45. HUGE Opportunity for Virtual CFOs in 2023

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The fractional CFO and virtual CFO industry is absolutely on fire right now. And 2023 is gearing up to be the best year ever for our industry. But low key, there's a massive opportunity that I just don't see enough people taking advantage of right now. In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through what that missed opportunity is and what you can do to take advantage of it in your firm. Let's go. Hey there. Welcome to the Connected Accountant. My name is Michael King. If you're new here, I talk about starting, scaling and optimizing fractional CFO services. I was recently on LinkedIn and a friend of mine, Chris Ortega, asked me, he said, mike, what do you see is the biggest opportunity for virtual and fractional CFOs in 2023? And I didn't even have to think about it. I was like, the biggest opportunity, honestly, is to lean more into marketing and sales. The reality is I don't see very many fractional CFOs doing hardly any work when it comes to marketing and sales. In those are doing it are really kind of leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. So in today's episode, what I want to do is break down what it is that I see that more virtual and fractional CFOs should be doing when it comes to marketing and sales. Now I want to break marketing and sales into two different discussions because they're two very different things. When I think about marketing, that's the ability or the activities of going out into the market and letting people know what it is you do, what goods or services do you provide? So in our case, it's fractional CFO services. Sales, on the other hand, is the ability to convince people to give you money in exchange for those services. So we're going to kind of separate those into two different conversations as we dive in today. First, I want to talk about marketing. I think that there's this apprehension amongst a lot of people in our industry to do marketing. And I think it's because a lot of us came from firms before we got into business for ourselves and when we worked for a firm, honestly, the business was brought to us. We just had to show up and do our accounting magic, send the product out the door and then when those things were done, more business would come to us. So marketing and sales, they're really new skills. They're new things for us to do with anything in life. When we try a new thing, a lot of times that's scary. There's A lot of nerves that go along with it. And honestly, it makes us feel kind of vulnerable. So I totally understand why people are so apprehensive about engaging in marketing and marketing related activities. But the reality is that without marketing, our firms aren't going to grow or they're going to grow at such a slow pace that it's almost impossible to scale. Business comes in, you know, sometimes in ebbs and flows when we're not consistently marketing. And that means that it's impossible for us to predict how fast or what pace our firms are going to grow. And if we can't predict that, then it's hard to know when's the right time to hire and when do we need to bring additional technologies on board, etc. So it's so important that we embrace marketing for fractional and virtual CFOs. What kind of marketing activities should you be doing? What I see a lot of people doing is nothing at all. And that's not the right thing to do. Those people that are doing marketing, really the I would say 95% or more of them, all they're doing is making posts on LinkedIn or they're making posts on Instagram and hoping that they're going to bring business in. And that can work to some extent. But the reality for the relationship that we have, our clients, it's a lot like in a lot of ways the doctor patient relationship, and give me a second to explain what I mean by that, is fractional CFOs. We're seeing business owners in their most vulnerable state, similar to what a doctor and a patient would do. Think about when you go to a doctor, right? It's time for an annual physical. You go into the doctor's office and you essentially strip off all your clothes and you're sitting on this cold table with a thin piece of paper underneath it. And that doctor goes in and he pokes and prods and you know, she asks you all these questions about your eating habits and your exercise habits and all these other health related questions and you're completely vulnerable in front of them. In a lot of ways, that's the exact kind of relationship that virtual CFOs have with their clients in a lot of ways. When our clients talk with their friends or their family, they've got clothes on and they're talking about how great sales have been and what growth is looking like and they're hiring all these people and doing all these things. But when they sit down with their virtual cfo, they're taking their clothes off. And sitting on that steel table, you get into their QuickBooks or their P and L, their financial statements, and you can see through all of those walls that they normally put up for other people. You can see how healthy their business actually is. And that's a very vulnerable place for a lot of business owners. And most of them have never had a vendor before where they allow them like, you know, completely uncensored access to the health of their business. It's really hard for clients to, you know, hire a CFO and give them that kind of insight. When it comes to marketing, you can't just post, you know, some clever videos or a clever, well worded post and expect people to come flocking to you. So how do you market as a fractional cfo? Well, it all boils down to relationships. You've got to establish relationships with people if you want them to come in, not just give you their money, but become completely naked for financially speaking in front of you. And I found that when it comes to those relationships, the key to it is less about social media and more about going out and meeting people. I mean, you've got to develop relationships and I think the only way you can do that is like to meet people and talk to people, let them know who you are as, not just as a business owner, but as a human. What are your values? What kinds of things are important to you? How do you show up? There's really a couple of key ways that you can do that. The first one is just going to networking events. You know, kind of that old school business development thing. Just go into networking, networking events, shaking hands, having conversations with people and getting to know them. I think that's old school, but you can't hack it. The second great marketing opportunity for us is to go to conferences. And so for my firm, I like to think of conferences where my ideal clients like to hang out. So as a lot of you know, a few months ago I went to a conference in Scottsdale where there were 500 moving companies. We love working with professional service companies that have physical locations. And so there's like 500 of them in there. That's a perfect opportunity for me to go shake hands, meet people, talk about their struggles, talk about who I am, and they have that opportunity to see me over multiple days. Plus, the added bonus of a conference is if you go to good conferences, you're probably going to take away some knowledge and other things that you can implement in your business as well. But really think about what are those conferences where my ideal clients might be at and how can I get in there and meet people and start building those relationships? A third great marketing opportunity in 2023 is to go out and get on podcasts. The thing that I about getting on podcasts is you give basically one hour of