The problem is if you’re not great at marketing, it doesn’t matter how spectacular a bookkeeper you are because people won’t know how to find you. The good news: marketing is a skill you can learn just like you learned bookkeeping. And if you love numbers, that’s a good thing, because there are a lot of them in marketing!

This is the perfect time of year to come up with your marketing plan. Soon you’ll be swept away with the busy tax season and it will be harder to focus on YOUR business growth. Start by brainstorming where you’d like to be three to five years from now.

Once you have that big picture, then you can work backwards breaking this ideal scene down into short-term goals, specifying those milestones that need to be achieved along the way to this long-term goal. Every morning review your marketing goals.  Keep them in plain view – by your desk or next to your computer.  Having them constantly in front of you will keep you aware of opportunities that cross your path to help you achieve those goals.

Then, take out your calendar and schedule in the time you need to actually accomplish your goals. Honor these appointments – whether it’s a networking meeting, time social networking or writing a quarterly newsletter to send clients.

On Friday, February 10^th The Bookkeeper’s Club will get must-have marketing advice in their Ask the Expert Call with Sandi Smith Leyva. Marketing maven, CPA, and Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Sandi will share, “5 Simple Steps to Get More Clients, More Profits, More Free Time”. You’ll discover the most important step – that everyone leaves out – that you mustn’t if you want your marketing to work.

Not a member yet? Click here to review all the benefits, including marketing training from Sandi AND a monthly marketing plan you can adapt to your bookkeeping business.

Then I heard this quote which really impacted me. I cannot remember who said it, but here it is…

That quote got me off my butt and motivated me to take the actions that I needed to take to get the weight off and keep it off. It made me realize I was using an “unreasonable reason” as to why I couldn’t take the weight off. I made a commitment to myself and the weight came off quite easily and has stayed off.

So, what does this have to do with business? Pretty much everything!

The energy of commitment is the highest form of energy any one person can be operating from. When we are operating from that place we will do whatever it takes, no matter what. There are 4 top areas of resistance. Being familiar with the roadblocks we can use to stop ourselves from moving forward can be helpful in not only gaining clarity for ourselves, it will also help us to recognize it in our prospective clients. The 4 top areas of resistance are:

1. Time
• I don’t have the time.
• I’m busy.
• I have to wash my cat.
• I have things I have to do. Do you know how much I have to do?

Time is not real. It is something we’ve collectively created as a society as a form of measurement. When we “think” there is not enough time, we are operating under the guise of a limiting belief.

2. Money
• I don’t have the money
• Who do they think they are charging that much?
• I don’t deserve it/I’m not worth it.
• Where are the clients who can afford to pay me what my rates are?

Money is one of the easiest forms of resistance we can use to not move forward. There is a common belief that if we say, “I don’t have the money” no one will challenge us. The truth is, when something is important to us, we find the money to move ahead, no matter what.

3. Timing
• I don’t feel it’s the right time for…

Is it ever the right time? The real question to ask and answer as honestly as you can is, “If you don’t move ahead now what is your plan? What will be different if you wait?”

4. Relationships
• My [wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend] won’t let me
• My [wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend] won’t approve

When we use this excuse we have given our power away to another person.

Check-in. Where are you feeling resistance in your life? Where are you making “unreasonable reasons” to not do something? Your resistance is your doorway to freedom and exactly where you are meant to go!

It’s time to reeducate clients so they treat you as a professional businessperson that you are. And the first step is retraining yourself to firmly set boundaries of what services you’re comfortable with providing and how much you want to be paid for those services.

Freelance bookkeepers have to look for ways to work smarter, conserve our dollars and see where there’s more value. Get creative and come up with a solution that will make you money. Keep the drudgery of the task down to a minimum.

So take a look at your client base. What are the client’s needs? Try not to make the decision that no one would pay for the services you come up with. If you make that decision, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. All you have to do is float the idea out there and see who bites.

Let’s look at an example and say you’re going to offer an administrative package or service to handle collecting your client’s information.

Let’s say you have clients that are reluctant to scan or fax bills. You need that information to do your work, but it’s not cost effective for you or one of your people to be scanning it for them. If they want to continue sending the original documentation in the mail, explain how risky it is.  Insist they send it using Priority Mail that allows you to trace it.  Then charge them a fee above and beyond the bookkeeping fee for scanning it. Get paid enough that you don’t resent doing it. Don’t give them a preferential rate. It costs you to do it.

Now’s the time to encourage them to choose your preferred method of handling the administrative tasks by telling them, “It’s more cost effective for you to take advantage of our administrative service package.”

