Ep. 24 | The 6-Step Strategy: Transforming Leads into Loyal Clients
Download MP3Welcome to the Mr. R Show, presented by the MRR Institute. This podcast is designed specifically for tax professionals looking to scale and modernize their practice by maximizing revenue through resources. Join us as we explore expert strategies, innovative tools, and actionable advice to help you navigate the evolving landscape of the tax industry. Whether you're aiming to grow your business or enhance your client experience, you're in the right place. Now let's get to the show and transform your practice together.
John Tripolsky:Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Mr. R show, your home for some of the best tax knowledge out there, especially for you, the tax pro. Just kidding. We know you have an abundance of information out there, but as we always try to do here, we try to cut right to the chase, get into it, give you facts, figures if we have them, and some advice from somebody who's been doing this a very, very long time. Chris Pacquero, welcome back, sir.
John Tripolsky:What's happened?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:A very long time? Well, that means that I'm old. No. I'm not I feel great, man. I feel great.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Thank you. Excited to be back on the show, and we are gonna talk about something that I wish I knew twenty two years ago when I started. I are actually presenting this topic at a extremely large national conference. We are also going to be presenting this at other events over the next probably about twelve to eighteen months. And it's and I'm I'm excited to jump into it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I think that, we know that that we've talked about on this on this show that there is a what's called a retirement cliff in our industry in in the tax and accounting world and especially in public accounting and enrolled agents. There's also there's a shortage of of new people coming into the profession. So, with that that cocktail, it's very important that we carefully, carefully select our clients and we also love our clients and we want the best for them. So it's also important that we, for their benefit, carefully select them and let them carefully select us. So if you're listening to this, thank you.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Enjoy this. Definitely grab your free continuing education credit, But I'm gonna be very vulnerable, and I'm going to, you know, I'm gonna talk through our growth and retention client acquisition strategies for our private CPA firm. It's taken a long time to develop this. And admittingly, about the first, oh, eight eight years of my twenty two year journey, eight to ten years of my twenty two year journey as a firm owner, I didn't have a client acquisition strategy. My strategy, well, there was no strategy.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It was basically whoever wanted to come through the doors. I was a completely a price taker, not a price maker. And as long as they were asking us to do something that was legal, we would do it. And if we didn't know how to do it, we'd try to figure it out. We didn't understand the power of no.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We didn't understand that you have to say no to say yes. So this is gonna take you through our firm's client acquisition strategy. I encourage you to develop your own, and if anything in this podcast episode speaks to you, I encourage you to jump on and connect with us. We are I am not a a teacher by training. I have no teaching degrees.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I have no coaching accreditations. I'm a I'm a CPA that is a firm owner that really believes in understanding the power of being an entrepreneur and understanding that running your practice is a different set of skills than being a practitioner. So if any of that speaks to you, please jump on at justmodernfirm.tax and connect with us. We are, you know, we're we're a grassroots organization and and we're always learning in our community of tax and accounting pros is constantly collaborating and helping each other. And, John, I know you're a marketing person in you know, by trades and not an accountant, but I know you've seen firsthand how, you know, collaboration is better than competition.
John Tripolsky:Absolutely. And and to kinda add to your point there too, I mean, by the way, you just I think you just dated yourself twice. You said how long you've been doing this and all this stuff. But, you know, to add to that as well, and I think a lot of people could attest to this, you know, along with myself as some of at least some of the most memorable, best professors, I've had what to say educators, you know, over the course of my lifetime, have not been educators by trade, they've been professionals by trade, educators by passion, Right? So they've they've gone in.
John Tripolsky:I'm thinking of one college course specifically, one of the best guys I ever had. And he admittedly said, am a terrible teacher, but I'll tell you everything that I've done. And and his approach was awesome. And that's exactly what you do time and time again. And then I'd actually just thought of something.
John Tripolsky:So we've met, you know, together at the same time. We've come across a ton of tax pros over the years. Right? So a lot of people know that mean you have been in each other's lives for twenty plus years. Years.
John Tripolsky:Mhmm. But, technically, am I actually one of your longest standing clients that you can't get rid of now that we think about it?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. Twenty plus years. Don't wanna get rid yeah. We And and here's what funny thing is you're gonna learn through this that you only have one chance to find to show value with a for a client. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It's hard to raise price.
John Tripolsky:If you weren't so damn good, you know, I'd go find somebody else. But what's the point? Right? And you started this off too, which is really good. Right?
John Tripolsky:We're gonna go through your process, which I think I have a very unique, very blessed to be along for the ride. I'm physically seeing you guys go through various transitions. And you you guys you guys, you know, collectively as a firm as what I'm talking about going into that transition during that transition, and then what the outcome has been on multiple occasions. And I can say this, that every time I remember vividly that I can't remember vividly. Now mind you again, this is over the course of twenty years, that it's always come out better at the end, even though there may have been some, you know, seemingly chaos in the middle of it.
John Tripolsky:But also too, I and I don't know if this is true or not. I don't think that I remember you guys ever having anything in in place or anybody telling you different ways to do things. You guys just you had to take it upon yourself. Right? Like, you didn't have a podcast to listen to fifteen years ago Right.
