CPA Practice Advisor

OCT 2014

Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.

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34 October 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com BRIDGING THE GAP By Jim Boomer, CPA.CITP 5 Technologies to Develop More Business for Your Firm Client Referrals & Testimonials W hen we ask people, "W ho are your best sales people?," the frst thought is the rainmaking partner or the business development professional in the frm. Clients don't ofen come up. Tink of your clients as an extension of your sales & marketing team. Te relation- ships they have with their colleagues and peers are opportunities for your frm to grow your client base. Keep in mind that your business is not their business. Making referrals should not be expected to be at the top of their priority list. You must be intentional about ask ing for referrals. Here are some tools to help in this area. • NETPROMOTER – both a loyalty metric and a discipline for using customer feedback to fuel proftable growth in your business. ( www.net- promoter.com ) • SKYPE/VODBURNER – many of you have probably used Skype for video calls with family and friends. You may even use it with your clients. With the Vodburner plug-in for Skype, you can record video calls to capture client testimonials even when you are not in the same location. ( www.skype. com , www.vodburner.com ) Branding & Design For many frms, branding and design ca n be int i m idat ing a nd resource- dra ining. Projects tend to become delayed and over budget. Branding and design effects lead generation and is vitally important to the image of the frm so this area can't be ignored. With advances in technology, the burden of these products can be minimized by leveraging crowdsourcing. Crowd- sourcing is commonly defned as "the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefned (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open cal l." In other words, you bid out your projects to a c om mu n it y of r e s ou rc e s v i a t he Internet completing projects quickly and cost efectively. Some of the leading platforms include: • Crowdspring ( www.crowdspring.com ) • 99Designs ( www.99designs.com ) • Elance ( www.elance.com ) • Zerys ( www.zerys.com ) Social Media Although social media has been around for years, too much focus has been given to marketing and not enough focus on how to leverage it for sales. With the improvements in social media over the last couple years, the idea of cold-calling is dead. By using the tools available on Facebook, LinkedIn and Tw itter, all of your "cold calls" can become "warm calls." Customer Relationship Management CR M has been a hot topic of discussion for some time now. Tools can range from simple to complex and success is deter- mined more by process and behavioral changes than the technologies them- selves. However, as Sofware-as-a-Ser- vice improves, so do the CR M tools. No longer are we limited to on premise, expensive, unwieldy CR M programs. CR M programs are becoming stream- lined, efective, and afordable options for organizing and coordinating business development eforts. Below is a list of services to consider. • Microsof Dynamics CRM ( htp://crm.dynamics.com ) • LexisNexis Interaction ( www.lexisnexis.com/intelligence/ interaction.page ) • SalesForce ( www.salesforce.com ) • ZOHO CRM ( www.zoho.com/crm ) • SugarCRM ( www.sugarcrm.com ) • WorkETC ( www.worketc.com ) Digital Messaging In today's digital world, a website and email marketing strategy are critical to having your message and value propo- sition heard by current and prospective clients. Too many frms still don't even have a website. And, a large number of those that do haven't given proper attention to their websites over the years. Trough website building tools, you can have a great looking website for a fraction of the time and cost it used to require. Some of the leading platforms include: • Wordpress ( www.wordpress.com ) • Emochila ( www.emochila.com ) • Squarespace ( www.squarespace.com ) • Weebly ( www.weebly.com ) • Wix ( www.wix.com ) • Webs ( www.webs.com ) • YourMembership ( www.yourmembership.com ) Developing an email communica- tion plan and schedule is also crucial to a well-rounded business development strategy. Despite the efects of spam, email marketing is still very efective for communicating with your clients and generating leads. Below are a few email marketing platforms that range from simplistic to robust. • BizActions ( www.bizactions.com ) • ClickDimensions ( www.clickdimensions.com ) • SalesFUSION ( www.salesfusion.com ) • Benchmark Email ( www.benchmarkemail.com ) • Constant Contact ( www.constantcontact.com ) • Mail Chimp ( www.mailchimp.com ) Tere is no shortage of technologies we can leverage to improve our busi- ness development efforts. A lthough many of the underlying principles are the same, business isn't developed the same way it was 5, 10, 20 years ago. Tools are becoming more powerful and more afordable every day. However, technolog y can't substitute the core business development sk i l ls we've relied upon in the past. You need to train your team on both the traditional concepts as well as the new age tech- nologies to truly recognize success. Tis will allow your frm to continue to Tink, Plan, Grow! 34 October 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com Jim Boomer is a shareholder and the CIO for Boomer Consulting , Inc. He is the director of the Boomer Technology Circles™ and an expert on managing technology within an accounting frm. He also serves as a strategic planning and technology consultant and frm adviser in the areas of performance and risk management. In addition, Jim is leading a new program, Te Producer Circle, in collaboration with CPA2BIZ and the AICPA. jim.boomer@cpapracticeadvisor.com E very day, new technology services are being launched that help professional ser v i ces f i r m s b etter engage w i t h prospects and clients in cost efective ways. Filtering through all the possibilities and efectively leveraging the technologies is becoming key to frms' success. W hile not all inclusive, here are a few focus areas to maximize the impact of your business development eforts.

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