You offer to give them Shoebox, which is a great service for scanning everything. It’s easy to use. They give your clients the envelopes. All they have to do is put their stuff in an envelope. Then they can either have it shredded afterwards or returned. Shoebox is also easily linked to Bill.com.  This technology is affordable and makes your job easier.  You just have to figure the cost of using it into your new administrative service package.

Do you see in this example how your productivity increases, your profitability increases and the value to your client increases?

Look at what your market needs creatively. Find a solution that incorporates technology that supports it, put it in a package, add the fee and you’ll have a product that makes you more money and takes away the burden of providing the administrative tasks.

Discover more proven techniques that successful freelance bookkeepers need to know at the Bookkeepers Club. Every month you’ll learn new tips from myself, industry experts and other bookkeepers that increase your productivity and your bottom line.

Having a tailored message is appealing to prospects. It’s going to bring in more of those types of clients to your freelance bookkeeping business. Business owners are looking for a fine-tuned message. They want to make a decision and buy services from a service provider that’s familiar with their industry’s needs.

However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t work with anyone else.  In fact, it’s not smart to put all of your eggs in one basket. You need to make sure you are diversifying your client base.

Why Diversify Your Client Base

To illustrate the danger of not diversifying, let’s say you decide to approach architects, interior designers and construction as your target market. When the economy recently went south, all of those industries were severely damaged.  And, if they were your only clients, it could have severely impacted your cash flow, maybe even putting you out of business.  The only way to protect yourself is to diversify into a market that’s not related to construction.

How to Diversify Your Client Base

The basic duties that freelance bookkeepers perform for most of your clients are the same. AP is the same for most businesses until you add the uniqueness for each specific market. The uniqueness comes from the individual business and personality that you work with.

Take as a real life example what happened in one of my recent consultations. I was working with someone who was interested in working with financial advisors.  During the consulting I asked, “Isn’t it true that what a freelance bookkeeper does for financial advisors is the same as what is done for a real estate agent? It’s the same basic service, isn’t it?”

After we worked together and tweaked the way that this client could present their bookkeeping services a bit differently, we came up with ways of presenting the same services tailored to appeal to the specific market of real estate agents.  They tried it and immediately picked up four or five realtors.

Be a Lighthouse and Clients Will Find You

All of this illustrates that you can specialize in niches but keep your door open to other clients that come in that you may enjoy working with. Always consider who your market is. Be aware of what it is that you want to offer in the marketplace.

One of the best nuggets of information I received early on in my entrepreneurial career from a mentor was: “Be like a lighthouse. Stand still and allow people to find you.  You do that by specializing in one thing. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything else. Lead with the one thing that you love and are passionate about. The other services are additional values and benefits that you can offer.”

Be a lighthouse and let your beacon or marketing campaign shine upon your ideal market. And as other ships pass by and are attracted to your light, add them to your client portfolio so you have a healthy diversification that will insulate your freelance bookkeeping business from disaster.

Want to learn more about how you, as a freelance bookkeeper, can become a Marketing Pro?  Check out my self-study course that’s designed to help you get fantastic and consistent results from every marketing campaign you launch.

But what are you suppose to do when the three months are up and the original bookkeeper has decided not to return to work, and now your client wants to hire your bookkeeper helper away from you?  Because your person knows their business needs and has been trained on their software program, the client wants to keep him/her.  He doesn’t want to start from scratch and go through the process of finding his own employee.

When you’re bookkeeping business has grown big enough for you to hire others to help you, you might find yourself in that very situation.  So rather than it blindsiding you, I want to share with you how you can be prepared.

First, you need to think about whether you’re okay with clients hiring your people away from you.  If you want to prevent that from happening you need to have that specifically written out in your letter of agreement when your new client first hires your bookkeeping business.

If you think you could be okay with the client hiring your helper away, you need to recognize that you can’t guarantee that your freelance bookkeeping helper is going to want to work for the client directly.  You’re going to need to talk to your person about this.

But before you ever find yourself in this situation, you need to prepare now, TODAY, and put into your letter of agreement a special clause called “Right to Hire.”

The “Right to Hire” clause states that they have the right to hire after the initial term. You can put in parentheses what that initial term is. The initial term can be for however long you decide. It also should say, “However we do not guarantee that the person you would like to hire will work for you.”

After you’ve talked with your bookkeeping helper and he/she does want to go to work for this client, then you go back to the client and say you’re completely open to the potential of the client hiring this person. However, there is a fee attached to this service.