John Tripolsky:That talked about membership based pricing. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:No. We just learned it. You know? Maybe that was a good or a bad thing. I've definitely had people help me along the way.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I've learned from a lot of practitioners. I think one of the pivot points for my career was, you know, getting up on you know, now it's been eight years being honored to be part of the Intuit Tax Council from 2017 to 2020 and work with about 10 other practitioners from all over the country that have different ideas, different ways of doing things, and that that we just, you know, kinda challenge each other in a positive way. So Absolutely. It was it was good. So yeah.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So let's talk and I I didn't really introduce myself. By the way, if if this is your first episode, welcome. My name is Chris Pacquero. I'm a CPA by trade. And, again, like I think I've already mentioned, been a been a firm owner for over twenty years and have transitioned my role now into really working about 25, 20 to 25% of the time working with other tax and accounting professionals with the other portion of the time working with within our private CPA firm within our community called Teaching Tax Flow and you know, honored that that you're listening.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, let's dive in and hopefully, you could take one or two really good nuggets away from here that you can implement immediately. Sometimes when you learn something new, gosh, it feels like you have eight, nine, 10 things, and you and you don't even know where to start. So let's start. Grab a nugget or two, and, and we'll dive into our, what we call, our client acquisition process. Or Absolutely.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Strategies. Strategies help the process.
John Tripolsky:And, Chris, you did forget to mention that you're a you're a collector of letters in the alphabet. We we don't even have to say all the acronyms and credentials that come after your name, which, you know, I like to poke fun at you for, but, you know, we're good.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:That's just another way of saying I'm old. What we're trying to accomplish here is we're trying to make sure that we can identify our ideal client and bring them in to our firm and have them be a partner of ours. Our best clients in our private practice don't look at us as an expense. They look at us as an asset. And when you get that, then what you have is you have your best clients picking your next clients.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, a client relationship starts through a through a journey and it's funny because the, you know, when putting together this this topic for for the, you know, the the work we're doing, the presentations, and and the speaking engagements, it's hard. And I think if you're listening to this, it could be tax and accounting. It could be something like, let's say you're really a good, you're a gearhead like John and you can change your own oil. You just do it, Maybe even doing it for twenty years. You don't even think about it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But if I challenge you and said, you know what? I want you to write down every little step of changing your oil from turning the car off to, you know, getting it on blocks or get, know, every little step. You'd be challenged to do it because you just do it naturally. So, this was a challenge. So, I and and so when I started thinking about the attracting clients and what our what our client acquisitions process is, I thought, okay, well, how does someone become a client?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I thought, alright, let's create something that we call the modern contact journey. The modern contact journey is it's like hopscotch, but you just keep going forward. And the thing is you start off and think about that letter V. You start off with that first step of being a wide wide range of individuals and you siphon it down after six steps to having those clients that are referring you to your next best clients. But the context the the modern contact journey starts with step one, someone that is a lurker.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:A lurker is kind of a I don't know. Kind of a term that doesn't have a great little connotation. Right? But you have lurkers out there. Lurkers, like for our practice, we have a virtual practice.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So our lurkers are people that are online. We don't have a storefront. We don't have an office. We can't have people that are walking by looking at or doing our window shopping, doing window, know, looking at looking through the windows as far as, oh, well, let me look what their office looks like or walking by our office daily. Maybe you're on Main Street somewhere.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Maybe you're in an office building. Maybe you ride an elevator with someone every day, and they're what's what the heck does this person do? But people are lurking. Lurkers are people that are checking out what you're doing. A lurker then becomes a follower.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:A follower is someone that's not just walking by and noticing, but they're paying attention to what your practice is doing. They're following what you're doing. Followers then become a lead. A lead then becomes a prospect. A prospect then becomes a client, and then your best clients actually become fans.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So that's at six steps of the contact journey. Lurker, follower, lead, prospect, client, fan, and a lot of people confuse the difference between a lead and a prospect. But don't worry, let's break down each of the six steps. All right. So Webster dictionary calls a lurker a person who reads messages on an Internet discussion forum or social media platform but does not contribute.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Cambridge dictionary just says someone who reads the messages in a chat room without taking part. So a lurker is gonna be someone that's checking your stuff out, walking by. Again, typically, that's gonna be online. Right? It could be so hence why you really have to have a strong online presence.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And, you know, strong is kind of a a vague word. So I'm gonna challenge you. Not a strong online present presence. A very direct online presence that identifies who exactly your target audience is. That's, to me, the most important thing.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But that's a lurker. Lurkers are just wandering around. They're checking you out. They're not following anything you're doing. They're not contributing at all, and there are a
John Tripolsky:lot of lurkers out there. So here's a question for you. So and this is and I'll kind of interject every once in a while, probably at every step of this is as everybody knows me, it's very hard for me to ever close my mouth. So this is really, really great to talk about. So here we are 2025, right, talking about lurkers.
John Tripolsky:If you had to take a step back, you know, years into your practice, and, obviously, you guys had a a much, much more physical presence. Like, you had the offices. You had people in different locations. Heck, you guys had, you know, in the teens of offices, if I remember it, all around the country. Do you think that this process or this this journey has changed a lot?
