The 3 Step Lead System That's Making Accounting Firms MILLIONS

In this video I'm going to show you the three step lead qualification system that accounting firms can use to weed out low quality leads without turning away high quality leads or potential customers. If you don't know who I am, my name is Peter Vanderwaal. I'm the marketing guy behind a CPA firm that went from zero to $3 million a year in three years. And this is basically the system that we use. Alright, so this is, this is how it flows. So we start with a VSL or video sales letter. Okay. And, and what we're going to do is push people to an application survey and then finally allow them to book a discovery call. Okay. And so I'm going to show you what each of these look like in real life out in the wild and how you can implement this as well. So first off, the VSL or video sales letter, right? So you're going to have a page that looks something like this. And this is basically the work with us page that you're going to send people. Okay. So on your website, like the work with us or contact us page, this is what that's going to look like. This will be the link in bio on all your social media pages. If you do, you know, a podcast or YouTube or something of that nature, you'll be sending traffic here if they're interested in learning more about working with you. And the way that this vets and qualifies people is it essentially makes sure that nobody booking on your calendar just like doesn't even know what you do. They don't know how you can help them. We basically want to make it easy for them to be able to look at your service and say you, yes, this is for me, this is what I'm looking for. Right? And so this video sales letter is going to kind of answer those initial basic questions of who is this for? What can this company actually even help me do? Have they helped people like me before? Et cetera, et cetera. Right. So the video sales letter is at the top of the page with kind of went full screen there with kind of this headline. So in this case, this particular CFO company that we're working with, their big value prop is like if you're making big moves in your business, like you're purchasing a building or you're opening up another location or something like that, then they're able to really help you navigate that in a really clean and effective manner. All of their clients, they came to them at a certain point when they were, you know, they were making some Type of big move in their business. And so like for example, this doctor that they worked with, he purchased a 5,000 square foot property in Miami for his med spa, right. This restaurant owner, he's grown from one location in Miami to four locations around Miami and New York. Right. And so that's why that's the title of their VSL essentially. So you watch the vsl, the video sales letter, you can go ahead and click this call to action to book a call. Or below that we've got some client case studies, some testimonials just from some of the people they've worked with. Again, I just want people to, I just want their prospects to be able to see business owners who are kind of somewhat like them. Right. So if you're in the medical space, if you're in the restaurant space, this is another hospitality business. I think this is a shipping business, maybe another medical space business. I have no idea what Groupforce Capital Ventures does to be honest. But this is just social proof that they're good at what they do, they've helped people in certain different industries and you should hopefully be able to see somebody who's in a similar situation to the situation you're in, whether you're opening up more locations or you're in the med spa business or you're trying to buy a building, whatever. And so this is the first filtering mechanism because if you see this and you're like, oh, this isn't really what I'm looking for, then you're just never going to even fill out an application or try to book a call here. And that's what we want, right? We want people to see this and say, oh, I don't think this is what I need. As long as we're properly communicating the value that they can actually get from working with us. Because if we're properly communicating our value in this video sales letter and they watch it and they say I don't think this is what I'm looking for, then that's a good thing because otherwise they're going to book. And best case, they sign up with us and they become a terrible client. Worst case, they book on our sales call, they book a sales call with us and it's just a complete waste of an hour of our time and theirs. So this is the first step, allowing them to essentially pre qualify themselves. The next step here, referring back to this flowchart here, we've got an application survey. And so this is where we start to get into some stuff that you've maybe seen before, right? And so if I click book a call here, it's going to take me to this application survey before it actually allows me to book my time with fcf. And so essentially what this is going to look like. I pulled up some applications from a few of our clients to show you different qualification questions you might ask. Ask. Right. So first off, this is this CFO company. They work with businesses in the 2 to 10 million dollar range who are making big moves in their business. So obviously name, email, phone, that's important. And then the questions we're asking to basically qualify them are company name and website and then what's your business revenue? Okay. And so the really the only thing we're qualifying or disqualifying in them in order to even actually book a call is just their revenue. If they're not making a million dollars a year, they can't book on this company's sales calendar. And that's just because they literally couldn't help them. The other thing we're doing though is their team is actually going to click on the look up the company and look up their website to see what type of company they are, what they're up to, what industry they're in, you know, all of the different details that would allow them to determine what's the best service for this lead. And you know, are we even able to help them? And so if it's somebody where it's just obviously like not a good fit, not an industry they're interested in working with or not, not a type of customer they'd want to work with, then they just cancel the call, no big deal. So this is the application survey. Now what a lot of people will do is they'll put just a million questions on this application survey. I think Calendly has something built in called like routing forms. And so a lot of people use that where they just add a million questions on here and it's like all of the 20 discovery questions that they ask at the beginning of the sales call, that's not what we're trying to do. You're still going to ask those discovery questions to understand what it is they're looking for and what it is that got them to reach out in the first place. All we're trying to do here is ask the bare minimum questions that we can ask in order to say yes or no. Is this person or is this company like at least somewhat qualified to work with us? And so in this case, it's like if they're under a million dollars, there's no way in the world that they're going to spend 35 to $10,000 a month on a fractional CFO service, right? So they're just literally not qualified to work with us if they're in an industry. Like for example, for my company, we had somebody reach out who's like the OnlyFans space. I'm not touching that industry with a