Know Your Market – Build Your Confidence
Research Makes Starting Your Bookkeeping and Tax Practice Easier & More Profitable
Do you know your market? A little research makes it easier and safer to start your new Bookkeeping and Tax Practice. By knowing what potential clients exist in your market, you’re better able to focus your efforts on who the best potential clients are and how you can find and keep them.
6 Suggestions for Researching Your Market
Market Research identifies what consumers want and how you’ll meet those needs. Kate Delhagen, a former research analyst at Forester and current V.P. of business development for sports e-tailer Lucy.com, offers the following 6 suggestions for making research a part of your new bookkeeping and tax business.
- Find the one. This is something you can do yourself, it’s not difficult. But you may choose to pick someone to oversee your market research. Whether or not you do it yourself, it needs a commitment from you. Kate Delhagen says, “[Research] is sometimes overlooked or handled in an ad hoc way, rather than a systematic, progressive, reinforcing way that will build your business.”If you have the right person in charge of market research, you can count on a dependable and constant flow of information that will enable you to make the right decisions.
- Play both ways. You need to do both quantitative and qualitative research. It’s important to know and understand what the major trends are, but you’ll also need to understand the more personal issues that create the trends. For example, you might look at major studies and find that juice bars are on the rise (quantitative) and proceed to do personal interviews with your neighborhood folks to find out what they like about juice bars (qualitative). You need to do both types of research.
- Use the Net. “Anyone who’s not taking advantage of the Net is missing a huge opportunity,” says Delhagen. “It’s an incredible way to get real-time feedback.”The internet is a great way to collect data via a flash poll on your own site or by reading the posts on similar web sites or forums. It will take some reading, but the information is invaluable.
- Choose wisely. Many small business owners opt for a market research firm. This may or may not be a good idea for you, but if you decide to go that route, Delhagen says, “Just like any other vendor selection… even if you’re a small [company], you have every right to… ask for references. Your company’s future is at stake.”Although there are a number of market research firms out there, make sure the one you choose to work with knows your business and has been doing it for a while.
- Don’t treat research as gospel. Don’t take everything a research analyst says as the absolute “way it is.” Delhagen also says, “The quality of research certainly varies from firm to firm, it depends on how the firm approaches that gap-whether they do both sides of the equation. Those are the things to look at before deciding which numbers to bet on.”There are always a lot of variables in how research data is compiled. Make sure and ask a lot of questions and realize that the final analysis of the data will depend a lot on how the information has been collected. Does it look at both sides-what vendors and customers are saying-before making analysis?
- Make a commitment. Market research is important, but the commitment needs to continue after you’ve started to keep on top of your market. Your needs for information will change over time, but you will always need information to continue to meet the needs within your market.”This sounds pretty complex… can I really do this?”Yes you can. To make it as simple and easy to impliment as possible, Universal Accounting has made the market research they have done over the past 25 years part of the Professional Bookkeeper Program. With this valuable information, you’ll have a “leg-up” on the competition as you start your business.
The Professional Bookkeeper Program Offers Advice on How to Research Your Market
With 12 Tested and Successful Marketing Strategies outlined in the Professional Bookkeeper Program, you’ll learn everything you’ll need to know to find and keep clients in your area. You’ll learn how to show potential clients why using your service will save them money, how to build a rapport, how to describe your service in terms of benefits to your potential clients and how to determine fees.With state-of-the-art bookkeeping and accounting instruction and the most comprehensive program to help you find and keep clients, in all my searching, I’ve never found a more complete program anywhere. At Universal Accounting, we’ve been teaching the ins-and-outs of small business accounting and tax since 1979. For over 25 years, we’ve been considered the small business experts. I’d like to show you why. Simply click on the link below to find out for yourself why The Professional Bookkeeper Program from Universal Accounting is the perfect place to get the most complete education in bookkeeping and tax issues anywhere. You owe it to yourself to learn more about the Professional Bookkeeper Program and our unmatched money-back guarantee.Click Here to Learn Why The Professional Bookkeeper Program Provides All the Tools and Training to Increase Your Income