John Tripolsky:And I'm sure we'll get into it more over the years. Like, do you feel that it's gotten more defined, or you feel like it's actually gotten more challenging? Like, you need to do more stuff to actually get more clients, if that
Chris Picciurro, CPA:makes sense. You have to do a lot less stuff to get clients now. You've gotta do more stuff to get the clients that you want. That's that's the key. So I should have mentioned this too.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We're gonna walk through this this contact journey, these these six steps, and then we're gonna actually look at the the client acquisition process. But it's important to identify the journey. Right? So you've got a lurker. Back before the you know, when we had dial up Internet, the lurker was people it was important to have a storefront or an office in a very visible area.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:A lurker then comes a lurker that's interested in you becomes a follower. Right? Where are they finding you? Are they finding you on do you have social media accounts, either personal or business? Do you have a podcast?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Are you part of an online community or group? Do you go to virtual events or host webinars or even in person events? Do you have a blog or a newsletter? That's how you're going to find a follower, right? So, in our private CPA practice, we have a a LinkedIn newsletter.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We have we have all the things actually that that that are on this list. But you don't don't feel compelled to have all those things. Instead of saying, I'm going to do one of I'm going to have six different things. Do one really, really well. So if you love blogging, don't worry about having all these social media accounts, all that stuff.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Just blog your heart out, you know, and get people to see that blog and then have a call to action from the blog. So people start following you. Right? So a follower is is is pretty good. Followers are valuable.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:From your pool of followers, right, from your pool of followers, you're gonna find leads. And when it comes specifically to social media followers, there are you know, what you're trying to who you're trying to attract should drive what social media you put your emphasis on. So for us, you know, we already chuckled and said that I'm a little more mature, but our most of our clients are somewhere between the ages of 35 and 55. I'd say the vast majority. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So for those that age, especially the 40 and older crowd, 45, the the older half of that, LinkedIn and Facebook are gonna be where we're gonna find more followers. Yes. We have a Twitter account. We have a TikTok account. But, John and you see it in our private CPA firm.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We're not getting people coming in. They might look at that as a lurker, but they're not following to the extent they're following on
John Tripolsky:other Right.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Forums. And
John Tripolsky:I can say this too, you know, from the marketing eye. Right? Like, you will see the the industry that you guys are in. And I say that to you, Chris, and your private practice, and obviously, people that are listening to this because I highly doubt somebody that's not a tax pro is super engaged in this podcast at this very moment. But really what we're looking at here, right, like, there is there are a few anomalies in the industry that you guys are in because and this is one of them.
John Tripolsky:Right? We're talking about platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook. Sure. TikTok, we're pretty active on. YouTube, we're pretty active on.
John Tripolsky:I can honestly say this, at least through my career, I don't think I've seen so little engagement, but a lot of followers. And what I mean by that, right, is you might have let's let's use anybody in in this, you know, virtual room of of listening to this podcast as an example. You might be putting out content, and you might be thinking to yourself, why is nobody seeing any of this stuff? And it's not a giant red flag right out of the gate, saying, Oh, you're doing it wrong, or any of this other stuff. And we see it, right?
John Tripolsky:We, I mean, I can't think of an exact example. But we may have put out a post or a series of posts on any given platform and gotten zero engagement. And and by engagement, I mean, comments, shares, any of that stuff. And we just, in our mind, initially, years back, we thought, oh, that was a total flop. But then people are telling us, literally telling us in person that they saw something.
John Tripolsky:So within that industry, think about it as, know, clients of a tax accounting firm. Sometimes people kind of lurk in that followership role, I would say if there's kind of a little bit of a morph between the two of them, because sometimes people don't want to engage with stuff like that, because they feel more vulnerable when they do. Right? So and I say that as a kind of words of wisdom to anybody. Just keep doing it, like stick to it, be consistent, put content out there, if that's the goal.
John Tripolsky:But as long as you define earlier on where you're doing it and who you want to engage with it, who you're trying to attract, just stay the course. I can almost promise you that there is a light at the end of a tunnel. And it's not a trade coming at you. Just stick
Chris Picciurro, CPA:to it.
John Tripolsky:Right? Because we've seen that, Chris, on numerous occasions with stuff we've done. Right? Where, you know, we look at it, we say, man, this was a flop, and it it's not. It's just a different
Chris Picciurro, CPA:people are different caging level. Exactly. And so, yeah, you've gotta find out where that where that per where that follower is at and meet him there. You know? So a follower is gonna see your stuff, is gonna see you over and over again, and a follower then becomes a lead.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, you want to figure out how they became a lead. We're going to talk about that process, alright? We're going to talk about that process. So, knowing how someone found your tax and accounting business helps you understand what is connecting with people. Like you just said, I can't tell you how many times someone's like, hey, I saw your like, I saw your video that was really good and oh, which, you know, which one?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Oh, great. Well, the person didn't share it with their community. They didn't like it. They didn't comment. So, you're just thinking it went unnoticed.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We gotta be consistent. My other thought was on when when we're building a following, I'm going to go back to my point. Don't worry about having LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all those. Find one and just own it first. Because if you're you're running your own tax and accounting practice, you don't have the luxury of having a a marketing person on your team, on staff, right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, figure out which one, what type of clients you're looking for and where they live. Fish in a pond where the fish, you know, where the fish that you want to eat are are are living. And then go for that. So if you're looking for tons of gig economists and young people, maybe maybe then, you know, Instagram or, you know, Twitter, one of TikTok's going to be there. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, figure out when someone becomes a lead, how they found you, right? For us, leads come in for in six different, so six different ways we've get leads in our private CPA firm. One, they found us through an online search. Two, they start they were following us online already. Three, we someone on our team knows them personally.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Four, they met us at an event, could be per in person or could be virtual. For us, our niche is real estate. So a lot times we meet people at real estate events. Five, they're referred by what's called a center of influence or COI. For our firm, I've been tracking our our our leads.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But the majority of our leads, the second biggest lead generation source for us are financial advisers. You're probably thinking, what's the first? Current clients. So current clients refer leads. And, actually, our biggest referral sources are clients that are center's influence.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We work with a lot of financial advisers as clients of our private CPA firm, and they're referring their clients to us. So that's the that's the double whammy. But someone's gonna find you, someone's gonna become a lead through one of those six, you know, six ways of of finding or six opportunities that I just described. Now, how do you take a lead? Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:How do you take a lead and make prospect? That's interesting. A lead is any potential client who enters your pipeline. Okay? So your sales pipeline is taking someone from lurker to fan.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Alright? So leads anyone that enters your pipeline. But a prospect is a lead that meets your criteria and shows a real potential for engagement. So for us, and I'm going to describe this in our client acquisition process, any lead, we ask any lead to fill out an online form that takes about four minutes to fill out. That online form asks about five to six questions, maybe seven if we're getting fan sassy.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Those questions are quick. We don't want them people that really be analyzing their answers, but they're gonna tell me, do they meet the criteria that we wanna work with, and do we meet their criteria, and do they show real potential for engagement? So leads become prospects. And for us, we're a virtual firm. So we need a lead to be kind of technologically savvy.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We need them to be able to use, you know, questionnaires, and they will upload documents and stuff. And if they can't, then they're not a lead. Then they're still a lead. They're they're never gonna move and graduate over to prospect. And and your question your prospect.
