’m comfortable with that. I’ve got a little higher percentage in salaries than is supposed to be ideal for an accounting firm but that’s okay. I know I’ve got good people and I think my clients are well served.

That’s important; you have to provide good service. Otherwise, you run into problems no matter what kind of marketing you’re doing. Getting them in is half the battle; the other half is then providing all the things that you said you would in a timely fashion. It’s not an easy thing but when it all comes together it’s certainly worthwhile. Do you have any advice for someone considering doing the processing seminar?

Well, I don’t think any of us can have too much input on that, because even though it may not be tangible, there are so many ways that the way we manage our practice affects everything. It affects the client relationships, the employees, everything. So, I think it’s important to keep fresh ideas coming your way. It matches your other seminar, too, because it gives you ideas on how to manage all this new business you’re going to get through the marketing.  The best way to do that is to streamline your systems and make sure they’re operating the way you want them to, that they’re smooth and everybody’s on the same page.

Do you have any final comments to sum up your feeling on NCI and our marketing programs?

Well, it’s certainly had a great impact on our firm, and it’s probably been the most impactful thing that I’ve ever done in terms of education because I’ve learned a lot, and it worked and I’m very happy with it.

Chris Clark

Chris Clark is the oldest son of New Clients Inc. founder and CEO Bruce Clark.  He has worked as a Senior Account Executive at NCI for the past four years.  During that time he has presented at the Practice Development Seminar on Internet and Email marketing and he also plays the prospective client during the seminar role play sessions.  Chris also edits and contributes to the NCI newsletter, New Client News.

You Call This a Recession??
Over $200,000 in New Billing over the Past Year!
One year ago starting in October 2009, Joe Pancerella, a CPA from Reading, PA, decided to do something positive about the declining economy. Rather than sitting back and waiting to see what would happen and hoping for the best, Joe decided to be proactive and make it happen. We interviewed Joe a few months into his program. We wanted to revisit his success and see how much he has grown after one year of running the NCI Plan 2 Client Acquisition Program. Just wait until you see what is possible, even during the current recession. Read More

Four Practices Built Using NCI and Counting…For this month’s success story I interviewed Brett Stigall. Brett is based in the tri-cities area in Tennessee. He first attended the NCI seminar in 1995. In the ensuing sixteen years Brett has built and sold three successful accounting and tax practices using what he learned at that seminar. Using rough numbers I can say with confidence that means Brett easily has made over one hundred times his initial investment to attend that seminar in 1995. Brett is currently starting a fourth practice using the NCI marketing method and in just over one month’s time has already amassed $33,000 in new annualized billings! Brett also worked briefly for NCI as a Senior Account Executive installing Plan 2 and Plan 3 programs around the country. Read on to hear him tell his story of success using NCI.

Chris: If you could talk about your lead-up to the first time you engaged in the program, what you were doing before you started your own practice and what kind of led you to using the NCI program and where you were in business until that point?

Brett: Basically I had worked for a firm for about 10 years and got some experience there, working in all aspects of the practice. I did some auditing, some tax work, things like that. I always wanted to go out on my own so I got some good experience from them and just decided one day I was ready. I thought I could just start the practice and put a sign on the door and clients would be beating the door down to come see me, that was not the case. I did some research and contacted NCI, this was probably ’95 or ’96, so I came up there for the seminar over the weekend and it was just unbelievable. I’m thinking, “Man, this is a whole new concept!” So I went home and actually hired a telemarketer or two and a salesperson. That worked out okay, but I quickly found out I enjoyed doing the sales more than the accounting work. We did sign up a lot of clients that way though, but that was the only salesperson I ever had. I don’t remember how long she stayed on, it was several months though. But it didn’t really work out because I enjoyed doing the sales and getting out and seeing the clients, picking up and dropping off the work and things like that.

If you have the skill set to do the selling that certainly gives you an advantage. We usually try to shy our clients away from hiring their own sales reps because, unlike what happened with you, it usually doesn’t work out that well. You ended up being a better fit to do the selling anyway.

It did, it made me realize what I really enjoyed doing and that’s getting out and seeing the clients and talking to prospective new clients, things like that.

When you first went through the seminar in 1995, were you pretty much brand new in business? Did you have some clients at that point and remember where you were, what the size of your business was?

I had very few clients. I had some that came over with me from the larger firm but not many at all.

So you were very much a start-up at that point?

I was, definitely.

Okay. What were you able to go on and accomplish using these marketing methods? How much growth did you add and how big did you grow that particular practice? I know you’ve used the program to grow a few practices at this point.

