Marketing and selling accounting services

Networking with your vendors and associates

This article discusses using your vendors and associates to send you referrals, an excellent source of new clients for your accounting service.

In addition to the finder's fee, there is another great advantage about having associates — the client resource. Each of these professionals is a potential resource for referrals for your business. You should fully expect to find business from each of them. I have gone as far as changing associates simply because one is better at referring potential clients to me than another.

Tax preparers are an excellent source of new business. Most tax preparers don't know a debit from a credit; and they don't need to. Their job is to transfer information to the right forms, and calculate the taxes. They can do this very successfully with a set of financial statements prepared by an accountant. Without the financial statements, they are often like a fish out of water in an area they know little about.

Tax preparers, as much as anyone, understand the value of well-prepared information they can use to complete the taxes. They will gladly refer business to you, if they feel comfortable you'll refer business back to them.