Is It Selling Season?
The weather forecast here (here = mountains of Idaho) is tanking to a high of 55 tomorrow, and I’ll be totally honest, I am HERE for it. I absolutely adore fall and am anxiously awaiting the exact moment I can sip an Oktoberfest in a flannel shirt next to my miniature solo stove.
But on to solo accounting firm talk…
Are we also entering a “selling season” for accounting services?
I started keeping close track of my sales leads about this time last year (my actual data below):
I removed the actual count of inquiries per month from this chart because it’s not a competition (you probably beat me anyway) and that’s not the point of this graph. The most interesting take away here is the seasonality of when people are reaching out (and not reaching out) asking about services.
Here are my key takeaways after a year’s worth of data:
There is a definite seasonality to when people are interested in accounting services
Aug - early Nov: people realize they haven’t touched their QBO in 9 months and see the train barreling toward them in the form of a quickly approaching end of tax year
Late Nov - Dec: No one cares about their accounting while they’re elbow deep in turkeys and wrapping paper
Jan - Mar: Aw crap, it’s tax time
Mar - Apr: Your potential buyer just had an awful experience with their current accounting provider. They want to line up another solution pronto.
The “dead zones” of Dec and May-Jul are interesting. I generally don’t onboard or market for new clients during these time periods, so I’m not sure if this is causation or correlation. Frankly, I don’t care though since I don’t want to onboard at this time anyways!
Your seasonality for prospects and onboarding calls will likely look different based on your niche, service offering, and marketing, but I have a hypothesis that most people in our line of work can expect at least a slight uptick in interest in the coming season.
Make sure:
People know you exist
People know what problem you solve
You have an SOP for discovery calls and onboarding
Here’s to all the flannel,
Erica
Behind-the-scenes in my business this week:
I took my own advice and spent some time this week reassessing my pricing structure for this upcoming selling season. I came up with a matrix based on client size, tier offering, plus a complexity factor using the “might as well” pricing curve from Geraldine Carter / Jonathan Stark / Jason Staats that I mentioned a few weeks ago. I don’t know how strictly I’ll follow it for my upcoming proposals, but it was a healthy brain exercise nonetheless.
No Work Wednesday today is doc appointments (check up for me, orthodontist for the older kiddo)…and writing this :o)
Money back guarantee, if you get in there and don’t see the value. No questions asked.
More details in the link above.