I have, that practice went well, the program created steady growth which is good. I was able to pick up good monthly write-up work which took me from May to December. The tax returns, it seems like they’re always there. The tax work is there but it’s the write-up; that monthly retainer work, that you want. We were able to grow nicely, as I recall, we signed over 30 monthly clients that first year.

What were your deciding factors in deciding to undertake the NCI program? You were hinting at that but what was it that made you decide to go to the seminar?

I had to do something to generate business. At the time there really weren’t a lot of options. I talked to my colleagues and they said join the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary and so on, but you’re not going to get enough clients that way. There’s no way. The more I looked into the NCI concept and ran the numbers, I’m thinking, “you know, this thing could work.” My only concern was the size of the market that I had. I was in East Tennessee, but that was the only thing that scared me: is the market big enough to sustain a marketing program like that? And I found out quickly that it was. It really didn’t matter because with the NCI system you can target a fairly good sized radius and it doesn’t really matter where your office is located because you go out and see the clients to pick up the work.

Do you recall how much growth you were able to add in total to that practice? You ended up selling it, right?

I did end up selling it. It was approaching six figures when I sold it.

NCI helped you to find a buyer for the practice as well, correct?

Yes.

What year was that, when did you sell that first practice?

I sold the practice around 1997.

So ultimately you built a $100,000 practice after attending the Plan 1 seminar in about two years?

Yes.

What was the experience like for you working with NCI to help you sell your practice?  How did that go?

Oh, it was easy. We went ahead and put an ad in the paper, I believe, and within two or three days we had more than one qualified buyer.

So it was a smooth process, you got the deal you wanted.

Oh definitely, it was great. I’d never done that before, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it would be like trying to sell a house, and it wasn’t.

It tends to be a seller’s market, which is nice. Having some experience to back you up makes it easier.

The NCI program generates a lot of monthly clients and emphasizes that you must keep up with the work. So when you put your practice on the market, a prospective buyer comes in and starts doing the due-diligence, and everything’s up to date, it’s nice and neat in the notebook, just like NCI teaches you. It’s turn-key, these folks are just like, “Wow, this is great!” Plus you get a higher fee when everything’s nice and neat, not scattered everywhere and you’re not 5 months behind with the bookkeeping.

Yeah, you have to stay on top of it, that’s important.

You do, and the way you all teach us to pick up the work, to drop off the work, it forces you to keep it up to date.

After selling that practice, you went on to eventually build another practice, right?

I did, yes. I was going through a divorce at the time and decided to move away from the Tri-cities and move down to the Atlanta area just to get a new start. I moved down there and I didn’t know anybody, I started from scratch. I used the NCI method again, hired a couple of telemarketers and ran that practice out of my home and the telemarketers worked out of their homes. I was able to grow that thing in a couple of years from zero, knowing no one in the area to around $75,000 in annual billing. I had no overhead, I did all the work, the office in my home and no rent, it worked great.

When and why did you sell that practice?

I had an opportunity, a friend of mine who’s also a CPA back in the Tri-cities had a small practice back there and was able to buy a bookkeeping practice but it was too large for him to buy himself. So he contacted me wondering if I would go in with him and merge his practice and the bookkeeping practice. We took a look at it and we thought, “Why not?” I wanted to move back, this was in 2001, so I went ahead and sold my practice down in Georgia fairly quickly and moved back to the Tri-cities.

Did NCI help you sell that one as well?

I don’t remember; it’s possible that NCI helped me to sell it. I just remember putting an ad in the Atlanta paper and bam, it was gone within two weeks.

So you joined up with this friend of yours, and you also helped to grow that practice as well, right?

We did the NCI program; we hired telemarketers that worked out of our office to help add new monthly accounting clients. We did that for 2 or 3 years, I guess.

Do you know the growth that you added to the practice through the program there?

Off the top of my head I don’t, but it was a good sized growth, though, to where we had to add a couple more bookkeepers to take care of it.

So now you’re back off on your own again? Quite the journey you’ve been through.

I know, it was good working with another CPA and a staff, but I just like doing it on my own. So I moved to Knoxville and basically started over for a fourth time.

You had ordered our marketing materials not that long ago actually, to refresh yourself with the training and our updated materials and now you’re up and running and off to a good early start so far, correct?

I’m off to a great start, I ordered the materials and started reviewing them, and you have done a great job updating the materials, including working with websites and internet marketing, things like that. I went ahead and hired an appointment setter. She started the week of May 9^th.

How are things going so far?