There has to be a fee.

If the new client does hire your bookkeeping helper away from you, that’s cutting into your potential profits, so you need to determine what it’s worth to your bookkeeping business to let your helper go.  You did the recruiting for him.

To figure out what fee you should charge for recruiting, here’s a rule of thumb to go by:

• 30% of the salary they are going to pay the person they are hiring as a recruiting fee,
• Or 30% of the revenue that you would have earned, whichever is greater.

So the second part of your “Right to Hire” clause should clearly state, “A fee of either 30% of the salary to be paid to this person or 30% of the revenue our business would have earned to be paid as a recruiting fee. Whichever is greater will be due upon the hiring of this individual.”

If it’s a new client and you haven’t had a revenue history with them, you should go with the percentage of the salary that he will pay that person. You have every right to bill them. You did the recruiting for them.  You went through a lot of trouble to originally hire this helper and you have the right to be compensated for that service.

If you enjoyed this information, you’re going to want to check out the Bookkeeper’s Club. This very topic came up recently, and we were able to help someone who was caught by surprise with this situation.  As a group of motivated freelance bookkeepers, we discuss real problems and find real solutions that benefit everyone.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM MY BLOG:

How to Hire Solid Team Members for your Freelance Bookkeeping Business
As CEO of your freelance bookkeeping business, you need to be spending your time marketing and growing your freelance bookkeeping business. This can be difficult if you’re doing all the “busy” work yourself. Here are some core elements to consider when building a team for your bookkeeping business… Read more.

How to Find Fellow Bookkeepers as Colleagues or to Add to Your Team
As your accounting business grows, you’ll be looking for people to add to your team. The best way to do that is to actually create a network of other bookkeepers. Knowing other people in your industry creates a sense of camaraderie. Here are a few ways to find colleagues so you can create your own network of bookkeepers… Read more.

But it is a wasted effort if it is not also focused on the longer term and achieving your strategic objective – the vision of your business as it will be when it is fully developed.

Your strategic objective is a clear written statement, a detailed picture of the future of what your business will look like, act like, and how it will perform when it is fully developed.  It is a commitment to the future, not just a wish.

The idea, then, is to establish the pattern of profits and sales that will get you to your strategic objective in the time frame you have set, and create a budget to make it happen.  It’s a matter of plotting the annual progress you intend to achieve, and breaking those annual goals into a progression of monthly results.

Budgeting is one of those core business practices that every well-run business uses and is a crucial aspect of financial planning.  It’s a fundamental management tool that not only keeps you and your people on course, but provides the radar to tell you when you’re off course and how far off course you are.  Whether you are a beginner or a veteran at budgeting, it pays to review the basics.

Here is an overview of the main activities of the budgeting process:

Budget Setup
The first step is to outline the ground rules you will follow to prepare your budget.  What is the layout and formatting of the budget itself – will you build your budget on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis?  Who will be accountable for generating the numbers and producing budget documents?  How the review process will work – what reports will you need to compare actual results to budget and on what frequency?

Plan and Forecast
The budgeting cycle begins by doing the planning and forecasting that will shape your business in the months to come based upon your strategic objective or goals. Fortunately, most goals have a dollar amount attached to them and the basis from which you can create your budget – revenues and profits.  And of the two, profits are the more important because profits are the key to the long-term financial value of your business.

The idea, then, is to establish the patterns of profits and sales that will get you to your strategic objective in the time frame you have set, and create a budget to make it happen.  One way to create your budget is to base it on sales (revenue) forecasts and work through the line items to net profit.  If that profit meets your goals, you’re set; if not, you can review the various line items to see where you can make adjustments to meet the profit goal.  The better way is to start your profit goal and calculate the revenue you have to generate in order to achieve the required profits.

Chances are the initial budget you set won’t be perfect.  Update your forecast quarterly or when new information or events impact your company.  Compare initial plans (budget) to what actually occurred (actual), and adjust remaining budget figures accordingly (forecast).  By doing so, your budget will keep touch with reality and provide you useful information as part of your monthly, ongoing review.

Monitor and Report
Use your accounting system to gather and organize actual results, and create monthly budget variance reports that point out where actual results differ from your plan and how much they differ by.  Then do some research as to what is causing the favorable or unfavorable variance.  This information is the key to help you make the right decisions to move your company forward towards your strategic objective.