John Tripolsky:And, really, Chris, to talk about the the questions, you know, not in a grave deal here. We'll get into it again. But it's one of those things. Right? It is kind of a living, breathing form.
John Tripolsky:Like, really, what we and I'm talking about just the ones that we built together. We built them initially. We didn't stew on them for an incredibly long time. We executed. We got them out there, and we tweak them because we need these things go through it.
John Tripolsky:Right? So it's and I say this to people. Sometimes they over plan things. Right? And they spend hours and hours and hours developing these questionnaires that are 30 questions long.
John Tripolsky:You tend to turn people away a little too much, and you've just spent a whole lot of time developing something you don't even know will Right? So it's usually better. Just get something out there, and it's very easy to change these things, obviously, depending on where you develop the forms at. I mean, we do everything in house, so it's you know, we do in a matter of minutes. But there's so many tools out there that it could be done and updated, like updating a word doc.
John Tripolsky:It's not rocket science. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Mhmm. Mhmm. Exactly. It's so a lead becomes a prospect. Okay.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:That's great. Now you have a prospective client. You have someone that is very interested in working with your firm and you have a lot of information about them. We're gonna talk about that process. How how we're gonna get that information?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right? We know more about that prospect. We or not more. We knew a lot about that prospect. So, going from a lead, so a client, how do you go from a prospect to a client?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, clients a lead that move through your acquisition process, signed your engagement, signed an engagement letter, and is now actively receiving services from your firm. So, it's more than just a transaction. Remember, our in our world, our clients are partners. It's an ongoing relationship where you're delivering value. You're building trust and you're building a book of business for your stuff.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, the longer, there's a lot of synergies with clients and the longer longer someone is a client of your firm, the deeper the relationship should be. So now someone becomes a client. And then the sixth step. It's funny because I've never in thinking of this, I'm like, well, just because someone's a client, is there a what if they're a super client? Well, super client is a fan.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:A fan is short for fanatic, and your fans are clients that are actually going to pick your next clients. And the beautiful thing about a fan is it could take a fan is gonna short circuit your client journey or your contact journey. A fan is going to not bring you lurkers. They're not gonna bring you followers. They're gonna bring you leads.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:In the in a high percentage of leagues become prospects, a low percentage of lurkers become prospects. So remember shoots and ladders that game when you'd slide up and slide down and all that? So you usually create a family fight and board flying all over their kitchen table. A fan is like the shoot the the ladder. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:A fan is gonna refer you to someone that is already in the lead category and skipped the first two spots on the contact journey?
John Tripolsky:I think my favorite ones are, you know, people that believe so much in what and this goes across many industries. Believe so much in in you, your process, your organization. They become a fan, like, immediately when they become a client because they're so happy even just with an onboarding process, and there really hasn't even been a lot delivered to them beyond that. Like and I imagine everybody's seen this. I mean, obviously, most people that are listening to this in in this profession are also business owners at the same time.
John Tripolsky:You're obviously in this industry. So, I mean, how easy and how pleasant, we should say, is it when people are coming in, they're saying they're referred by somebody, and and that you kinda tend to see, right, birds of the feather flock together. Like you mentioned, it's, like, one of the best lines I think I've ever heard in my professional career. You know? What is it?
John Tripolsky:You just said a couple times. Let your best clients pick your next clients. Like, that is the best advice I think you could give anybody besides just wake up in a good mood. Like, literally. Alright.
John Tripolsky:Because that means, like, not only are you building your proverbial Rolodex of clients, but if you build it with intention, you're picking the best ones, the ones that you want. And now they're gonna refer you again becoming a fan of people that are like minded or, in theory, hopefully, like minded with them. And that's how you grow your practice. Like, you guys have, you know, you've niched down into real estate so much. I remember when you guys were thinking about doing that, you know, over fifteen, sixteen years ago.
John Tripolsky:It's I feel like you wrote it down on a piece of paper of, you know, you have a couple clients in that industry, and you really like working with them. They are great. They're profitable. It's for a number of reasons. And now look.