ten foot pole, right? And so I can see their company name and their website and I could say, hell no, cancel the call, block them, don't allow them to ever book with us. Because that's just my personal feelings towards that industry. I'm not going to touch it. Right? And so if there's things like that that just immediately scream, this is not a qualified candidate to work with us, then that's great. That's all we're trying to get here. Okay? I don't actually want to ask like a million questions and create this unnecessary friction because picture it from the prospect side, right? Like if I get to this and I'm interested in working with this company and hiring them as my fractional CFO, and it's just like 20 questions all about my company, about all of these. How much did you pay in taxes last year? And what's your entity structure for your business? Are you an LLC or an S corp or a C corp? It's like, first off, I might not even know the answers to all of these offhand. Second of all, I'm a busy business owner. I don't have time to sit here and answer 20,000 questions on a random form before I've even spoken to you about your company. That's just not something I'm interested in doing. And so you'll actually, by trying to qualify that hard, you'll actually end up turning away otherwise good leads that would be a great customer for you to work with. And so it's really this fine balance you have to find of the exact right number of questions to ask on this so that you're not allowing complete brokies who have no intention to buy to book in on your sales calendar. But you're also not pushing away people who could otherwise be a good quality prospect to work with you. And so that's really important I want to show you too. This is a tax firm that we work with and so they work with real estate investors. This is their application form. Because the questions are a little bit different here. So I wanted to show you this one too. So again, we're asking for income. Now in this case, the income threshold is Much lower. So they have to be making at least 200k a year to be qualified to work with this particular company. Right. And so that's where we're disqualifying them. The other thing here is we want to know how many rental properties they own and what do you hope to get out of this call. Now, the reason we're asking these two is because this company has very limited. They haven't hired a sales rep yet. And so the owner is still taking a lot of the sales calls. And so obviously she's got limited availability, right? And so if her calendar starts getting really, really stacked up, she sometimes goes through or has her assistant go through and, and delete like the lowest quality leads from her sales calendar just to free up time for her to be able to, like, actually do, you know, live her life. Right? So she might go through and like, if you've got zero properties and you're like, in the 300 to 500k bracket, she might delete your call, right? And if you're here and you're saying, like, I just want to see if I need a new cpa, she might delete your call. But if you're like, I know Tax Boss is the right firm for me. I'm excited to work with you. Ain't no way I'm deleting that call, right? If you have 10 to 25 rental properties and you're this, this big whale of a real estate investor, no way I'm deleting that call. And so it's kind of a way to vet, like, if we're trying to clear out the schedule and clear out the calendar, like, how do we treat these leads? Do we just cancel the call, no explanation, get out of my face? Or do we, you know, do we keep them on the calendar as much as humanly possible and do we, you know, treat them with white gloves if we do have to reschedule? Right. So that's also important here. And then this right here, this is my application form for my company. So if you're interested in working with us, by the way, link down below for more info on that. But this is the application form that you would have to fill out. So first name, last name, email, phone, website, so that I can look you up and see what industry you're in and make sure you're not in the only fans industry. What's your core offer again? Same deal. I want to, I want to know, you know, what is it that you provide to people and is that something I'm down to Work on with you. How soon are you planning to get started? So similar to this question, what do you hope to get out of this call? This is just a way that I can kind of gauge the warmth of a lead. And so I'm not gonna say no, you can't book if you're looking to get started 30 days or more from now. But if I do have to cancel something from my calendar, you're gonna be the first one to go, right? And so that's something important there. And then annual revenue again, same deal. I'm not currently actually disqualifying people who make less than 300,000 dol a year. I may at some point, especially when sales call volume starts to get really, really high. But I am for sure going to prioritize sales calls with businesses who are in the 3 million dollar plus or the 1 to 3 million or you know, basically just the higher earning, higher level businesses that schedule with me and I'm going to prioritize those over the ones making less money. And so that's, that's my application survey. And then the third step, if we just go back to this workflow here, the third step is just very simple and straightforward. It's your discovery call. And so this is the first five to ten minutes of the call where you're kind of in the discovery phase. You're trying to figure out, you know, what, what is actually the pain point that's driving them to reach out and take action today. And like you're probably doing this mostly, right? I'm not, I'm not talking about your actual sales skills right now, but I'm just talking about like the structure and, and what you do on that call, right? You have calendly or you have a calendar scheduling tool where people select the time that works for them. They get reminders, they show up on the zoom call and you speak to them, right? So most of you are probably doing that part, right? It's just this, you definitely most likely don't have a video sales letter. Why is this doing this? You most likely don't have a video sales letter and you're probably doing the application survey wrong where you're actually potentially pushing away people who would otherwise be a good fit to work with you. And so that's what I want to go over there. So again, if you're an accounting firm and you're looking to grow your business in the next six to 12 months, then I want you to check the link down below this video. First link in the description is just more information about what we do. We grow accounting firms using brand and marketing not the outdated way where you grow by you know custom, you know word of mouth and referrals in your local town and then you either buy, buy out the guy in the next town over or you go open a location there and try to put him out of business and then you do that in the next town and the next town and you know now you got five, five CPA firms in the local area all charging 300 bucks for a tax return. That's not the way we help CPA firms grow. We help you grow through online marketing serving clients nationally selling high ticket advisory tax strategy CFO packages not just like your low ticket like you know $300 tax return or your transactional work. Right? So if that's you go ahead and click the link below this video. Check out that video on the next page and for the rest of you I'll see you in the next one.