Pretty doggone good! Our gross annual billing is already over $33,000.

Not bad at all.

And that’s after about 5 weeks and it’s all from the marketing program.

That’s all monthly clients at this point?

Most are monthly, we have picked up some that are just tax clients, but at this point, pretty good sized tax clients. Hopefully some of these folks will convert into monthly clients. We’ve already converted one, I went ahead and did a tax return, convinced him he’d be better off letting us handle his payroll and things like that.

Once you have them as a client it opens the door for that kind of thing.

It does, you don’t want to go out and just look for tax returns, but you’re not going to turn them away either. A lot of these folks are small businesses and they know a lot of other folks. The good thing about this program is you get to see so many people. You’re not going to sign everybody up, but you never know who they may know, and before you know it, the referrals start rolling in.

That’s the idea, you bring in all these small to medium sized clients and they all have friends and family in business and you’re going to get referrals. Obviously as long as you keep up with the work, that’s important too.

I’ve had a couple calls already saying, “You talked to me a couple weeks ago, I’m not ready to sign up but a friend of mine does. Here’s their name and number, give them a call.” We’ve picked up a couple of clients that way so far.

That’s something I always recommend to my clients. If you get somebody who’s not interested, thank them for their time and ask if they know anybody that could benefit from your service? It’s a great way to turn a negative into a positive.

I always ask for referrals. Plus we’ve got our website up and running through CPA Site Solutions and even if a prospect says, “We’re not interested,” we’ll ask for an e-mail address and ask if they mind if we send them the monthly newsletter. 95% are fine with that so we’ve got plenty of folks that are getting our newsletter automatically each month.

You’ve got to stay in front of people – they might not need your service now, but things change, a couple of months down the road something goes wrong with their accounting and you want to be the first person they think of.

Without a doubt, they may be one IRS notice away from saying, “I’m tired of this stuff.” If their having problems with their accountant, late filings, not returning phone calls, charging too much etc. you keep your name in front of them by that monthly newsletter. It’s great, you’re not worrying about mailing stuff out or anything, it’s just automatic.

We’ve talked about a lot of the positives you’ve experienced through the program, but what’s been the biggest challenge with running it over the years?

The biggest challenge has been trying to keep up with the volume of work. Once a client is set up in your system it’s easy but it’s the clients who have a lot of back work that can be a challenge. It’s a great problem to have, it really is, but it’s a struggle sometimes.

What advice would you consider giving somebody who’s considering engaging in the NCI program?

Hey, go for it. You don’t have anything to lose! It’s a very, very small investment and it works. It’s worked for me since 1995. I’ve done it in small markets, I’ve done it in Atlanta, and I’ve done it where I am now, Knoxville, Tennessee, a medium sized market. It’s worked every time.

That’s a testament to the adaptability of the program. I tell people we’ve done them all over the place, big markets, small markets, medium markets. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes people are skeptical in a bit of a smaller market, which I can understand, but the business is out there.

It’s out there, and you’ve got to go get it, and if you follow what NCI tells you to do, then it works without a doubt.

Are you surprised at all by the growth that you’ve been able to achieve in the various programs?

I was surprised early on, you never know going in how it’s going to work. I guess I was a little on the pessimistic side, just not knowing what to expect. But just getting out in front of these business owners, listening to what their needs are, the big thing is the way you price your services. You say, “We’ll set you up on a monthly retainer. You pay us the same amount each month; we won’t charge extra for all this other stuff that you’re getting charged for now. They love that, they can budget for it and we put it in writing, we’ve got an agreement. You know exactly what you’re getting and what it will cost and there are no hidden charges. They love it. It’s a great model, it really is.

To switch gears a little bit, you worked for NCI for a brief period there. Could you talk a little bit about that experience, what you were doing there, how it was?

Basically I would go out and help set up a program for these accountants, help hire and train the marketing staff which includes the appointment setters and the client service representative.

So you were installing Plan II and Plan III programs.

I was, and I got to travel all over the country and just had a blast. I enjoyed meeting all types of accountants all over the country, back in the late ’90s.

I know my father, Bruce; he speaks highly of your time here with the company.

I had a blast working for you guys, got to see a lot of neat places and to meet a lot of great people. Most of them were in the same boat that I had been in when I first started, they had worked for a larger firm or a big six firm and were just going out on their own, scared to death because they’d never had to do it all. I could really relate to what they were going through.

Yeah, you were in their position. Did you find that rewarding?

It was very rewarding.

I guess rewarding in a similar way to helping your accounting clients, helping them run their businesses and be successful.