Review and Manage
Budgeting is where planning and implementation meet.  Managing your budget is translating information into action.  Your budget tells you what you need to accomplish. Your variance reports tell you what you are actually accomplishing.  Your budget review process gives you the specific direction you need to focus your attention where it will do the most good, where it will get the best results for your business.

Study your budget and variance reports for clues on how to improve your business, spot problems before they become serious and generally “keep in touch” with the pulse of your business.  Use this opportunity to review and confirm budget assumptions and revise them, as necessary.

As you refine your budgeting skills, fine tune your budget numbers, and become more imaginative in your review and analysis of your variance reports, all this will become second nature.  You’ll scan the monthly variance reports, instantly honing in on the things that matter.  You’ll have a firm grasp on the leverage points of your business.  You’ll see problems long before they become serious, and opportunities will become visible at an early stage when you can maximize their benefit to you and achieving your strategic objective.

You’ll not only be a better freelance bookkeeper, you’ll be a savvy business owner as well! Do you need one-on-one support to increase your bottom line? I have a couple of new coaching programs for freelance bookkeepers. Contact me to schedule a free 30-minute consult with me and learn which one might be right for you.

Social networking is a popular marketing tool right now but can you really use it to promote your services as a bookkeeper? Absolutely! But there is a right way and a wrong way to use social networking. Here are some tips that will help professionals successfully promote their freelance business.

1. Find the right social networking sites.

You want to use the right sites for your business. The most popular sites are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But you may also want to investigate smaller niche networks or even a local community network that may have more of targeted traffic you want.

2. Submit a well-written, professional profile that establishes your credentials and expertise.

The profile page is the perfect place for you to market yourself. This is the place to highlight your particular expertise. Make sure that it’s easy for potential clients to contact you by providing necessary contact information!

3. Join and start interacting on groups and forums.

Groups and forums are good places to start establishing connections. I’ve really enjoyed participating in several groups on LinkedIn. Remember that you can build credibility and trust by participating in discussions and sharing helpful advice that showcases your expertise.

4. Find the right “friends” and “followers”.

Some people begin amassing friends and followers they have no real connection with and they quickly become overwhelmed. It can be advantageous to be more selective – with a small number of connections it’s easier to keep the interactions meaningful and authentic.

5. Don’t be overly pushy – take time to establish relationships.

If you’re constantly promoting yourself people will lose interest. Instead focus on building rapport and credibility over time. Share some of your favorite tips and people will begin seeing you as someone they know, like and trust which can lead them to want to work with you.

I share a lot more tips on how to use social metworking to market your bookkeeping services in my product, How to Be a Marketing Pro (When You’re Really a Bookkeeper).

Recently, I told you that your primary job wasn’t doing bookkeeping, it was MARKETING.

Well, that’s not the whole story. You also need to spend a fair amount of time closing…or selling.

Marketing and Selling go hand in hand. They are sister functions – kind of like Siamese twins. After all, the goal of your marketing is ultimately to sell your services.

Sure, there are different purposes to your marketing at different times…like building your list, educating your clients and creating awareness of your product or service, and there are multiple and varied avenues through which you can deliver your service – articles, blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, press releases, video…and the list could go on.

BUT, no matter the marketing tool, the end goal is to sell your product – and done right, create long-term clients. (It’s much easier to keep a client than it is to get a new one. Client Acquisition can be costly.)

Marketing is just one step in a multi-step cycle that should lead to s-a-l-e-s.

Now, now, now…don’t panic…when you understand what sales and marketing are REALLY about, you can feel GOOD about sales. When you know this secret, you can stop hiding and really put yourself, your business and services out there.

The SECRET to marketing and selling without slime is simple: Solve Problems and Create Results for people.

If you do these two things, then the slime factor disappears.

Your service becomes about…well, service.

You’re not trying to swindle people, trick them or take advantage of them…you could even say that if you have solutions for people’s problems, then you are OBLIGATED to “get the word out”.

The good news is that if you are solving people’s problems and creating results for them, then those people will sell themselves!

3 Steps to Solving Client Problems and Selling without Slime:

1. Prospect/Market – let people know you’re there through all those marketing channels mentioned above. Talk to people and find out what their problems are and how you can help them. Take the position of a trusted advisor. Listen to their problems – and if you aren’t the one who can best solve their problems, then say so…and if you can, refer them to some people who can. The word will get around that you are trustworthy and that goes a long way in marketing and sales.

2. Present your service packages or product– Repeat your client’s problems to them and show them how you can help. Let them know the benefits of your service. Tell them what your service will do for them…and don’t just list the features. Tell them a story…how will it FEEL to have that problem solved.