John Tripolsky:I mean, that's almost the the majority of your business. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Oh, absolutely. So And now well, mean, I would say one thing. It's it's tempting to let a fan refer you to someone, and you automatically put them in as a prospect. Be careful. Send them back to a lead.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Let the lead become the prospect. Because I could tell you, I had a fan of our firm refer us to someone, and they jumped all the way to prospect. They're ready to do, you know, get a quote. I'm like, woah, woah, woah. We gotta send you back to lead.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I gotta get some more information, see if we're a great fit. They actually were not a good fit. And had I let if I would if I were to skip that lead to prospect step of of making sure that we align on technology, on on on pricing, on need assessment, then there could be bad stuff happening. So fans create the leads, and then it's your responsibility as a firm owner to take that lead and run with it. So that's the modern contact journey.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Now I'm gonna jump in next or transition to the client acquisition process. Alright? How do we take because I I just explained someone goes from a lead to a prospect to a client to a fan, which is great, but what are the really the steps to do it? You know, I told you what the process is, but now we're gonna actually look at the recipe card. We're gonna look at these steps to take a lead all the way to onboarding a client.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So I have nine steps. Right? Oh, boy. Nine steps. But don't worry.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It it it's it's these steps can go pretty quickly. Go and lead to onboard. The first step is someone's a lead. So, hey. We only have eight steps after that now.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Or seven. I'm sorry. I'm not good with numbers. But the first thing is someone's a lead. When you get a lead, you then send them to what's called a qualifying URL.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Okay? And let's remember, as I said, leads are coming from anywhere. You know, they could this is a tricky part. I get phone calls. I get emails.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I get text messages. I get DMs on social media. I get and we don't have a physical office but people come in from all over the place as a lead. I just had my wife refer me to a high school friend of hers. He called me.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:John, you were actually with me when this happened, but he called me. I called him back and left him a voice mail and said, hey. Love to talk to you about your situation. I'm gonna text you a website to please submit a formal inquiry. So no matter where the lead's coming from, my next step is I'm trying to get them to what's called what we call a qualifying URL.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:A qualifying URL is a a domain. I I'm not saying it right, but a but a a site where someone could submit their their information to us. Really, it's your lead capture forms. It's my lead capture. Now no matter what, for us, we're gonna try to get their email address.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Okay? Even if they text us. Someone hey. Can you send me your email address? Great.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I'm gonna then email them saying, thank you so much for, you know, thank you so much for that information. Here's a link to answer a few questions. Can you, you know, having a solid CPA firm relationship is very important and this is what you do. At that point, it's time to humble brag for your firm. In the meantime, that's what you should have put in an email.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Why don't you check out some of the links to our information? It could be something as easy as, let's say you're not, let's say you don't have a website also, but you just have a ton of good Google reviews. Send them to that. Send them to whatever you have that puts you in a good light, that establishes your credibility right away. Okay?
John Tripolsky:And adding to that, Chris, as well too. Like, think about it. Right? Like, we live in an age where a lot of people do online shopping, follow-up see follow-up emails, all of this stuff so late in the middle of the night. I mean, they might be sitting in bed doing this.
John Tripolsky:Imagine if you don't have anything like this set up. You have no online presence. You have a phone number. And say this is a business owner who is extremely busy during the day, does not take their eye off the ball. They're not answering phone calls from people they don't know.
John Tripolsky:They're not getting back to emails, any of that stuff. They're very focused. How hard is it gonna be to get ahold of that person and actually align your schedules? You're basically cutting yourself off of the knees as far as for lead gen goes. So having something like this literally is, I mean, think about it, as a sales assistant or a salesperson that's out there in the world, you're not having to pay them really, and they're open twenty four seven.
John Tripolsky:They never call in sick is there. It's you. You control it. You own that domain. You own what's on it.
John Tripolsky:You have control over that. And that basically is it's you. It's that thing. And I'm I'm sure you'll talk about automations or something at some point with a little bit of this, or maybe we can have a whole another podcast on that. But it's all about keeping the conversations going and not letting it run dry or feel like that you don't care.
John Tripolsky:They got thrown into a system. Right? Like, adding that human element a little bit to it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, that's a good point. What what does your qualifying URL say? So I'll tell you what ours does. We ask qualifying questions that are gonna take two minutes or less to answer. We have an automation that leads right into a CRM or a database.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We have a clear description of our services so our leads know exactly what we offer. We have a comment section. So that if someone does wanna expect well, I want this to be two minutes or less to answer, but if they wanna add some color to what their answers are, that's fine. And guess what? The comment section is a hidden trick.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:If someone puts nothing in the comment section, I'm a little concerned. If someone writes me a book in the comment section, I think they're gonna be someone that overshares and my professor personally, I'm not gonna mesh well with them. But if they give me some comments that are to the point direct, I know that we're gonna work well with them. So the comments comments section is a way that you can figure out what their communication style is. And if it aligns with you, we have FAQs.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Don't offer an a meeting immediately right there too. Get information before you offer a meeting. Your time is valuable. Your URL could provide niche positioning and make sure it's easy to navigate and layout. The nav or the it's laid out.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, I'm going I'm going to take you a little bit of inside baseball now. I'm we have two URLs that are that are qualifying URLs that if you're watching this, listening to this, maybe jot them down and check them out later. The first one is www.2025.tax. Okay? That's it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:2025.tax. The other one is if we have a real estate investor is www.realestatecpa.guru. Maybe put that on the side as we walk work through this podcast. Check them out. That and you'll see exactly what our qualifying URL looks like.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It's not that fancy. It's simple, and we've built automations out that we when we get, you know, we get those submissions that we're emailing people within one business day. That's the other thing. So you get a qualifying URL. Someone create someone puts a submission in.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Oh, boy. What do we do now? Right? The third the third step of the eight step client acquisition process is a post submission email. So someone submits an inquiry, I'm gonna send them an email.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:What my email is gonna tell them is this. One,
John Tripolsky:there's
Chris Picciurro, CPA:a call to action. Hey. Thank you so much for submitting your inquiry. Here's some information about our programs and packages. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Because if they if you have minimum fees, you need to communicate that right away. Don't meet with someone until they have a clear understanding of your range of fees and what type of services you offer. The more information you can give them, the better. Okay? We haven't reinforced your firm's strengths and resources and credibility at that time.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So and for us, I would offer them at this point an opportunity to set up a call with you. We call it in our firm an assessment call. A ten to fifteen minute chat. I call it ten minutes, but I leave fifteen minutes in case someone gets talkative. I make it a chat so that they don't expect that we're gonna be in front of our computer.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Personally, John, you know this? I do my ten to fifteen minute chats when I'm walking because I think better. All I'm doing is trying to figure out, are they a good fit? Okay? So post submission email comes after that qualifying URL.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We've have an automation where it goes out about an hour after the submission. So they actually, clients, prospective prospects or leads actually think that it's not automated because it doesn't go out right away, but it's not so delayed that we forgot about it.