It was similar, I really enjoyed doing that.

If you could just sum up your feelings on the NCI programs, on Bruce, I know you’ve worked with him for a number of years in the system?

Basically everything that’s taught and presented at the seminar is true, there’s no crazy projections out there. If you follow the plan it will work. I’m proof of that, but there are hundreds of others out there that you could talk to that are proof that this marketing program works.

I really appreciate your time today, Brett. Good luck with your new practice!

Chris Clark

Chris: Can you give me a little bit of background information about yourself:  what were you doing before you went into the practice and when did you start the practice? 

Andrew: It’s actually not my practice; the owner is Nick Hodges. I’m general manager. What I was doing before I went into this practice was going to high school. I started working for Nick during my freshman year of college, so I’ve been working with him for nine years now. We used to be part of a regional firm.  We were one of three offices, and Nick was the managing partner of that large firm. We basically split from them and went off on our own, and we acquired two businesses. That was our first growth measure. We’re somewhat unique in that we’re actually a wealth advisory firm, so we have a traditional tax and accounting firm, but all of our principals are also financial planners. 

Very nice. I know a lot of our clients have found it to be very lucrative and rewarding to offer that service. Do you know what the size of the practice was when you decided to engage in the NCI program in terms of a gross billing figure? 

I do; we were at about $780,000 a year. 

When was it that you engaged in the Plan 2 marketing program? 

Last August.  In July, we went to the seminar and Pete Borrelli came out here in mid-August. 

What were the deciding factors in the choice to undertake the NCI program? 

We needed to add a mechanism for growth. We’d done all the stuff that you’re supposed to do for external marketing, but we wanted to grow aggressively and we didn’t have the time or talent to build on. We wanted people focused on marketing; we wanted them doing nothing but that so we would have a constant stream of new business coming through the door. We wanted to see 8% to 10% growth every single year. It really wasn’t about filling or hitting a specific target number; it was about having a mechanism in place where we’re constantly growing.  

Okay, so you’re looking for that consistent, on-going growth on a weekly basis. 

Right, because our job as principals is not; I do no accounting and I do just a little bit of taxes. My main job is to up-sell folks into financial planning services. So, if we don’t have a constant set of leads coming in at the bottom, we can’t be filling our pipelines at the top.  

What other types of marketing have you done or are you doing? 

We have a very extensive online set-up. We have our main website and we have two websites that are product-specific. We have a personal CFO package, which is our annual fee financial planning, tax advice product. And we have that rebranded for another niche for ex-pats. So, each of those products has its own individual site that has its own e-mail list that we’re generating.  In addition, we have an e-book on those sites where people are signing up with an e-mail to get the e-book. Then, we’re sending them e-mail campaigns that we’ve created.  We have our own monthly newsletter that comes directly from our site working the same way. Between the two of us, we probably do six to eight speaking engagements and different types of presentations a year, and we’re generally writing twelve to fifteen articles a year, along with one or two e-books a year.  All of that’s getting spread out through our various e-mail lists, our blog and our Facebook page–any place we can get those things out.  

Branding the firm, getting exposure, that’s great.  It sounds like you’re very active in terms of marketing, which is so important. To be an effective marketer, you have to constantly be in motion to keep your firm in the public consciousness. 

All that stuff is what we had in place. Then, we said, okay, now we need to go get someone who’s going to grow this constantly. We built the branding and we built the outreach stuff. It’s just not generating enough leads, which we didn’t think it was going to; we didn’t expect that e-mail blasts were going to generate a lot of leads.  

Right, that’s supplemental. 

Then, we moved to NCI, and now we’ve got people here who are focused on selling.  

Okay, so you do the financial planning, the taxes and accounting.  Are there any other services that the firm provides? 

Not really; there’s a whole subset of things underneath those headings, but that’s generally what we do.  

So, approximately how much growth have you achieved since starting the program about eight months ago? 

Currently we’re at about $6,500 a month and about $2,500 per quarter on the books right now.  

Is that just representative of the monthly accounting fees and doesn’t include any financial planning that you’ve sold on top of that from those clients that were developed? 

Correct. That also does not include tax work. Also, we wouldn’t include financial planning fees in that because it runs through a separate company.  

Right, I understand. I just meant that for the purposes of getting a bigger picture.  Like you said, you wanted to bring those clients in to enable you to cross-sell the financial planning.  So, do you have a sense of what’s been added overall, above and beyond the billings from the accounting work? 

