256 How To Get Software Cos To Promote Your Firm

Who's got the biggest budget in the game for getting in front of people? Software companies. Every little niche industry has software vendors building stuff specific to them. And they are pouring tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars every single quarter into getting in front of more people that run these types of businesses. Can you see where this is headed, buddy? Let's jump on some coattails, huh? Do you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend advertising every single quarter? I didn't think so. So today we're going to figure out how we can be helpful to our little software friends, use them to get in front of a whole bunch of people. That would be great clients for us. The old whoop whoop, the old, the old software back door, if you know what I mean. Let's say side door. Let's jam on some ideas for how to do this and find some great new clients. Come on in. Let's, let's ride some coattails. All right, Everyspace has software. There was an era where you had like the trellos and the clickups. What else was there? The teamworks. You had all these super cool general like tools for managing all sorts of work. These days everything is trickling down to specific spaces and accounting is no different. Like most firms now, they're leaning into tools that are specific to our space because the things that the general tools do have kind of become table stakes. So software has gotten more customized to every itty bitty type of business. And as we're talking about the various hubs where certain types of, of entrepreneurs collect, there may not be anything better than software because everybody is looking at what's the better software to run my business on. And I would argue actually the type of software that business owner is running is actually a decent indicator of sometimes of like how progressive they are about how they run their business. So if you've got a number of tools in the space and you got like brutal legacy server based ones and then you've got much more progressive, like cool new ones, who are the entrepreneurs that are attracted to those more progressive apps? If you're looking for progressive clients, that's actually a pretty positive signal. So today we're going to talk about all of the various things that you can offer to software companies. You're actually extremely valuable to them. We'll talk about how to choose a partner, a software company to partner with, like what that process looks like and then how to crack that nut, how to, how to build that relationship. So first up, what are the things that you can offer to a software Company, we know that they got big old budgets that they're burning on getting in front of people. And we want to be the thing that they are putting in front of people or somehow be visible there. So that if it's the first time someone has ever seen a beekeeping accountant on that webinar for the software tool or something like that, when their mind goes to like, I gotta hire some professional help, it's gonna go to you first. Or maybe even better, because their current person that they work with just works with anybody and everybody. The first time they see an accountant that's like, just for them, they're gonna be like, where you been all my life, bud? Bring it in. Come on, let's be friends. So things that you can offer software companies, also, if you are a software company, welcome. Please incorporate more domain experts into the things that you do. People know when you don't. And when you sound like software people. Okay. There's a beautiful harmony that can be. That can be found in working together here. Okay, how about blog posts? All of these companies are on the SEO hamster wheel putting out content. Some of it's really good. Like, what's an example of a good one? Ignition has always done great content around value pricing and recurring pricing and like, just more sort of progressive firm running stuff. Zapier has a killer blog that's always been really good. This company, this software company, they're looking at putting out content whether it directly ties to their software tool or not. And a problem that every single business owner has in that space is accounting, is compliance, is finance stuff. Right. So how can you come along and help them? And maybe tangentially. Is that the word tangent? You know what I'm saying? And maybe kind of sort of related to the software, but by and large, I mean, it can be something as simple as 7 tax mistakes most beekeepers make, or 7 accounting mistakes beekeepers make. Like, you can create content that is largely like parroting content that you may have already made. Write it for this software platform. It goes out on their email list to 50,000 people. You better believe that is a worthwhile use of your time. A second webinars. There's a few here that are going to be a little more spooky. If you haven't done this sort of thing very much, I would encourage you get some. Get some reps in bro. Because being visible and people seeing your face actually makes a really big difference. I think it's. I think it's a much stronger hook than writing can be. Helps them kind of do that vibe check, but, man, we are. Are we coming down from peak webinar yet? I think Covid was peak webinar. Hopefully we're coming down a bit from webinars because, boy, do they all just seem like the same regurgitated stuff over and over again. But people keep tuning in and you have a lot of value to offer. We've talked a lot in the past about, like, pitching a consultant or a podcast host on what you can bring to their content. Same thing with webinars. Like, they're just looking for clicks for people to engage with it. And it may be somewhat tied into the software platform, but the fact that you have, like, real grounded expertise and the fact that people normally have to pay top dollar to get access to your expertise makes this an attractive thing for the software company to pull you in on. Third, how about hanging