This may come as a surprise to most people, but most accountants do not know how to promote their services. We don’t know the first thing about marketing because we have never really had to do it before. Historically, people need to have their taxes done, and all we have had to do is be knowledgeable enough to do them. Our focus has always been on keeping up with the changes in tax law and maintaining our continuing education and never on advertising. In fact, there was a time when marketing a CPA firm was so heavily regulated that it was actually a liability to even pay for advertising. It’s even a common joke amount CPAs is if you need to throw away some money just buy advertising space.
Imagine my surprise when, during a string of client meetings, my clients, while trying to justify the expense, marketed me better than ever I have. The first said: “If you do handle the bookkeeping and sales tax, then that will free me up to focus on my business.” Then the second said: “If I delegate the taxes to you, I know they will be filed on time and that will actually save me money.” These are two things that we as accountants just assume our clients know, but the reality is a lot of business owners are so overwhelmed with doing everything, they don’t realize there is a huge benefit to delegating some of the more complicated tasks.
I delegate a lot of simple things. When I realized my time was better spent working on more detailed projects, I started delegating things that take me a lot of time, but don’t provide me any income. It actually saves me money to hire someone else to do things like clean the house and prep meals because then I can spend more time working. I even started outsourcing aspects of my business that I’ve come to realize, I’m not any good at. For example, I recently started using the Marketing Department for a lot of my social media postings because I realized it was something that I needed to do but was struggling to find the time to post to social media consistently. I also needed help building a website that appropriately conveyed the services I wanted to provide and gave my clients access to information they needed.
My experience has been that if someone isn’t good at something or doesn’t like a certain task, they will put it off. Unfortunately, you are not supposed to do that with your books or taxes, but I have had business owners contact me every year saying they need help catching up. This can lead to huge fines and penalties and scrutiny from the IRS. This is what my second client pointed out. They had been filing their sales tax returns late repeatedly and it was costing them money. Outsourcing that to someone who is conditioned to meet those deadlines and already knows how to process those returns eliminates the risk of filing them late and incurring those penalties. And when it comes to your taxes, you want to make sure you are compliant.
Bookkeeping and taxes can sometimes seem like something that you can’t afford to outsource to a service provider. You must place your trust in someone else in order to give them access to your financial data, which can be scary. But once you are willing to take the leap, you may find the freedom you gain in saving time and peace of mind that one of the most important aspects of your business is being handled correctly was worth it. You may even find that once you outsource that part of your business that your business will grow and then you can’t afford not to hire a bookkeeper or tax professional.
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