What To Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client? —CPA Trendlines

Regular Marketing is Important, and Existing Clients Are One of the Best Sources of Referrals.  Here’s How to Get the Best Return on Marketing Investment. 

Ed Mendlowitz regularly fields questions from readers at CPA Trendlines.  Recently he opined on the importance of regular marketing.  One tip:  leverage your existing clients for referrals.  Specifically, he adds:  

Many businesspeople – including accountants – spend great effort obtaining new clients. These efforts have a cost that includes time spent, lost billing time and marketing expenses. The same expense on existing customers will usually yield a greater amount of new business. It is also easier since you’ve already been pre-qualified by the customer.  Yet, many overlook marketing to existing clients.

With a smaller cost and less time spent on marketing to existing clients you should have a greater return on investment. An example is a newsletter directed at getting business from current clients. The newsletter could feature many more services than an ad and could cover each service in greater depth. The newsletter mailing should be followed up by phone calls to those clients that you know have an interest in the services promoted. A quarterly newsletter could have some firm information and stories about two or three services. This will also make you an “expert” in the eyes of your client. However, it should be stressed that follow up calls are essential. Do not sit by the phone waiting for it to ring.

Client contacts are part of marketing. How often and how they are made will affect your image and is a very important part of marketing. I know of a firm that requires partners to have a client contact at least every two months, and the managing partner monitors it. I try to have contact with my largest clients at least once every three weeks, and with tax clients twice a year besides the tax preparation contacts.

I suggest calling or meeting with your largest clients – your top 10 – and tell them you have some available time and resources and are looking for a limited number of additional clients and ASK FOR A REFERRAL!

Practice Marketing Integrates Many Disciplines