out at their booth at a conference? This can actually be a great side door into industry conferences. Vendors who will turn up at a trade show and exhibit there and get a booth, get a certain number of badges, basically, badges they can give out to their team as part of the whole package for that booth. And oftentimes they don't use them all. Some conferences are stingy with this, but other ones are not. And they'll actually get way more badges than they need. In my experience, even the stingy ones, there's an added fee for more badges. That is a third to a quarter the price of, like, buying a conference ticket, like a normie. So if you want a great way into that trade show and actually a great way to build a deeper connection with that software company. Because after all, everyone making decisions in this company are people. And it boils down to human relationships, man, it is. Why, I mean, this week I'm@AICPA engage in Las Vegas. Even though so much of what we do has gone online, there's absolutely nothing that compares with, like, interacting people with real life. Like, them getting an understanding of what you do, it then, like, actually heightens all of the future online interactions that you have with these people because they understand the person behind that avatar online now. And to, like, spend a couple of days hanging out in a booth, like, being helpful to them and chatting with the folks on the team. That is a great way to get access to the trade show where you wouldn't otherwise have, or at least you're able to do it much cheaper while building that relationship with the software company. And on the software company side, you can speak intelligently to things that your sales reps can't. And that's a great thing to have on hand at a conference. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. Pop Quiz look to your left. Look to your right. Right. You're in Excel or Google Sheets, if you're into that kind of thing. How long is it going to take you to pull QuickBooks data from any of your clients? Any report into that spreadsheet that you're in right now? The answer to this pop quiz? It'll take you a little bit, a little while, decent amount of time. But imagine if your Excel or your Google Sheets just had a button. You could push a magic button that would pull in any old data from QuickBooks from any of your clients that you have access to in qbo. Let's talk about this magic button a little more. Here's what would happen. You'd click on it, a little side panel would come out. Agree to say hello Keith, how's your day going? It'd give you a dropdown that was every single QBO file you have access to, and then a second dropdown of all of the QuickBooks reports you could possibly want to pull out of it. And then various other buttons and knobs for adjusting settings, filters, and all that stuff. Just to be super clear, this button exists and it's called Live Flow. Anytime you're hustling spreadsheets, you are a mere few clicks away from dumping out some data from an accounting file. Not just once. You can set it to update like ongoing. You can set the the date ranges of the reports to be like rolling like relative to today. So like you know, an AP report that is always up to date or something like that. Because you know where you oftentimes need your QuickBooks data. Not in QuickBooks. And you know who I oftentimes don't want to be in my client's QuickBooks file. The only place that data is almost anyone. Oftentimes I don't even want my client in that QuickBooks file. That's live Flow basically sticks a button right in your spreadsheet app that lets you pull anything from any of your clients QuickBooks files. Learn more about that one link in the show Notes this episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Accountant staffing the people who find you awesome hires in the Philippines to make your wildest getting stuff done dreams come true. I've shared many times. I hired a bunch of folks in the Philippines, completely changed our approach to fulfillment in our firm. I got a resume in front of me that is an actual person cloud accountant staffing placed Into a firm, you actually get both a resume and a video intro. Based on that, you can decide if you want to do an interview with them or not. Let me just run you through this. This person got their bachelor's in accounting in 2019. Ever since then, they've worked with US based public accounting firms. How's this sound? Daily recording of bank transactions, monthly reconciliations, preparing financials, postpartum journal entries, clean up, work for new projects, 1099 filing, work directly with clients and even became the trainer for their colleagues on QBO practices. Experience with qbo Xero Gusto, QBO certified. I mean, you run an accounting firm, you get a resume like this, you're like, yes, please. Right? This person's actually got experience. Not an accountant that's just like gone and work for a company, but somebody with a bunch of public accounting experience working with US companies. That's what I'm looking for. They know what like volume, getting the books done looks like. Again, this is a real person, a real resume. When you work for Cloud accountant staffing, basically all you do, you hop on a call with them, you say, here's my needs. They have recruiters on the ground in the Philippines who will go find great applicants for you, bring all that info back to you, resumes, intro videos, all that. You decide whether you want to interview them. And you only ever cut a check to cloud accountant staffing. If you make a hire, what do you have to lose? Huh? Huh? Learn more at the link in the show notes. Fourth thing I got here even join them on stage for a sponsored talk. So many talks at conferences are part of a package that a company buys that may include a booth and all that. They may get a bit of stage time. It's not uncommon for them to pull in actual subject matter experts for that stage time. In fact, I would argue it's. It's actually a lot more interesting than just