Tech-Backed Accounting Firm Sales Strategies

What comes to mind when you think of “sales strategies”? For many people, images of slick sales reps with fancy watches and expensive cars may be the answer. But these sales stereotypes have been outdated for a while. In the digital era, sales is less about aggressive tactics that deceive and manipulate and more about finding the people whose needs align with what your organization offers.

In recent years, technology has become one of the most powerful tools for the sales process. But we speak to many bookkeeping firms and accountants who aren’t taking full advantage of the many ways to use technology to find and attract new clients. If you’re looking for more insights on how exactly you can use the latest technology to make your sales processes more efficient, keep reading.

The baseline: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

You can think of a CRM system as the foundation of your firm’s tech-driven sales efforts. If you aren’t already using a CRM – an online management system for prospects, customers, and sales activity – you’re missing out on one of the best modern sales tools around. If you’re already working with a CRM to help your firm track the way you contact prospects and nurture them through your funnel, it’s important to look at ways you can take your current tactics to the next level.

Lead qualification and scoring

If your firm is already actively working in a CRM to manage potential new clients and log interactions with existing clients, you can take it to the next level by creating a system to determine how likely a lead is to actually become a client. This process is called lead scoring, and thanks to the advancement of marketing technology, more firms than ever before have access to a process that was once reserved for larger organizations with huge research budgets. 

As is the case with all the other items on this list, you don’t need to invest a significant amount of time and resources into a complex system for lead scoring. You can start off by creating a few simple categories and a grading scale from 1 to 10. As time goes on, you can work to further develop your lead scoring model to incorporate more sophisticated demographic information about prospects and clients. Check out this basic guide for more details about getting started with lead scoring. 

Automated follow-up (drip) sequences

Drip sequences are an automated set of emails that get sent out to a prospect or client after they trigger a certain milestone. They are sometimes called “lead nurturing sequences” because the most common use case is to encourage a lead to convert into a client. 

For example, if someone visiting your website submitted a form to download a marketing asset, they might be enrolled in an automated email sequence that sends them the asset and a series of emails providing more context about related services. This is just one example – there are lots of different trigger events that can be paired with an automated follow-up sequence, from making a purchase to sending a specific kind of inquiry to the firm. Like the other tactics in this section, technology makes it much easier to plan and execute any type of drip sequence.

AI Language Models for Content Creation

ChatGPT and Google’s recently renamed Gemini platform are two examples of arguably the most popular use of artificial intelligence: large language models, sometimes known as “chatbots.” And though AI-generated works like poems and songs may get a lot of buzz in the media, these platforms are not yet capable of generating good quality content without some kind of human oversight. 

However, AI models can be helpful as a supplement for content creation. For example, if you prompt a language model to give you examples of how you might present a new accounting service to an existing client – and offer sufficient details – you’ll be presented with a few examples that may give you a good foundation to start creating your own example. You can apply this process to things like social media updates, text message correspondence, and any other kind of written content you need to generate in your firm. 

Final thoughts: Tech should be a supplement

While all of these different tech-backed sales approaches can be valuable for bookkeeping and accounting firms, remember that you’ll need to choose the specific processes that align most with your organization’s existing operations and business goals. 

Above all, keep in mind that your technology should be a way to support your sales campaigns. As tech becomes more and more advanced, people are looking even harder for a human connection with companies they work with. One of the best ways to ensure you don’t lose that personal element in your sales campaigns is to use a comprehensive accounting practice management platform that gives you all the benefits of technology while still allowing you to incorporate the unique signature that clients and prospects expect from your firm.

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