Developing Business Without Selling

Source: Current Accounts

Tax season is the best time to develop new business since you’ll be seeing your clients under circumstances that make it easy. Here are some reasons:

• You don’t have to sell. You simply have to get clients to talk about their problems. It’s your job to help them solve problems. If you don’t, you’re not doing your job. It makes you vulnerable.
• Be sure to ask your clients how you can improve your services for them.
• Don’t just ask a client if he knows someone who can use your services. You should have a list of prospective clients. It’s a small world. Maybe your current client knows your prospect, or knows someone else who knows him. Maybe there’s a lawyer or other professional known to both of them.
• It may be more effective to work with people you know than to attend networking events where you don’t have solid relationships. You may find that you talk to certain referral sources only infrequently and should increase your meetings with them. (Editor’s note: But don’t beat dead horses. If you set up luncheons with people simply because you feel comfortable with them but they are not likely to refer business to you, that’s not marketing.)

For the complete article, click here and select Five Winning Tips For Business Development.

From Current Accounts, The Georgia Society of CPAs, January/February 2008, https://www.gscpa.org/Content/22247.aspx.

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