In this segment Matt Vaadi advises CPA and payroll firms to avoid the vague "anyone and everybody" positioning when seeking referrals. He explains that a broad target makes a firm effectively invisible to referral partners, who prefer specialists who understand specific industry challenges. Vaadi illustrates how he categorizes firms by niche—such as dental, tech, legal, or by employee count and geography—to quickly match referral needs. He recommends firms craft a concise target addressable market statement (e.g., professional services with 10‑49 employees in a specific city) that highlights their sweet‑spot and excludes high‑risk segments like restaurants or construction. This focused positioning reduces operational risks (e.g., NSF checks), improves service quality, and makes the firm easier for partners to refer.
Chapters
So what are some things when we talk about being easy to refer? So one of the biggest mistakes I see, I see this with CPA firms particularly that start to get into the payroll space, is that when I ask them who their target client is, oh, anybody and everybody. Oh, we'll just do, you know, whether it's a restaurant, a dental practice, a tech firm, a construction company, they just, they're, they're wide open for business. 2 employees, 200 employees, we'll do anything. You know, we're just We're just here to do a great job. Well, to me, it's kind of funny because I was looking for a CPA firm to refer a client to last week, and immediately I started categorizing, well, this company's really good with dental practices and this type of firm. This one is really good with more of the tech companies because they know those tax credits. This one is really good. And I just remember categorically skipping over one in my mind because they were one of these we do anybody and everybody firms. And to me, that means you do nobody. As far as I can tell, I want to know that I'm sending my clients to somebody who's a specialist and that they're going to know their unique business challenges. And that's the way that CPAs want to think about you or your referral partners want to think about you is that you're a specialist in these industries, whether that's simply, hey, we only work with folks with 25 employees or less. We only work with folks in this geography. Hopefully I don't get canceled there. I guess I kind of accidentally cussed there, but You've got to have some sort of target addressable market that you can come to folks, say, we work with professional services companies, typically with between 10 and 49 employees, mostly headquartered here in Columbia, South Carolina. This includes dental practices, legal practices, financial service companies, tech companies, and IT companies. And that's, that's our real sweet spot, our real bread and butter. Tends to be they're coming off of a national provider, they've been jaded with the service, and they're looking for something more local where they can get more hands-on service. Now, that gives them a clean snapshot of opportunities that might fit us. I didn't say anybody and everybody, you know, and then they'll start to ask, well, what about this? It's like, eh, we'll, we'll work with it, but they might not be the best fit for what we do. So for example, we don't want to take on a lot of restaurants, a lot of construction companies. I mean, we're trying to mitigate risk as it relates to NSFs and as it relates to just the quality of life for our internal employees and the support interactions that they have. So we don't go out and promote that. But conversely, if I did, it'd be the first thing I talked about so that I made myself easier to
