How to set up a Tax Advisory Services Practice for your Accounting/Tax Firm
As a CPA firm or accounting/tax service provider, you always seek ways to grow your business and improve your bottom line. One of the best ways to do that is to upsell your clients on tax advisory services. They can be lucrative and high margin service, but many firms need help selling them effectively.
In this blog post, we will guide you through – the process of selling tax advice services, including how to price the services, what channels to use to promote tax advisory, what marketing methods work best, how to set up the sales process, examples of firms that are leaders in this space, tools to use etc.
So, let’s get started and do a deep dive on this.
What can you call tax advisory services?
Tax advisory services are professional services offered by certified public accountants (CPAs) and accounting firms to help clients navigate complex tax-related issues. These services can include tax planning, consulting, and advice to optimise clients’ tax strategies and minimise their tax liability. They can be especially valuable for small business owners needing more resources or expertise to manage their taxes effectively.
Tax advisors can guide on various tax-related matters, such as:
- compliance with tax laws and regulations
- identifying tax credits and deductions
- developing tax strategies for the future
The scope of tax services can vary widely depending on the client’s needs, with some firms offering specialised services for industries such as real estate, healthcare, and technology. Overall, tax services play an essential role in helping clients navigate the complex and ever-changing tax landscape while achieving their financial goals.
Why Sell Tax Advisory Services?
Before we dive into how to sell tax services, it is important to understand why they are a key upsell to your accounting/tax work. Tax planning and advisory services provide valuable insights into a client’s business’s financial and tax aspects.
As a result, they are often in high demand among small business owners and individuals seeking to minimise their tax liability and maximise their financial returns. By offering tax advisory services, you can help your clients navigate complex tax laws and regulations, identify opportunities for tax savings, and ultimately help them achieve their financial goals. This improves the value you provide to your clients and helps establish your firm as a leader in the tax consulting space.
How to find the right niche for selling Tax Advisory services?
Why is it important to find a good niche, if you want to develop your services as a horizontal niche you can but having a vertical niche has its advantages.
What is a horizontal niche? A horizontal niche is not specific to any industry or segment (like real estate, SaaS, e-commerce etc). You are helping small business owners from all niches with some strategies which reduce their tax burden. This approach typically works well with business owners who are small and do not have complexities arising out of how their business is growing and how they can optimize their taxes. Horizontal niching can also be specific to an area which is defined by how an individual is taxed. Crypto tax is an example of this.
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What is a vertical niche? A vertical niche is when you go deep into an industry to provide specific tax planning/advisory to reduce the firm’s taxes. Vertical niching is beneficial because it allows your firm to build expertise and offer high value to your clients. It also allows you to price your services well and evolve your services in line with changes in industry regulation. Vertical niching is also beneficial because your clients value your expertise more when they know that you are an industry expert. Some common vertical niches are:
- Real estate
- Attorneys
- SaaS
- E-commerce
- Construction
- Medical practitioners
- Restaurants
- Marketing/Branding Agencies
- Cannabis
Cannabis and real estate are two great niches to focus on if you want to go down the path of establishing a vertical niche for your firm.
How to Price Tax Advisory Services?
There are several factors to consider when pricing your tax advisory services. One important consideration is the value that your services provide to the client. This can include factors such as:
- The complexity of the client’s tax situation
- the potential savings your services can generate
- The expertise and experience you bring to the table
Generally, the more value your services provide to the client, the higher you can set your prices.
Another factor to consider is the level of competition in your market. If many other firms offer similar tax services in your area, you may need to price your services more competitively to remain competitive. On the other hand, if few other firms offer tax services in your area, you can set higher prices and still attract clients.
Two models of pricing exist in the market
Many tax advisory firms use hourly billing, billing clients for the time spent working on their tax-related matters.
However, the better approach is to charge a set fee for a specific package of services and deliver it at a specific frequency. Subscription based advisory services are what modern accounting firms are increasingly offering.
The way to value price is to offer 3 tiers of service. Tiering it by value, frequency, and access. Important to note is that the value delivered must be consistent across the three tiers.
So, for example in the:
Basic package – you offer x number of consults/month, they get access to 2 calls, unlimited email support.
Medium package – you offer y number of consults/month, they get access to 4 calls, unlimited email support.
High package – you offer z number of consults/month, they get access to 6 calls, unlimited email support.
Ultimately, the key to pricing your tax services is to balance the value you provide to clients and the level of competition in your market. By carefully considering these factors and setting competitive prices that reflect your value, you can ensure that your tax advisory business remains profitable and successful over the long term.
Pricing your value tiers can be a daunting task, but it is crucial to get it right. Here are some tips to help you:
Do your research: Research your competitors and see what they are charging for similar services. This will give you a good idea of what the market is willing to pay.
