1. For starters, stop calling us “CPAs”. It’s our own industry’s fault, I know, but “CPA” is a license and it doesn’t tell you what that person actually DOES. Also, know that we’re often not location-specific like, say, attorneys tend to be.
When YOU are looking for US, rather than saying “I’m looking for a CPA in Atlanta”, consider what your client NEEDS. A tax professional who can handle multi-state equity comp? A part-time controller for their int’l mfg biz?
When you ask for a tax or accounting professional or firm in a way that lets us know you have some insight into both your client’s situation AND how OUR industry works, we’ll have more trust in sending OUR clients YOUR way.
2. You spend more of your time on marketing & sales; we spend more of our time on service. You’re looking for ways to GET new clients, we’re looking for ways to more efficiently TAKE CARE OF clients we already have.
Many tax & accounting professionals are too busy putting out fires to think beyond what's immediately in front of us. And we hate this.
This is a long-standing issue that's been exacerbated in recent years with absolutely insane changes to tax laws and completely absent customer service from tax administration. EVERYTHING we do takes 10%, 20%, 30%+ longer than it used to just a few years ago.
You’re not receiving referrals from us simply because we don’t have time to scrub our client base for additional work - not for you, not even for ourselves. Many of us are trying to fix all this by developing focused expertise & narrowing our market,
hiring more folks (when we can find them), implementing helpful technologies, etc. - all of which mean raising our fees. And then you tell us and your clients we charge too much so 🤷🏻♀️
3. Many of you are paid based on AUM. Tax & accounting pros don't think in terms of AUM. In fact, I bet some of them reading this will have to look it up. Saying you want a client that has $250K+ in investable assets is meaningless to us.
We see taxable account 1099s, we prep business financials & 1120S/1065s, but we're not often seeing our clients’ personal balance sheets. Understand our client composition and then translate how WE would see things appear into what would be an ideal client for YOU.
4. What do I mean by “client composition”? You may assume we have these untapped books of business from which we can magically pluck out multiple referrals for you and we simply choose not to. But is that true?
If you’re looking for HNW retiree referrals and my client base is primarily young, growing business owners then how can I refer to you? If most of MY work comes from referrals and much of those referrals come from other FAs,
then probably most of my clients ALREADY HAVE AN FA so who then can I refer? If most of my clients are GA Tech fans and your website is all about UGA, I would never send them to you.
Understand who my clients are, how I got them, what my relationships is with them, etc. before expecting a referral from me.
5. We don't understand your pricing. When I refer a client to an FA, the #1 or #2 q is “how much will it cost?” If your pricing is not super transparent and something we can understand, how are we expected to explain this to a client? Again, many of us will not understand AUM.
6. Your marketing is vague. We know a lot of financial planners. Well, we know a lot of people who SAY they are financial planners. IYKYK
Unless you are super & consistently clear about who you work with, how you charge, what value you provide, etc. it’s just noise for us and you are all the same person who does the same thing.
7. You expect referrals to soon after meeting us. Tax & accounting pros are gatekeepers with good reason. Our clients often first come to us out of necessity for tax returns, tax planning, business advisory, etc.
During the process of taking care of the must-haves, they start to trust us and we start to see all the ways their dreams and goals can be derailed. They return to us year after year for continued support and advice and…protection even.
We TREASURE and GUARD these deep relationships. (I am tearing up as I write this, I kid you not.) We will not willingly allow our clients to be made vulnerable to just anyone.
We need to trust you, too. That doesn’t happen quickly and MAY NOT HAPPEN AT ALL even if YOU REFER CLIENTS TO US ALL THE TIME.
8. While many of your clients may NEED a tax pro, many of our clients see a financial advisor as more of a would-like than a must-have. I’ve had many clients I’ve tried to convince otherwise.
Indeed, I’ve had more than one I had to fire simply because they would not work with an FA which limited my ability to provide quality service.
9. You've burned us. Trying to get our clients into abusive tax shelters? Not telling us about sizable realized gains/losses and letting US tell our clients in April?
Sending “prospects” to us just as a comparison against another tax pro or your own internal tax department that we didn’t even know you had until the “prospect” mentioned it?
Have you ever been screwed over by your client’s tax advisor or accountant? I bet you have and it’s a two-way street.
10. You’re uninvolved with your clients. If you're focused on your firm’s growth at the expense of client service, I can assure you it shows.
We can tell by the way you nonchalantly send referrals OUR way. We can tell when clients come to us with questions that are in your domain that you won’t answer.
11. This is a high risk referral. I don’t need to explain to you why this is. As the FA relationship is stickier than ours, we know if send our clients somewhere “bad” we/they are stuck.
That’s a wrap. The purpose of all this is not to criticize or blame, but truly to provide a few explanations for a situation I see financial planners struggle with and be mystified about.
My own industry doesn’t get it right all the time, either. We definitely have some problems and it impacts our mutual clients and we know it.
Hope you found something helpful here that positively informs how you seek referrals from tax & accounting professionals. 💕
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