Easy Ways to Increase Your Tax Firm’s Bottom Line
How to Make Your Tax Firm More Profitable in 2019
This year, almost half of all Americans paid absolutely nothing in federal income taxes. With this percentage set to slowly increase thanks to new tax acts, solidifying your tax firm’s profit per customer interaction is going to be more important than ever. Luckily there’s no shortage of tools, techniques, and advancements you can utilize to bridge the gap and make 2019 your most profitable year yet.
Define a Clear Budget for Marketing.
Getting your name out there can mean the difference between ending a year in the red versus the black. With the almost endless options for digital marketing, it’s easy to lose sight of how much of your budget should reasonably be allocated to marketing your firm. For newer tax firms, you should expect heavier marketing and advertising costs during your first few years of operation. This is nothing to be worried about! Don’t be afraid to spend a little more than expected while letting people know you’re open for business.
Before you dole out money for targeted Facebook ads, however, your first course of action should be word of mouth. Utilizing your friends and family not only as clients, but as links to potential clients, is an extremely cost effective form of marketing that could help kick-start your year. Offering incentives like free consultations for new/recommended customers is a great way to get clients in the door instead of your competitor’s. Keep in mind that it’s important to take advantage of every free option out there, but your ultimate goal is bringing in business…not your first few years’ bottom-line.
Streamline and Optimize Your Workload.
Working smarter, not harder, is the name of the game for any tax firm looking to get the most out of each workday. Adding helpful software to your firm’s arsenal will eliminate the tedious portions of your workload, and allow you to place more focus on your client experience. By going paperless you can automate calculations, find and fix errors more effectively, and rapidly increase data entry. These softwares also come pre-loaded with the forms and schedules that you’d regularly spend precious hours sorting through.
Offer Alternate Services.
In an ever-adapting world, staying on top of adapting your business will give you an edge up on your competition. Offering a mobile service to your tax firm will allow you to reach clients who might otherwise be too busy to visit in-person, and increase client satisfaction by working around their schedules. This is also a great time to offer accounting, payroll, and bookkeeping services to your newfound mobile customers.
Expanding your professional capabilities via further education is another great way to expand your market. While many states require CPA’s to update their CPE (Continuing Professional Education), this is still an important certification to obtain regardless of your local rules and regulations. Obtaining an EA (Enrolled Agent) certification is also a solid addition to any tax firm looking to expand into preparing taxes for a company, and will grant you the ability to tap into the corporate market.
Prioritize Your Strongest Employees.
You’ve spent time hiring the strongest available candidates, but some seem to be succeeding more than others. This could create a bit of a chasm in your potential profits, and it’s important to recognize this early on. There’s nothing wrong with giving Maria a larger portion of the higher profile clients. Even if this means creating an imbalance of work assigned per employee, your job as a business owner is to get the most out of each employee.
While focusing on your employees’ strengths, don’t forget to fortify your weak links. Communicate to your under-performing employees and recognize the areas in which they can be improved. Training or retraining an employee could be the perfect spark they need to turn around their work performance and become a valued asset to the team.
Curate a Flawless Customer Experience.
Integrating a professional tax software for tax preparers into your firm’s tech stack won’t solely benefit you and your employees. The client-facing features will improve ease of use between yourself and your clients by allowing then to easily upload and send documents back and forth from anywhere. This is essential in providing client data protection, and will ensure you’re not sending sensitive and confidential information through unsecured emails.
At the end of each interaction, you want to ensure your firm is exceeding client expectations each and every time. Whether through impressive service, speedy prep time, or convenient/cutting-edge features…if you can assure client retention and positive word of mouth, you’ll undoubtedly see an increase in profits as the year progresses.