having product people and putting them up on stage because subject matter experts can speak a little more directly to the problems of the actual people that run these businesses. And so I think kind of the best version of these talks is kind of a hybrid where you have somebody from the software company, but you also have at least one domain expert. And so that they're both offering value one through the lens of the software platform, which is itself valuable, but also through the lens of like something more practical, more grounded in the actual running of the business. And you have a ton of experience, especially if you already work with these types of clients that you can share on stage. Now that that's one of those scary ones. Maybe that's too spooky for you right now. I would encourage you. Boy, public speaking is so powerful. Like if you can find itty bitty baby ways to invest in developing that skill, it's one of those things like video or writing where when you develop that skill, it is incredibly powerful and will aid you for the entire rest of your life in absolutely anything you do. Work stuff, service stuff, going into a different industry, it is one of those skills that just never leaves you. And so it's a great place to invest a few more here. Product feedback. Most software companies start by basically building a custom product from scratch around a few customers. And longer term they can sometimes lose track of that feedback loop. Right. Like you see stuff that gets shipped in software, sometimes that just feels totally tone deaf. So for example, let's say a software platform is going to like roll out a payroll integration or something that somehow touches the accounting system, or they're trying to get that sync figured out to push stuff into the accounting system the right way. Boy, could you offer some really valuable insights there, right to the product team. How about marketing feedback? This is one that comes up with me a lot in the way that I work with brands. Some brands are super opinionated and want things set a certain way. Other brands come to me and say, you probably know how to communicate what we do to accountants better than we do, which is oftentimes the case and like good for them for kind of getting out of the way and acknowledging that. So when it comes to their marketing team putting out content that is something you might be educated on, like be have an opinion on, that's a way that you can contribute. And then last, an increasing number of software companies are developing online communities where users and business owners can come and like kind of collaborate with each other and ask questions. And the very best versions of those are not things that are necessarily tied directly to the product. But online communities, I mean, have actually have long been a great way to sort of put your expertise on display and find new clients. That's one thing Brandon hall has talked about quite a bit, how their team is very active in real estate online communities, just trying to be helpful and trusting that positive things will come from that. It's a great way to earn some kudos from this software company while also being helpful to a bunch of people that could be great potential clients. Right. So of all of the software companies out there, how do you find which one's going to be a fit for you? Right? Like, because frankly, I mean just look at practice management systems for example in the U.S. i mean there's like over 50 practice management systems that say they are just for accounting firms that I'm aware of now. So just looking at our industry, man, how do you decide who to partner with? It doesn't always need to be exclusive. In fact, it's in your best interest usually if it isn't exclusive. But like don't forget there's actually a really cool specialization in your firm to be built around a tech stack. Many like this is. I think I see this most commonly in construction where you build a. That you build expertise around a specific like gnarly software platform and you become the accountant for X platform. That's really powerful. And if you go that far and if you can build a cool business out of just supporting folks on that one platform, absolutely, you need to find ways to try to partner with that vendor. In fact, this could even be a factor in how deep are you going to invest in that platform with clients. Like are is that software platform willing to work with you and highlight you at conferences and stuff like that to make that mutually beneficial? Not to say that they have to. You don't wanna let the tail wag the dog there. If there's a great platform that maybe isn't thinking about this like in a marketing context, it's gonna be helpful for you. But I'd say try to work with your few favorites. Start with the ones that your clients love, like your good clients. If you see any common trend there that could be a place to invest. Again, pay attention to the more progressive ones that will attract the more progressive entrepreneurs that you're probably looking for. Normally, clients working on legacy systems, whether you like those systems or not, can just be harder to support because they have more on stuff like that's just a little harder. In general, the more progressive the tool, the easier it's going to be for you to build your accounting practice around. Look at who's exhibiting at events. In fact, in general, every event will put on blast, like the whole exhibit hall, all of the exhibitors that are going to be there. It's kind of social proof for them. Finding more sponsors. It's helpful for attendees who may be trying to connect with specific companies. And for you it's a great signal as to who's got damn marketing bucks because they are all paying a hefty sum to be there. And some companies just don't invest in marketing stuff and that's fine. Remember that no ad sunscreen. I Never knew what that meant. We always used, growing up, those that really ugly sunscreen. But then he saw commercials for like Coppertone and all these other types of sunscreen. It's probably a very American thing. And it just said no ad. And I never understood what that meant. I thought that was the company's name. I think it actually means no advertising. And that was like, they're like, oh, we don't advertise so our sunscreen can be cheaper. There are software companies like that and it's going to be tougher to get a company like that to put you on blast and like really partner with them. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have software companies that actually invest like way bigger sums. You see this in our space. You have companies that invest huge sums in marketing and they're like seemingly everywhere. So you get a pretty big spectrum of like, how much companies are willing to invest. Also take a look at who's pumping out content, like who's running webinars every single week. Who's got the newsletters that have a bunch of people on them. The more content they're pumping out, the more there is smoke rolling off that hamster wheel of having to find another thing to talk about every day and every week. And probably the more open they're going to be to you. Contributing this episode of Sponsored in part by T Squared how digitally ready is your accounting firm? You ever think about that? You ever lay in bed at night and think, am I properly securing my data? Is somebody hacking into the mainframe right now? Well, great news. Let me point you to a completely free 10 minute assessment that will give you customized results instantly about your firm's digital readiness. It's from the folks at T Squared to help accounting firms like yours get their IT stuff sorted out. Oh, look at this. We've been working with accounting firms since 2014. B. Hall, CPA Past Past Guest of the podcast Sherwood Tax Little Fish Accounting Caleb is Keela been on the podcast yet? Alison MacLeod I see here T Squared supports a whole bunch of smart, capable accountants, but they put together this free tool to help you figure out if you're doing what you need to do. You know, keep on the straight and narrow. And personally, I love self assessments as much as the next guy. Which Harry Potter character are you? If you were a pizza topping, what would you be? To be clear, this is not that this one's actually helpful. Check out the link down in the show notes. This episode is brought to you in part by Team up, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options is that Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company. Guys, gals, gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you. So you can retain your team for the long term. Team up can source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Zero, QBO and DeX. Also recruit specialist roles, team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants. Thought experiment. What if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season just. Just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky ol inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever gonna get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable and employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team Up. Last, and this is maybe the hardest part. How do you crack that nut? How do you establish a relationship where right now there may be none? Frankly the toughest thing in software companies and this gets harder the bigger they get is cracking that freaking org chart and understanding who does what. I just don't generally don't like big machines. That's why I have always like been turned off by the notion of working for a large company. The things to look out for if you're trying to like get into some content and partner here first check to see if the app has like a dedicated advisor channel. And so we see this very commonly with the apps that we use like you know, say Gusto has a accountant channel, QuickBooks0. They are all like direct businesses and then have indirect channels. So in the case of these vendors, they're direct businesses, beekeepers or whatever your industry niche is and they have an indirect channel that may be working with financial analysts or consultants or whatever it is. Look and see if they have this LinkedIn these days getting better and better because generationally just more People are coming online and are more discoverable. And these LinkedIn accounts aren't like zombie accounts that somebody set up once and then never updated, particularly people in more senior positions and particularly people at software companies. So if they do have a partner channel, do some skulking on LinkedIn, there's probably going to be a head of whatever they call it, their advisor channel, whatever it is that's going to be a good person to try to talk to. More generally. Pretty much all software companies will have quote, unquote partnerships, which is like a more general version than like an advisor channel. So oftentimes the right person could be the head of partnerships. Many software companies also have content teams. And so who you actually want to talk with if you're trying to get on a webinar or something like that, is content managers look out for regional folks as well. For bigger companies, the folks in charge of those roles could be different region to region, particularly if the type of advice you're bringing is regional. For example, if you're a tax pro and you're offering, you know, tax insights or something like that, obviously that's only going to have relevance to the US Market. To reiterate this again in person is absolutely gold. These folks inside these companies have to navigate politics and how budgets get allocated and all of that. And if you're trying to work with these companies, like, to a degree, that's what you're doing as well. Particularly like in my business, for example, it's like, well, why should, why should part of this company's budget be carved out for influencer marketing, particularly when there's not much influencer marketing that happens in the accounting industry. So you're