Every April 16, a small accounting firm goes from the busiest building in town to the quietest one, and the phones stay that way until the extension crowd shows up in September. The team finally has time to breathe, and the clients who trusted the firm with their taxes three weeks ago have mostly forgotten the firm exists.
That gap is the best sales window a firm gets all year. Your client wrote a bigger check than they expected a few weeks ago, and they’re probably still a little annoyed about it. A firm that shows up in May with a clear advisory offer is solving a problem the client is already thinking about, which is a lot easier than convincing them they have one in November.
A small firm can do this without a bigger team or a marketing budget, using one good advisory page, a starting price, a few well timed emails and a simple way to remember who asked.
Why tax clients make the best advisory clients
A tax client already trusts you with their most private numbers, which is the hardest part of any advisory sale, so what’s left is timing and a clear offer.
In the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, 51% of employer firms named uneven cash flow as a challenge, and 56% said the same about paying operating expenses. Those are advisory problems, and the people living with them are sitting in your client list.
Most of those owners won’t ask for help planning. They’ll wait until next March and ask why the bill was so big again, and the firm that raised it in May is the one they’ll hire.
Which advisory services to put on the firm website first
The temptation is to list everything the firm can do, from cash flow forecasting to succession planning to fractional CFO work. A long list reads like a restaurant menu with 40 entrees, and the client who isn’t sure what they need will close the tab.
Pick one or two services that grow out of the tax return itself, because the return already told you who needs them.
- A business owner who got a surprise bill is a natural fit for quarterly tax planning.
- A client whose books took three weeks to clean up before filing is a natural fit for monthly client accounting services.
- An owner whose income jumped by a third is a natural fit for entity and compensation planning.
Give each service its own page instead of a bullet on a services page, so there’s room to answer the questions a client asks before they book a call.
How to write an advisory services page clients understand
Write the page the way the client would describe the problem to a friend at dinner. A client is far more likely to search “help planning taxes for my business” than “proactive tax advisory,” and Google’s own guidance on creating helpful, people first content rewards pages written for the reader over pages written for a keyword.
A good advisory page answers four questions a client has before they call.
- Who it’s for, described by situation, such as “owners whose business income changed by more than a third this year.”
- What happens in the first month, step by step, so the client can picture it.
- What the client gets at the end of each quarter, in plain terms.
- How it connects to the tax work the firm already does, so the client sees it as the next step after their return.
Skip the wall of credentials at the top. The client already knows you’re a CPA, which is why they’re on the page. What they want to know is whether you understand their problem, and the first paragraph should prove it.
How to show advisory pricing on the firm website
Many firms leave pricing off the website because every engagement is different. That’s true, and the prospect still wants a number before they pick up the phone.
Nielsen Norman Group has watched this play out in years of usability testing. In their research on why B2B sites should show prices, business buyers ranked price as the information they need most, and participants left for competitors’ sites when a site hid it. When the price is missing, the prospect goes looking for it on another firm’s website.
You don’t need a full rate card. A single line such as “quarterly tax planning for small businesses starts at $750 a quarter” gives the reader enough to decide whether to keep going, and it makes the first call easier because the ballpark is already settled.
If one starting price feels risky, show a few sample situations instead. Nielsen Norman Group suggests the same approach for complex pricing in their piece on showing prices for common scenarios. A firm could list a single member LLC in one state, a two location retail business and a multistate S corporation, each with its typical quarterly range. The client finds the one that looks like them and does the math themselves.
Firms that publish a price get fewer calls from people who were never going to sign, and the calls they do get start with the client already comfortable with the number.
Follow up emails that turn tax clients into year round clients
The weeks after a return is filed are when clients remember you best. Three short emails over the next few months can turn that moment into an advisory conversation without anyone at the firm feeling like a salesperson.
When the return goes out. Thank the client, point to the one or two numbers on the return that matter most, and name one thing they could change before next year. Keep it to four or five sentences that a client can read in the parking lot.
About 30 days later. Send a note tied to something specific, such as a change in their estimated payments or a deduction they nearly missed, and offer a 20 minute call to plan for it.
Before the next estimated payment. The IRS publishes the estimated tax payment schedule for individuals and businesses, and every deadline on it is a natural reason to write. Remind the client of the date and the amount, and mention that quarterly planning would mean they stop guessing. Link to the advisory page you built.
Send each email from a person the client knows, from that person’s own address, and keep it short enough to read on a phone. Most practice management and CRM tools can schedule these once they’re written, so the firm writes them in May and they keep working through January.
How accounting firms get found by local business owners
Your current clients are the easiest advisory sale, but the firm also needs new ones, and most owners start that search on Google. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and its tips to improve your local ranking come down to a few habits a firm can keep without a marketing team.
- