Special Report >Building a Profitable Accounting Firm 

Attention: Accountants…

"Are you Prepared to Multiply Your Annual Billings per Business Client by 3 to 10 Times this Year?"

If you are not actively pursuing outsourced accounting and controllership services, you are, quite frankly, missing the boat on the best service opportunity to hit the accounting industry since QuickBooks.

From the Desk of:

Rebecca Jensen, CPA

RE:  Building Your Accounting Business

Dear Accounting Professional,

Presumably you are reading this special report for one or more reasons.  I think that I have heard many of them already from other accountants just like you.  Now, I want you to do me a favor and yourself one at the same time.  Go through this list, and see if any of these reasons apply to you:

• You are frustrated with how hard you have to work to make top profits in your firm.  You wonder—shouldn’t it be easier than this?
• The old ways of servicing your clients you’ve used successfully in the past just isn’t working as well anymore.
• You can never seem to get the type of motivated employees you want, and just wish you were not so dependent on finding and holding them.
• You can see the value of your firm actually declining.  When you want to sell it, will you be able to?  Maybe your income has even grown, but it’s still not translating into wealth and security for you and your family.
• The “word of mouth” advertising that you used to rely on is leaving your client list shorter than you’d like.
• You’re frustrated with your income fluctuations, the “feast or famine” syndrome you’ve had to live with in with traditional accounting services.  Things look great in tax season, but you’re scrambling to make ends meet in November.
• You’re feeling out of control, putting out so many fires in your firm, it’s a miracle you have 5 minutes a day to produce results.  It feels like you are running faster and faster on that treadmill, yet still going nowhere.  You feel like you’ll never get out from the mountain of busywork and problems.  There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day for everything.  If it doesn’t end soon, you could burn out completely.
• You provide real services, you have real expertise, you know your stuff – but you admit you do NOT really understand “marketing” and you often feel like you’re reinventing the wheel, wasting money or doing things the hard way unnecessarily.
• You wonder if your clients really care about quality and service anymore.
• You feel like you’re working longer hours and harder than you should have to, or want to.  You’d like more time for your family or to play golf or whatever.  You want a top income but you want a life too.  Is it possible to have both?
• You see your margins declining.  It seems like somebody’s taking a little bite out of your money every other day.  You wonder – where will this end?  What can I do to make up for this?
• You’re worried about increasing numbers of people bypassing your firm for computerized “do it yourself” solutions.
• You thought you would be able to pass along your firm to your children for their financial security.  Is this still a possibility?

If you agree with one or more (maybe all) of these reasons, this special report is for you.  If you know in your heart that you really deserve to make a lot more money and would like to know the “secret answers” it starts with this realization – BEING GOOD AT WHAT YOU DO IS NOT ENOUGH!

According to the Small Business Administration, more than 600,000 businesses are started in the United States each year.  Every one of these new businesses can benefit from the expertise of a good accountant.  In fact, good accounting practices can be instrumental in helping these new businesses survive their most difficult first two years.  Since the mid-1990’s, small businesses have created 60-80% of all new jobs.  Accountants just like you have been instrumental in helping these businesses grow and prosper like never before in our history.

So why does it feel like you are working harder than ever before?

Let’s face it.  Accounting has become a commodity. 

Low-cost computerized accounting software has revolutionized the accounting industry.  Whether you like it or not, accounting services are no longer the mysterious domain of the select few in the accounting industry.  Business owners are constantly bombarded with commercials telling them they can easily manage their own accounting simply by spending a few hundred dollars on software.

Business owners expect more from their accountants now than ever before.  Keeping track of the numbers and filling out tax forms is not enough to keep up your profit margins.  Accounting has changed, and your business will suffer if you do not change with it.

Back in 1997, my husband and I started an accounting firm in Spokane, Washington.  We focused on providing services to businesses, and we found the market hungry for a new approach.  From the day we opened our doors, we focused on helping business owners be more profitable.  With virtually no contacts in Spokane, we grew our firm to over $300,000 in annualized billings in less than three years.  When we first started out, we acquired anywhere from four to eleven new monthly business clients each month. We could have grown our firm much faster, but we deliberately slowed our growth after the first six months in order to develop efficient internal processing systems. 

In 1999, we were one of the first firms in the country to offer online outsourced accounting services.  We learned how to efficiently and profitably become the “accounting department down the hall without the hall”.  The technology and systems required to run this service were so revolutionary that we became founding members of a national accounting organization focused on supporting accountants who provided these services.  We envisioned that online outsourced accounting would quickly become the standard in a few short years.

In reality, almost ten years later, we have found that only a small handful of firms across the country have embraced the new technology and systems necessary to efficiently support today’s small business owner.

The business world today is very different than twenty, or even ten years ago.  In order to be competitive, business owners need to have ready access to accurate financial information.  Today’s business world moves faster than every before, and accountants who are willing to embrace this change have an opportunity available to them to grow their accounting practices in a whole new way.

The biggest challenge for accounting firms right now is finding the knowledge and experience to offer online outsourced accounting and controllership services, and more importantly, effectively market these services to the business community. 

The technology is even better now than it was in 1999, but the tools and systems necessary to profitably market and service outsourcing clients has been a closely guarded secret.

If you are reading this special report, you should know that you have found the treasure map to building an outsourced accounting empire.

When we started our accounting firm in 1997, our goal was to help as many business owners as possible become profitable, stable enterprises.  We quickly found that we could personally only help a very tiny fraction of business owners that needed our help.  If we wanted to make a true difference, we had to do more than run a successful accounting practice.

If we changed our focus to helping other accountants help business owners, how many more businesses could we impact? 

Business owners are hungry for help.  They need you, but you cannot provide the help they need if you don’t have the right systems and tools.  You also need to have the right marketing system in place to bring the right clients to your business.

What kind of an impact could you have on your business community if you had a step-by-step guide to profitably providing outsourced accounting services?  How many businesses could you help?

Providing outsourced accounting services could completely change how you do business.  For me, tax season is just a bit of extra fluff.  Think about how quickly you could process your clients’ tax returns if you managed their books.  And, your regular monthly accounting fees more than cover all your expenses, so you can pick and choose which returns you want to prepare. 

No more feast or famine.  You can write your own fee checks, month after month after month.

The better you service your clients, the more efficient their businesses.  You help your clients grow, and your fees grow with your clients’ businesses.  You would be very hard pressed to find any other business or service area that gives you a more predictable, stable revenue stream.

 So how do you get started?

Right now, we are looking for one accountant in your area who shares our vision and passion for helping business owners.  We have the step-by-step guides, the technology resources, and the marketing system necessary to help you help your clients.

We would like to personally help you implement and market an outsourced accounting business into your practice.

Sure, we could sell you a how-to manual and walk away, but our goal is not to see how quickly we can put another guide on your shelf, or add another item to your to-do list that you may get to in another ten years.  Business owners need help now, and we want to work with an accountant who is ready to fill this need.

We are dedicated to helping your business implement and grow an outsourced accounting practice.  We will personally coach you through your first year of growing and building a profitable outsourced accounting program.

There is too much to learn to expect you to absorb this knowledge with a few “How-to” guides.  We could not possibly teach you everything we know about running this type of service with simply a seminar or workbook.  We are dedicated to making this program a success, which requires coaching you through this process on a one-on-one basis.

 We will be working with one accountant in your area, and the question is whether you or your competition will be implementing this program.

 As an example of the effectiveness of this system, we had 59 appointments scheduled on our books to talk to business owners about our accounting services two weeks after we opened our door.  Most of these business owners already had an accountant.  A large percentage of them fired their accountant when they compared our services to what they were currently receiving.  Our closing ratio in acquiring new accounts was close to 70%.  We were working with up to eleven new businesses each month, until we moved our marketing program to half-time, and then to referral and word-of-mouth only.   

Would your practice benefit from a steady stream of new clients, and a regular source of recurring revenue?

If you have a strong desire to help business owners, and are ready to revolutionalize accounting in your area, sign up right now.   Let us know you are interested in discussing this program in more detail.

No promises, but I will call you to discuss your suitability for this program.  The fact is that many accountants are not ready to change.  They will not embrace technology and new practices, and it is a waste of my time to try to work with them.  This is not arrogance on my part, but a reflection of personal experience.  You must have the right mindset and experience in order to be a good outsourced accounting service provider.

Be assured that implementing this program is surprisingly affordable.  We are in this for the long haul, and are willing to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement for the right accountant.

You want more details, of course, but we need to confirm we have not already selected an accountant in your area before we can provide them to you.

We also need to spend a few minutes talking to get an idea whether or not we can work together effectively.  If you are the accountant chosen for your area, we will be working with you a minimum of one hour a week for the next year.  We need to talk to you in person to determine if you are a good “fit” for this program.

Sign up here, and we can schedule a time to discuss the details.

To your success,

 Rebecca Jensen, CPA

Rebecca Jensen, CPA

P.S.  It took years for us to develop the systems, tools and marketing systems in this program.  With our help, you could get started right away with virtually no learning curve.  Sure, you could try to develop these systems on your own, but why recreate the wheel?

P.P.S.  I am absolutely serious about this being a one-time, one accountant offer in your area.  Because we are providing personal one-on-one coaching services, there is no way we could offer this program to more than a handful of accountants at one time.  We will market in your area only until we find the best qualified accountant.  We have no need to saturate your marketplace with competitive firms.  It is in our best interest and yours to keep this knowledge limited to one firm in your area, as this increases the impact and success rate of our specialized marketing system.

P.P.P.S.  You may be concerned that this program is too much for the upcoming “busy season”.  In reality, the first part of the year is the absolute best time to implement your new marketing system, as this is the time of year most businesses think about changing accountants.  Ask me about our special “busy season” rates, if you need another incentive to get started right away.  Remember, once we find a candidate in your area, you will lose the opportunity to be a part of this program.

Sign Up right now for personal consideration of your qualifications.