John Tripolsky:This is such a good conversation because I feel like we could be pretty transparent with this because, really, at this point, right, we're thirty five minutes into a conversation about running a tax practice. It's highly doubtful that a potential client's gonna listen this far and be like, they tricked me. They tricked me this far in. And and, Chris, if I can answer that really quick, and and I apologize if I'm gonna cut you off when you're about to talk about this. But one of the glorious parts about this, right, like, here's a little bit of a hidden secret maybe somebody didn't think about.
John Tripolsky:You know, Chris had mentioned multiple URLs, so lead capture pages, forms that we've built. A little trick. If you think about it, it's kind of common sense. It's almost the exact same content and the form on each of those pages with minor tweaks. It's any supporting content that's on there that just really exudes expertise and a focus in a specific niche.
John Tripolsky:So and I and I say that because I don't want somebody to be listening to this and think, oh, man. Now he's talking about making three different pages, three different forms, three different processes. It follows a lot of the same processes, and actually a lot of the same tools are built in it kind of as a hub that these are all feeding into. It's I just wanted to put that out there so it'll scare anybody away. But it's a it's been a I mean, frankly, Chris, I mean, I think I'm not speaking out of out of context.
John Tripolsky:I it's basically been nothing short of a game changer for you guys having these pages. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:That's been a game changer. And and think about, like, you you know, you don't have to have a niche. You could you're you could have a segment. Meaning, John, let's say you you operate in Michigan and you're, you know, you want to and let's say you're on a small town. Let's say you're in Alpena, Michigan.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I'm just gonna make something up. Right? You could get the domain name alpena.tax. How easy is that for people to remember? And people know, okay.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I know where they're located. Right? Or it could be it could be whatever, you know, your URL is. That qualifying URL help people a lot of information, but it's gotta be easy to it's gotta be easy to remember.
John Tripolsky:Exactly. And you said it earlier on too as far as we're picking it and making it say what it is. And I said earlier, and then just again to it, it is very important that they don't have to think too hard on what it is just based off of that URL. Because some people think like, oh, well, you know, my initials are I'm gonna start randomly putting in all these acronyms and all these things that if it's not clear to somebody, they they tend to kinda put a little bit of a guard confusion guard up first. And I would almost put out the challenge.
John Tripolsky:Right? If anybody's thinking about doing this, consider put yourself in somebody's shoes and say you're considering registering a domain, which by the way is extremely easy to do. If you haven't done it before, trust me, it's easy. You get a domain and think about it. If you could just only even put a form on there, not even saying anything about your firm or anything what you do, just what's in that form by way of the questions you're asking, could somebody actually be able to semi confidently know what you do just by that URL?
John Tripolsky:Like, Chris, you mentioned the, you know, the real estate one. We have realestate.guru, I think it is. A real estate CPA dot guru. That one even specifically, people know that is real estate and a CPA right there. And then say you just had a contact form, they don't really need to know much more, and it's already clear to them.
John Tripolsky:So keep the confusion down to a minimum if anybody's getting into it. Famous last words from a marketing guy.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Let's go to we're gonna pick it up here and and get into that client acquisition process. So you do the you do the ten minute call. Listen. Okay? Let keep your listening ears open.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I per we personally use a note taker, virtual note taker to jump on the calls, which is disclosed to people when they book that call. Call the contact directly. Don't have them call you. You need to control this call. If they are not available and blow you off, that's a red flag.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right? So you make you call them, use a dedicated work number, and only conduct a phone call at this stage, not a full meeting. Figure out what their questions are. If you're being real honest with yourself as you're listening to this or watch you're not watching it, but listening to this, you know that within ten to fifteen minutes of talking to someone, if it's someone you'd wanna work with or not. So don't waste more than that.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Don't invest more time than that. So if you do the assessment call, right, after that, do a follow-up email. Even if someone is not a good prospective client, even if they are not a gonna move to the next step of being a client, still do a follow-up email. And now I have template follow-up emails, but I would I would definitely send a follow-up email because it might say, hey. Thank you for the time.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:At this point, you know, we might not have the capacity to help you or we doesn't sound like we're a great fit for you. I might have a referral for you or is it this, you always leave someone better than you found them even if they're not working with you. You wanna you wanna send that out within two business days. I do mine within one. But send that out within two business days and it allows you to really think about what you learned on that call.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Think about if someone is a is a good fit and if you want to have them move forward into the next step of that client acquisition Chris, you you guys are ask your going Oh, no. Go ahead,
John Tripolsky:I'm so sorry. No. I was just gonna say, you mastered that so much, you personally, in your firm that even if I wouldn't say you turned somebody away, but you're not a fit for them and you have a resource for them, I've actually seen them come back to you guys. Or, you know, they're out there spreading good words about you. They're not like all these jackasses just turn me away, and they're really rude.