almost kind of educating them on the fly of, here's why this is valuable. It may take a bit of advocating for yourself if they've never partnered with somebody in this way. And so it's about finding the right people in the organization that can make that happen to say, I have a ton of value to offer. I work with a bunch of these type of people already, and I'm happy to help you create more valuable content through my expertise. If you're at trade shows, it is vital that you try to make those connections in person if possible, because it separates you from all the other voices online. If it is a smaller company that you're working with. The nice thing about trade shows is usually you can literally walk up and talk to the founders if they're larger, more mature companies. The folks hanging out of the booth, by and large will be Salespeople who have like no agency in the types of decision making that will impact whether or not you can help them out. So you walk up and talk to them and you're like, I do this and that and they'll be polite and cool and all that. But the reality is, at the end of the day, that person is incentivized to do something entirely different than what you're proposing and probably doesn't have much of an interest in helping you. You know, if you're at a conference, it's probably all about planning ahead of time. So how can you, how can you connect with somebody before an in person event like that to get the context out of the way so that when you meet, you're not doing that awkward conversation. If you've ever tried to do this before where you want to work with somebody and you walk up and you're simultaneously like introducing yourself and explaining what you do and how you want to support them all at the same time, that's a really hard thing to do. Particularly if you just randomly walk up to a booth and a random person comes out and you don't know what that person's job is. So if you're trying to maximize the opportunity of that in person conversation, make the connection beforehand. So what I'll usually do going into an in person event is I'll kind of make a list of people that I want to connect with. I will reach out to every single one of them before the event. If we can. We'll try to nail down an actual time to connect to ensure that it actually happens. But then as soon as you connect with them, boom, you're already off to the ground running. Because we've already set the context of what I want to talk about. And as soon as we get there, it's like, great, we're meeting and now it's happening and it's, it's immediately productive. This is all front of mind for me right now just because Engage is such a, such a big conference. But there's so many opportunities for people at trade show, like industry conferences, from just meeting with people who could be potential clients to getting better connected with the software vendors in the space. I could go to an expo hall and you will have 50 software vendors all in one room who have all spent tens of thousands of dollars to be there and will continue spending tens of thousands of dollars every single month to continue getting in front of the same people that you want to get in front of. That expo hall is a massive opportunity. I think we, we Always talk about like the stage and being able to do talks and all that. And that is valuable. But being able to form partnerships with software companies is an awesome way to get in front of a whole bunch of people and is another example of cases where it's like, what other accountants do you see doing this? Like all of these people are consuming this content. Just think about what percentage of the content in the accounting space is produced by software vendors. Just how much learning we do through content that's being fed to us from software vendors, which isn't great honestly and is going to be inherently biased. Not to say there isn't a lot of great content there, but 90 to 95% of all the content that's produced in the accounting space is produced by software vendors. I got to think that holds up in most other spaces. I don't see a whole ton of accountants going on and like supporting those software companies and their content. If you can be that face that they keep putting in front of people, man, that's great. They're like pouring money into showing you off. It's cool opportunity, a great way to shortcut, like building your own perceived expertise. We talked, we talked in the firm roast, what was that yesterday? About the value of investing in being perceived as a leading expert in the space a big software company puts on a webinar. You've done that overnight. Now be sure to have a call to action. Try to get people to follow you on social media. Come do like a trial project with your firm, something like that. That's, that's a way to start working with a client without making a forever commitment. We've talked before about how that is a call to action that converts much better than just asking them to be a client because that requires them divorcing their current accountant. So what is a lower barrier of entry project they could do with you to learn more about working with you? So always be thinking about what is the low barrier to entry call to action that I have ready in my, in my elevator pitch. If it's easier than becoming an ongoing client, then you're to get 5x as many people who are willing to do that that you would otherwise lose because they're maybe not quite ready to divorce their current accountant and then go out there and shine, man, show off what you got to show off. It's actually going to help the software company in the process and put you in front of, of a, of a bunch of people you wouldn't otherwise get in front of if you had any practical experience of having having done that and things that worked for you, I would love to see that stuff in the comments. There's a version of this in, like, every space these days. Right? So go fleece those software companies. Let me know how that works for you. We'll see you, Tom. It.