We’ve done no financial planning for any of these folks, yet. Financial planning generally takes several years to get going, to establish that relationship. But, yes, earnings to date from 8/1/10 to 4/30/11 are about $74,000. We also did about $12,000, including tax work, in May. So, it’s about $86,000 so far.  

$86k in nine months. 

As of May, yes.  

What would you say was your biggest concern before signing up for the program? 

Our biggest concern was whether the growth would be there.  Would the program deliver what we needed and do it on a consistent basis? 

What has been your biggest challenge in running this program so far? 

Our biggest challenge right now is getting the traction. It took some time to get started. We were running the program for probably four weeks before we saw any new business. Now, we’re trucking along, but we’re having a problem filling the pipeline with new leads. We’re currently going back over our old lists and recalling some of them. Our CSR has been tremendous in that we have data in our spreadsheets for every single week. He’s keyed that stuff into the spreadsheet to show us what the appointments per dial are–all kinds of metrics. 

Yeah, it’s important to track that. 

He’s doing two weeks of going backwards through the list and comparing that to the 10 or 11 months of averages to see how redoing those old lists falls into that scheme. Another thing that we’ve done here concerns a very large hospital near us that has a lot of ancillary buildings and businesses. We’ve actually gone through a second time and opted to include the doctors, because we already have about a dozen doctor clients.  

That certainly goes a long way. 

That opened up another 300 to 400 leads we weren’t using, but will be using now. 

Are you calling on new businesses, as well? 

Yes, we pull those every Monday and run through those during the week. 

Would you say that you’re surprised by the growth you’ve been able to attain thus far through the program? 

No, it’s basically what the numbers suggested. If you do “x” amount of work and invest “x” amount of money, this should be the result. We’ve come pretty close; we’re a little bit light compared to what we expected, but most of that we’ve attributed to economic conditions. It was just slightly under what we expected.  

I just wanted to ask you quickly about Nick.  I know he does some seminars nationwide on picking up tax work for accountants. Is that right? 

Not anymore; he used to. The seminar he’s doing right now is for ex-pats. We used to do consulting for CPA firms on how to add financial planning to their CPA practices and we did a series of speeches on that, but we haven’t done that in a while. 

Any plans to return to it? 

He won’t, but I might get back into it, if I can. We’ve found we make more money focusing on the practice rather than teaching people how to do what we do, because none of them believed us and none of them wanted to pay us to show them how to make more money. We thought it was going to be great because we’ve had success, and we can teach others and help people try to move the industry forward. Most of them either didn’t get it or didn’t believe it or were too scared to try something new.  

The other thing is that a lot of them have waited so long to make a change in their business that now they’re broke and they don’t have any money to invest in marketing and growing their business. If they’d had the foresight to address it when they were still doing well, they’d still have money to invest in things like that. Now they get to the point where, “Okay, now I’m in trouble, let’s go do something.” Well, the problem is you can’t invest in something like NCI at that point. If you wait until you’re broke to find the solution, then it’s too late! You can’t do anything. 

The seminars you do now are for ex-pats? 

Yes, Nick is doing presentations for a magazine called International Living.  They have three or four conferences around the world each year and he’s going to all of those as the speaker on taxes, investments, and things like that.  

Also, Nick is writing a book called The Lazy CPA, is that right? 

Yeah, the first book we have is called The Lazy CPA’s Guide to Adding Financial Services.  It went along with the consulting business we did; it’s basically a book about how to add financial services and his experiences doing it. We’ve another book coming out, probably by the end of summer, that he’s going to finish. 

It’s about getting your series 7 license and so on? 

Kind of; it’s not that technical. It’s more about what you can expect from your clients, and what you want to portray, and what kind of personality it takes to be successful at it. A little bit more about the mindset that goes into it and handling objections that will come up, rather than a step-by-step manual. 

Is The Lazy CPA an e-book or a physical book? 

It’s a physical book; you can find it on Amazon.  

Could you sum up your feelings on our company and the NCI program to wrap up? 

The one thing I would say is that I like the program.  You guys are really good at sticking to your guns and saying this is the program; this is what it is and this is how it works. That’s really good, because most CPAs don’t want to accept that. They’re looking for a magic bullet, and I appreciate the fact that you guys are the ones that go, “No, this is not easy. You have to do the work; you’re going to have to grind it out. We’ve made this as easy as possible, but if you work the program you will get the growth you need.” I think that’s really good, sound advice and the proof is in the pudding. I like that. I like that you promised that if we put the work in, it would work and the program delivered on that promise.  

Thank you for your time today, Andrew.  It is much appreciated and has been a pleasure. 

Chris Clark