John Tripolsky:Right? You you still become a resource center for them.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right. Yeah. You again, yeah, you wanna leave someone better than you found them. Right? So after that call, I'm gonna do one or two, three thing.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:One of three things. One, I'm gonna respectfully decline moving forward with them. Two, I'm gonna send them a quote for the if let's say they just have an immediate need, what we are, we call tax compliance work. Or three, since our firm is a, you know, let's say they need more than just tax preparation. They need tax planning, strategy, bookkeeping.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You really need to dive in. Invite them to a formal discovery meeting. It's at that point where you're really going to put some time into this person. You're going to you're going to host your discovery meeting with the expectation that they do become a client and for us, the minimum annual spend for someone to go to that discovery meeting step is a a $5,000 per year. It doesn't mean that has to be for you.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But think about this. If it's someone that you're just preparing a tax turn for, send them the quote after that that call. But if it's someone that's gonna do planning, bookkeeping, payroll, have more of a bundled service. We have a subscription service. Then, you can invite them to do your a formal discovery meeting.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:When you invite them to do a formal discovery meeting, okay, it's at that point we say, hey, here's a link to book that. Our formal discovery meetings are forty five minutes long. I I I allocate an hour in case it goes a little longer. And what I'm trying to figure out is, is there enough there for a permanent relationship? So here's my best practice for for inviting them into a discovery meeting.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Because here's what I see a lot, John. I see people going from someone is a lead and they automatically offer them a discovery meeting. There's no qualifying URL. There's no post submission email. There's no assessment call.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:There's no follow-up email. So you're taking all the time and risk they're not. For my discovery meetings, I will tell you our someone that's a lead, we're probably working with I'm gonna have to look at the data and I will soon. We're probably working with about 20 no. Probably about 15% of any lead.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:However, we're probably working with about 75 to 80% of people that make it to discovery meeting phase. Because I've I've you know? So And that brings up a good point too.
John Tripolsky:I'm sorry? No. I'm so sorry. And that really brings up a good point. This literally just happened to me early this week where I got on a it was for a a a software that we use.
John Tripolsky:Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Mhmm.
John Tripolsky:And Mhmm. We actually got on a discovery call. It was supposed to be, like, a a thirty minute call. And if I didn't if I didn't know better, the the description of this meeting was so far off by this organization, it almost seemed like it was more of an intake onboarding call than it was a discovery call. Right?
John Tripolsky:So I think and you guys do a great job of this is telling them the process up front and as you're going along with it, not just, oh, here's a meeting. Let's talk. Like, you actually give them context around it. Right? Which is super important.
John Tripolsky:Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Oh, absolutely. You you the the more transparent you can be, you're asking people for their income, their marital status, their Social Security numbers, their information about their their job. You've gotta be transparent also. You can't you know, you've got to establish trust. So my best practices are use an online calendar, come up with, like, a loose script.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I might you know, have some type of agenda so you don't after this discovery meeting, oh, you know what? I realized they have three s corps I didn't ask about. Understand that this discovery meeting, if there's such a big potential client, there's nothing wrong. If you can't conduct if you can't get everything you need within the the forty five minutes to an hour, do a second meeting or have follow-up. Don't go on a meeting and sit there for two to three hours.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You will wear them down, and they will now wanna work with you.
John Tripolsky:And then they'll expect every meeting's two or three hours and they and flowers at
Chris Picciurro, CPA:the end of it. Right? Yep. Conduct a meeting on a virtual session with a camera to build rapport. Like, don't go on Zoom with a with a and not have your camera on.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:That's that's just not best practice. I we create a secure portal. You need their tax return documents before you have this discovery meeting. Figure out what their pain points are. Stress is expensive.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:When you relieve stress, you create value. Their pain points are what's causing them stress. So their pain point could be something that you think is so easy, like, oh, didn't get our home office deduction. That really upset me. You're thinking, even if they took the simplified home office, I could fix that.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And you see four or five other things that could be valuable. You know, address their pain points because that's where the value is going to be hidden and find the red flags that could affect this fit or scope. They will tell you the red flags if you're quiet enough to listen. Your biggest asset during the discovery meeting are are is is the ability to listen, your ears. Get those old tax returns, and I use a note taking software also, which is disclosed when I book the meeting.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I'm taking some notes, but I am using a note taking software because I don't wanna miss anything because I might look at it a couple days later, three days later and say, oh, yeah. They did tell me about that. Then after the discovery meeting, do not quote them at the meeting. Tell them, look. I will get you a purse a a quote.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:For me, it's because we are talking about memberships. We are in a subscription model. It's within five business days. I usually get it to him in three. So if you think you can get the quote to them in three, tell him five.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Do you think you can get to him in five? Tell him seven. Always over or or always deliver, right? Don't tell them I'll give you a quote tomorrow and then it's two days. Now, you're losing your trust.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Tell them it's gonna be within four days because they have no expectation of when the quote's coming yet until you open your mouth and tell them. So, that's the quoting stage. The next thing is you give them the quote. You deliver the quote. Okay and what we do for delivering our quote is we make sure that the that the that at this point, the prospect, right, very good prospect, understands that our pricing, our quote is firm, And it clearly identifies the scope of our services.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We all know about scope creep. We communicate that all items that will be delivered so there's no confusion, right? Be very clear. Don't just say, we'll prepare your tax return. No.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We'll prepare your tax return with including up to two schedule Cs, up to 10 rental properties, to 10 k ones. Because what happens, that's how you prevent scope creep before it's it's an issue. Communicate the terms including your payment expectations and engagement details. This hack has helped me. I can't tell you how how good this has been for me in our firm.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Create a walk through of the video for the prospect. Don't just email. You've put time, effort into this quote. Don't just email it to them. Create a one minute, one and a half minute video walking them through the quote.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It shows they care. Don't use round numbers when you quote. Do not so if it if you if it's a tax preparation client, don't charge them a thousand dollars for the tax term. Charge them $9.90, charge them a thousand 15. Because when you use round numbers in any type of quote, the it feels like it's negotiable.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It doesn't feel so exact. I would, you know, a thousand $15 seems pretty darn exact for tax term preparation, not a thousand dollars. And have an expiration date on the quote. I got burnt many, many years ago where I quoted someone and a year later, they they came back and said, oh, yeah. We wanna work with you.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I'm like, oh, gosh. That quote's not valid anymore. So definitely have a an expiration date on the quote and deliver it with an email and deliver it with a video. Use video software where you can tell if they've watched it. And then after the quote, they say yes to the dress as we like to say in our firm, then you have an onboarding process.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Onboarding starts with a nice email. We use a template email where we have a welcome video that we said, thank you, welcome to our family clients. And we have them book an onboarding meeting with us. It's that first impression that you can now, if you're a multi person firm, start bringing in other people into that onboarding process and get everyone acclimated with that client and the client, new client feel like, okay. Cool.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We're on we're having an onboarding meeting. We're hitting the ground running.