Consider your costs: Consider the cost of delivering the services, including the time spent, software costs, and other expenses. This will help you set a fair price for your services.
Value-based pricing: Consider pricing your services based on the value they provide to your clients. This means you will charge more for services that impact your client’s bottom line more.
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Marketing your Tax Advisory Services
Once you have determined how to price your services, the next step is to promote them to your existing and prospective clients.
Here are the steps to promote your tax advisory services:
- Update your website: Your website is the first point of contact for prospects clients. Make sure it showcases your services and includes client testimonials. Video testimonials work best. The website should clearly reflect the change/transformation you bring, the problems you solve and the pain your service alleviates for your niche. Example of a great website is:
- Use the Awareness -> Interest -> Decision -> Action framework to implement channels for:
1) educating your clients. Platforms such as podcasts, long form blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube are great for educating your clients. While educating your audience, talk about their problems i.e., what challenges they face in their business, how not having tax efficient structures, strategies affect what they do and how your service will help solve these problems. This will raise awareness and get your audience interested if you are hitting the right problems and pain points
2) To then showcase your actual client case studies which will help them move forward after they are interested. You need to have CTA’s done strategically to let them subscribe to your newsletter for further nurturing or come to you for direct bookings on your calendar. Being consistent and patient in doing this will start to get you good results.
You will build traction and in 2-3 months start to get results and conversions. Important is to keep the newsletter going and building your audience there for continuous upselling and letting people buy when they are ready.
- Referrals – Referrals: Encourage existing clients to refer their friends and colleagues to your firm. Also create a strategy to collaborate and refer clients from and to providers serving the same niche.
- Networking/Industry Events: Participating in various networking events, will help you to meet more people from your target audience and understand their problems, get perspective on what others are doing and get opportunities on collaboration with people who are serving the same niche.
- Own Event: Creating your own annual event creates a lot of buzz and you come across as a thought leader/key player in your niche. It will also keep you up on your toes to know the latest happening in your niche and create a new experience/event for your audience every year. A great platform to showcase your expertise as well.
- Cold Email: Cold email can be a powerful tool if used well. Platforms such as zoominfo, or other tools where you can get accurate data of your audience along with information on intent (people in your niche already searching for services that you are offering) can be a great way to target people. Using the right cold emailing strategies which include high deliverability, inbox rotation, high open rates etc. and the right tools like mailshake and
smart lead AI can help you deliver solid results. If you are looking at a way to quickly scale your marketing in 3-4 months and get inbound leads on autopilot, cold email is one of the ways to market your tax advisory services.
- Paid Ads: Paid ads, if done right can get you really good results as well. Again, testing across various platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook and using the AIDA method to nurture can get you good results soon. If this is something you want to explore, download our FREE PAID ADS SCRIPT, which you can start to use immediately in your paid ad campaigns.
Setting Up the Sales Process
Once you have promoted your services to your clients and prospects, the next step is setting up a sales process that converts leads into paying clients. Your sales process should be efficient, automate and focused on building client relationships.
This may involve:
- Qualifying leads in detail so you only get the ones that are interested and can afford your services
- Offering small free consultations upfront through a discovery call
- Templatizing proposals based on value tiers
- Recording standard loom videos outlining the scope of the engagement and the pricing structure
- Having automated email follow up with clients to check if they have any doubts etc.
Examples of firms which are doing great work in the tax advisory space are as below:
Tools to use to sell tax advisory services
There are several tools you can use to as part of the process of selling tax planning services. Here are some of the most popular ones:
Corvee Tax: Corvee Tax is a tax planning software that helps CPAs and accounting firms provide planning services to clients.
Taxfyle: Taxfyle is a platform that connects clients with tax professionals who can provide tax advisory services.
TaxCaddy: TaxCaddy is a document management platform that helps clients organise their tax-related documents and collaborate with their tax advisors.
TaxSlayer Pro: Taxslayer Pro is a tax preparation software designed for tax professionals.
Tax planning services tools can facilitate better collaboration between tax professionals and their clients and offer a seamless digital experience to the clients.
Conclusion
Selling tax advisory services can be a profitable opportunity for CPA and accounting firms. However, it requires a strategic approach that combines marketing, sales, and expertise to succeed.
By implementing the tips and strategies discussed in this article, you can effectively promote and sell your tax planning and advisory services, establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry, and ultimately, help your clients save money and optimize their tax strategy.
A lot of firms, market their services well, but struggle with the right service delivery model and touch when selling subscription-based services. If you are already doing great at marketing your firm but need help with optimizing your tax advisory services delivery model. Check out our blog on optimizing your service delivery model for tax advisory services here.
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