How To Leverage Accountants as a Marketing Channel with Michael Ly
Accountants as sales targets are an incredibly tough crowd. And it makes sense - when their clients engage with them, they are handing over all their precious financial data. It’s a high-trust relationship that is very fragile.
Aly Garrett, founder of All in Advisory, said it best in a recent Early Adopters Hub webinar:
“We [accountants] are an educated buyer. We know what we want; we’ve been flooded with tech for an enormously long time; we have high expectations. You actually need to engage and listen with us, otherwise we’re just not going to engage back.”
Given the complexity, why would anyone want to sell products or services through accountants, rather than going straight to the end customer? Michael Ly, co-founder of PunchPay, has several reasons: prior history + reach.
PunchPay leverages accounting data to provide capital access to small businesses through micro lines of credit and installment loans. Before co-founding PunchPay, Michael had built up a network of accountants as the founder of Reconciled, a virtual bookkeeping and accounting service.
With such a strong accounting background, it was a no-brainer for Michael to reach out to his accounting network first to market his product. Instead of him generating leads from scratch, those accounting firms give him access to the millions of small businesses who currently use their services.
So what’s Michael’s advice on how to leverage accountants as a marketing channel?
Solve a real problem.
Don’t just offer extra benefits and add-ons to what the accountant or small business owner already has. Figure out what pain points the accountant or small business owner is dealing with, and make sure your product or service solves that problem.
Because Michael spent so much time helping small businesses with their bank relationships, he saw firsthand just how difficult and complex the lending and underwriting process was. Then, as he and his team conducted their initial research to build PunchPay, they interviewed more than 100 banks and credit unions to learn exactly how those institutions operate.
Now, with PunchPay, he’s able to automate the process most banks perform manually, saving precious time for small businesses who need capital fast.
Put relationships and trust first.
In accounting, trust is everything. Accountants must have their customers’ complete trust to handle their finances. That means you as a vendor must have the accountant’s complete trust if they’re going to recommend your products to those customers.
Trust is hard to build. And once established, it can be broken with just a single mistake. Take your time developing authentic relationships instead of approaching it as just another marketing channel to try. A great place to start in terms of connecting with accounting firms is to meet them at conferences and other industry events.
“Seeing you at multiple conferences over time gives you longevity validation that you're going to be around,” Michael explained. “Accountants and accounting firms are conservative by nature, so they don't want to introduce their customers to tools that they believe won't be around for a long time or don't have longevity to be available.”
Make it easy on accountants.
Validating the problem and building trust with accountants are both absolutely critical. But they have to be paired with an easy, straightforward way for accountants to share your products and services with their clients.
Do the legwork upfront. Create a set of turnkey resources — email or Slack templates they can send to staff members, step-by-step guides, etc. — to walk accountants and their clients through education, application, and onboarding.
Better yet: grant access to the firm to try out your product or service themselves. That way, they’ll understand exactly how it works - and be able to share their experience with clients (and you).
Want to learn more? Listen to Michael’s full podcast episode, Marketing to Accountants vs. SMBs with Michael Ly, on Scrappy Fintech Marketing.