John Tripolsky:And even with this, Chris, I think too is is we wrap this out. I mean, we're we're definitely gonna talk more about this. And and, obviously, we welcome anybody. If you have questions on this, reach out to us. I mean, out to Chris, myself, MRR on LinkedIn, through the website.
John Tripolsky:Anything you can think of, just look us up. Reach out. We're there for it. And and kind of a closing note on this too, Chris, if I might add to this part is, I think some people and this goes across all industries. Some people, I think, are very afraid to to put some information out there what they think is too early on in the process.
John Tripolsky:But think of it this way. I almost say it the other way around. It's gonna come out eventually. If somebody's gonna get scared off from a price or a process, wouldn't you much rather it not come as a surprise to them later and have it be addressed upfront? So you're not in your example, right, you know, spending time in a lengthy discovery conversation with somebody.
John Tripolsky:We'll just say it's, you know, $5,000 a year for something, and they expected it to be 1,500. Right? Like, you both might be moving along. You both have time and and energy and emotions tied into a relationship, and then all of a sudden, it's like, nope. It it it hits the bed, and it's out.
John Tripolsky:So I I put that out there. And, again, I'm saying that almost because of, you know, our experience with that with a software provider on something earlier. They were not clear on a process and where we stood in that process, I think, is just as important as the process, letting them know where they're at. So I look forward to, you know, keep talking on this.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. I'm in I mean, that's how you take a lead to to someone that's onboarding. Onboard's the last step of that client acquisition process. I'm gonna leave people with some tips on how to go from a client to a fan. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:How to date your clients? Have exclusive content. It could be a newsletter. It could be something about your practice. Something behind the scenes.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Some they you want your clients to feel like they have information. They have access to someone that other people don't. Have client appreciation events. It could be a webinar, in person mixes. It could be a virtual q and a session.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Be proactive with communication. You know, do personal check ins. It could be a call. Hey. You know what the great thing about of people never answer their phone anymore?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You could pretty much get someone's voice mail at any time. So use it to your advantage. Call one of your clients. If you get the voice, say, hey. Just just, hey, Sally.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:This is Chris. Just say seeing how you're doing. If you need anything, you know we're here to help you. 90% of the time, they're probably not gonna even reply turn your call, but guess what you did? That was a touch.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:They feel good. They feel proactive communication. Was was was there. So date your clients. Many married successfully married people, and my wife and I tried to do this.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You try to date your spouse. Date your significant other. And then also leverage your centers of influence. Alright? For us, our centers influence our financial advisers, estate planning attorneys, insurance brokers, lenders, real estate agents, bankers, bookkeepers, fractional CFOs.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:My one of the roles in our firm is I'm leveraging or I'm deepening those relationships relationships and leveraging the centers of influence. So those are the things that we're we're trying to do to plant seeds, to build a build a base of individuals that we could take from lurker to a fan.
John Tripolsky:Amazing. And that's a great spot to close it out. And even with this, again, everybody that's listened to this, you had, you basically gotten the words of wisdom from somebody that's not just read about this in a book or heard about it on a podcast, seen about it, you know, on YouTube specifically. He's been eating, breathing, crying over this thing for twenty plus years. So, Chris, as we started this off with, you know, nothing makes a better teacher than somebody that's actually done it and then educates based on passion.
John Tripolsky:And I think you checked all the boxes here, man. So, again, as as I mentioned just briefly ago is anybody have questions on this? You have the luxury of having the resources at your fingertips to reach out. If it's if it's us, we're happy to help. If it's somebody else, obviously, just take that first step, obviously, in in growing your practice and defining and optimize.
John Tripolsky:And we'll drop some notes here as well in the show notes wherever you're listening to this, with some quick little links. So as I say in the teaching tech textual podcast, don't be lazy. It's one click away. Click on some resources. Follow along.
John Tripolsky:We're here to help you. No judgment if you have no idea or you're scared to death on what to do next. We're here to help you. So thank you everybody for joining us on this episode of the MrR Show. We'll be back again here in a month with the next episode.
John Tripolsky:However, we have some events between now and then, so I'm sure we will see a handful of you at those. So take care, everybody. Enjoy the work that you do. You're in a fantastic, fantastic industry with a heck of a lot of opportunity in, in the modern times. So enjoy it, grow it, optimize it.
John Tripolsky:We're here for you. Talk to everybody soon.
Outro:You've been listening to the Mr. R show presented by the MRR Institute. For more content like this, be sure to check us out on YouTube for weekly expert tips, and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to stay updated on the latest strategies for scaling and modernizing your tax practice. Looking for more? Contact us at mrrinstitute dot com for practice resources, coaching opportunities, and a peer to peer mastermind group.
Outro:Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
Disclaimer:The content of this podcast does not constitute an offer of securities. Offerings can only be made through an offering memorandum, and you should carefully examine the risk factors and other information contained in the memorandum. The content provided is for educational purposes only. We encourage you to seek personalized investment advice from your financial professional. For all tax and legal advice, please consult your CPA or attorney. Investment advisory services are offered through Cabin Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Securities are offered through Cabin Securities, a registered broker dealer.
