Insider's Circle Group Member Testimonial

I recently received this testimonial from one of our Insider's Circle Members. It was too good to keep to ourselves! Thank you Karen M. Lee for your kind words and congratulations to you and your company Alliance Tax Resolution Service on all your success!

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Alliance Tax Resolution Service is in its' sixth year of operation. In the past we sent what we called a "scary letter" directly to tax debtors in Wisconsin and other states. The staff would get busy, then too busy, so no additional marketing was done. Those spurts left us with unpredictable income. So we tried television. We were excited to have the local station produce the 30-second commercial. It ran for three weeks in February/March. Then we pulled the plug. Too expensive, we believed. In hindsight it was a scary and dreary version of our direct mail piece and brochure. So the up and down results continued, with that burst of business during tax season, for both resolution work and tax prep. By the way, because of the steep ebbs and flows of business, there was often too much or too little staff at the wrong times. My husband Arthur, our CPA, worked around the clock. Not fun for either of us!

Since we began to participate in Michael Rozbruch's Tax & Business Solutions Academy in July, we have made several minor operational changes, and some major marketing improvements. The most obvious results are:
1) the ongoing influx of qualified prospective clients
2) the importance and need for sequential follow-up to them
3) tracking mailings, calls, appointments, and sales helps create the formula for better financial success.
We're in control of our business future like never before. Feels good.

The first thing we did was write up a budget to understand what we could afford to invest in marketing to attract new clients. Then we placed an ad (horizontal 1/2-page) in our largest community newspaper beginning in August; it runs in two markets monthly through February. One is green the other blue--so we'll know the source of business when clients call or bring the ad to our office.  We’re about to overlap that with another high-distribution weekly newspaper run through April.

Our goal was to acquire ten (10) new clients a month. We researched local print mail houses that could cost effectively get our marketing in the mail, on our repetitive schedule. They've become a valuable business partner. Now we market monthly--not just when it becomes apparent the revenue stream is about to run dry!

We identified the professional referral sources and the cost to obtain those lists, re-vamped our business cards with a fresh-looking new logo, and redesigned our brochure based on the material from our Insider's Call back in September. We wanted to send enough referral letters, letters to existing clients, and direct mailers to achieve our goal of ten (10) new clients a month.

Our first Direct Mail (2,705 pieces) went out in October. We'll drop seven of those through the beginning of March, averaging about 2,900 pieces per drop. In November we dropped our first referral mailing of 9,274 pieces. That will drop four times total ending in February. Due to the cost of that mailing, (about $.515 per piece), we are going to pare down to around 8,300 to reduce the mailing cost (to about $.466 per piece) so all the mailing costs are roughly the same. There was a great video presentation to which Insider’s were given access. Reading about unconverted leads steeled our resolve to follow up on all qualified leads. We’re ready to get estimates on a good newsletter and automated marketing. Those are good problems to have from where we sit.

Of the ten new clients for the month of November, two were the recipients of our referral letter--one 160 miles away the the other 187 miles away from our office. That was the very perimeter of our mailing zone. So the need is out there!  Those two new clients paid for the referral mailing leaving a small profit! We have not received true referrals from that mailing, but with a couple of those individuals becoming clients, it's a start and we'll take it! We have developed other referral sources that have produced new business.

We also have better workflow systems with the help of RozStrategies. The case resolution tips actually helped us with segregation of duties. Our cases flow from phase to phase without a lot of the back and forth we used to experience. The improved efficiency has benefited all of us in the office, especially clients.

In total, the direct Mail, Newspaper and other referral sources, and sequential follow-up letters resulted in 55 appointments from September 25th through December 10th. We’ll continue to work toward improving our average fee and close rate. The membership only access calls are so motivating. Bottom line, I doubt we would have been able to so quickly restructure our sales, marketing and operations to our current results without Michael Rozbruch's Tax & Business Solutions Academy.

~Karen M. Lee, Tax Resolution Associate at Alliance Tax Resolution Service and Member of the Insider's Circle Group

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Thank you for sharing your success story with us Karen and congratulations on claiming the reins to your company!!  Here is a video interview we did on Skype as well!