your time for an interview, and that one hour can literally get you in front of thousands, if not tens of thousands of people that are potentially your ideal clients. It's really hard to get that kind of scale, that kind of audience in exchange for just one hour of your time. Now, the downside is, in order to get on podcasts, you're going to have to really proactively go out and pitch yourself to podcasts and convince them basically sell yourself on why they should have you on their show. You know, podcast hosts, they're really protective of their audience. So you've got to learn how to go out and sell yourself and convince them why their audience would get tremendous value out of you being on their show. But I think it's a great opportunity in 2023. I don't see a ton of fractional CFOs going on podcast tours, so I think it's ripe for the picking. The fourth marketing opportunity in 2023 for fractional CFOs is to develop personal relationships with service providers that are kind of ancillary to fractional CFOs. So what I mean by that is find other service providers that have relations with the types of clients that you want to work with and develop relationships with them. So a great example is like, my firm only offers CFO services. We don't do any bookkeeping services. We don't do tax prep services. So CPA firms are great relationships that I can develop that work with the kinds of people that might need CFO services. So I might go find bookkeeping firms or tax preparation firms and say, look, you're probably getting questions about cash flow forecasting and projections in tax strategies or other kinds of financial strategies, and your firm doesn't offer that, but your clients need it. I would love to be that resource that you refer your clients to when they come to you and want those things if your firm's not offering them. This makes the CPA firm look like a hero because they've got great referrals and it's a great source for you to get business as well. Other examples that you might consider are wealth managers. A lot of times wealth managers work with successful businesses. We all want to work with successful businesses. So you might work on developing relationships with wealth managers. Another great one are attorneys Attorneys can be great lead sources, great referral sources for fractional CFOs, especially if you can get in with attorneys that focus primarily on business law. And another type of referral relationship that we've kind of stumbled upon recently, don't tell anybody but EOS implementers, the entrepreneurial operating system, the implementers. Those implementers are working with businesses that have the money and the interest to grow their businesses. We've recently started really leaning into developing relationships with those EOS implementers because they already have trust with their clients. Their clients already know them. And so those EOS implementers can be like, look, we're doing a great job over here on operations, but you need to level up your finances. We know a great firm that can help you out with that. Really what I want to encourage you to do on the marketing front is find those ways that you can develop actual relationships with people because relationships and trust are so important as prerequisites. A lot of time for what we're going to talk about here in a minute for sales. So if you are thinking like, I got to get more sales calls before you can do that, you've really got to learn how to go out and market. Like I said, there's not that many fractional and virtual CFOs that are doing anything with marketing, and even fewer of them are doing more than just posting things on LinkedIn or Instagram. Developing relationships with people is a great opportunity if you want to grow in 2023. All right. The second thing every fractional CFO firm has got to lean into a missed opportunity is getting good at sales. I know for a lot of us, when we think about sales, we think of like that typical used car salesperson, the sleazy tactics and the false senses of urgencies that a lot of people have experienced when it comes to sales. But like I talk about all the time, sales doesn't have to be that way. That's one way that sales often are. But sales don't have to be that way. If you're anything like me, you don't want to have those kind of sales tactics. But there is a way to really be authentic with your sales approach. For those of us that realize that a sales conversation is actually an opportunity to serve. It's an opportunity for us to magnify the impact that we're having on the world when we can kind of embrace that mindset that sales isn't a sleazy thing unless we make it that way. But sales is actually an opportunity to serve, to educate, to Increase our impact. That really opens up the door for us. It really kind of frees us to do sales in a different way and to do it in a way that's authentic to us. Now, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty on how to do sales that way in this episode, but I will include a link. I've got a free training, it's an hour long where I walk you through the sales framework that I use in my firm. That's worked tremendously well for me. I close something like 80% of people that I get on sales calls using this framework. And there's no sleazy sales tactics. There's none of the if you buy right now on this call, then you can save 20%. But you know, this offer expires in three hours and you know, like there's none of those kinds of things. So if you're interested in that, I will include a link in the description below. Another kind of bonus thing that I'll share with you today is in order to do sales well as a fractional cfo, kind of as a prerequisite to that, you've got to figure out what your service offering is and what your pricing is. I see a lot of people that are still in this hourly consulting model as a fractional cfo. And if you take that hourly consulting model into a sales call, it makes the sales process infinitely harder and you're going to close significantly fewer deals. And when you get on sales calls, it's so much easier to say, look for this price, this is the value that I'm going to add to your business. And you can let that, you know, way more to it than that. That's definitely not the summary of my sales calls. But when you can communicate scope of work, fixed price, this is what you know that you're going to get. From a value perspective, it's so much easier to close business. And there's so many CFO firms that are still on that, you know, hourly pricing model. And that's just not what the market market once from fractional cfo. So I really want to encourage you think about what is your scope of work, what is your pricing? Put together some pricing packages so that you can have an actual sales call that will close more business and enable you to increase your impact. One of my favorite quotes in the world of business is mission is everything, but without money we can't sustain the mission. And that's true for fractional CFOs as much as it is for any other business. Out there. What is the biggest opportunity in 2023? If you want to start or scale a fractional CFO firm, you've got to learn how to market. You've got to learn how to sell yourself. And like I said, there's ways that you can do that in a completely authentic way. Marketing should be relationship based. Sales should be all about having the fixed scope of work that fixed pricing. You're going to close so many more deals. You're going to be able to have such a greater impact if you can learn how to do marketing and sales in 2023. All right, my friends, that's it for this episode. I appreciate you being here. I'll see you back same time, same place next week. See you there.