3. Close – There are many different ways to “close the sale”. (This could be its own topic.) Closing is where most people “lose the sale”…either they don’t want to ask for the sale, or they’re afraid of offending the client. What you need to remember is that you need not force the situation. Done properly, the client understands that you can solve his problem and sells himself. The client WANTS to buy from you at this point. You should also keep in mind that “it’s not about you”! This is about how you and your service can help the client.

When you approach marketing from the perspective of solving people’s problems and creating results for them, you never have to feel guilty, sleazy or slimy again.

Remember: Your business is about helping clients with a need or problem. NOT marketing and NOT selling is actually doing people a disservice.

Plus, you’ll stand out from the crowd as a trusted advisor who knows how to make their pain and problems disappear. (That’s a great position to be in…and it makes both marketing and sales much easier!)

In a private coaching session with Jane (names have been changed to protect privacy), we were talking about how bad she felt that one of her clients was experiencing financial difficulty.  She was experiencing real angst and turmoil because she knew of the client’s financial hardship and felt guilty about charging them for her services.  At one point in the conversation, she said to me “I’m going to call them when we’re through with our session and tell them I am giving them a refund!”

This was not the first time Jane and I were having this type of conversation.  Jane is a wonderful coach and mentor but from time to time experiences boundary and deservabilty issues surrounding money.  Jane was projecting her own issues with money onto her coaching relationship with this client.

I knew that day was going to be a tough session and I was determined to shed light on this issue for Jane once and for all.  I decided to show Jane exactly what she was doing by deciding to “fix” her financial situation with me.

Jane became outraged when I suggested to her, that we reduce our number sessions since she was soon to be experiencing financial difficulty with her clients.  When I first asked the question, she started to agree with me and then, being the smart woman that she is immediately saw what I was trying to do.  I asked her how it felt that I had made a decision for her about her financial well-being.  Her response, “disempowering!”

When we make a decision for someone, for whom we are not responsible AND who has not asked for our input, we are not giving that person the opportunity to step up and be called forth in their spiritual evolution.  Instead we are perpetrating our insecurities onto that relationship.

If you have a client who is experiencing financial difficulty and they have ONLY shared that information with you, it is NOT your responsibility to offer to change the level of service being provided to them.  Is their responsibility to bring that subject forward to you.

If you make a decision for your client that they cannot afford your service, you are energetically saying to the Universe that you don’t need the money.  Again, this is not your responsibility.  If you are in a coaching relationship with your client then you can take it a step further and help them to see alternatives they may not be able to think of.  

Remember, you are only responsible for yourself.  It is not your job to fix the financial situation of your client. 

Do you know the real reason why you are in business?

The first response I hear most often to that question is to be of service.  That is a wonderful reason and very true for the majority of individuals in a service business, including myself.  However, there is a key component of to that answer that is missing.  That missing component is why so many of us experience difficulty manifesting abundance and prosperity in the form of money.  We have no trouble attracting clients, just attracting clients who can pay us.

That is why it is so important to be extremely clear with yourself about the real reason is why you are in business.  That reason is:

To be of service AND to provide those services in EXCHANGE for FINANCIAL COMPENSATION

That certainly sends a clear message to the Universe – doesn’t it?!

There is another form of payment that happens when we are being of service to our clients.  It is the gift of seeing how you have positively affected another human being and that gift fills you up. 

Consciously, we may believe that we deserve to be paid but somewhere in our unconscious mind, we don’t believe that we deserve any other form of payment.  Our conscious mind makes up 10% of our brain and our unconscious mind makes up over 90%.  The 90%  – unconsciously believing we don’t deserve any other form of payment – is the vibration that we are sending out in the Universe.

When you are struggling to make the mortgage payment each month, the worry and stress you are feeling comes through the service you are providing and is energetically felt by the client.  At first, it may not affect them and they will continue to work with you, but at some point the service they are receiving will no longer feel good and they will seek that service from another source.

Do you see how not knowing the real reason why you are in business compounds negatively upon itself?

When you are clear about your reason for being in business and you have that resonating in your body, mind and spirit that energy will emanate forth from you and you will attract clients who will willingly pay you for your services.  You in turn will receive abundance and prosperity in the form of the seeing how you have positively impacted another human being and monetarily.  Resulting in ever expanding abundance and prosperity for everyone involved.

Just remember:

□ You are in the business of providing a quality service.

□ Clients hire and pay you because they are in need of those services.

□ You provide these services for financial compensation.

Repeat these three lines, as often as needed.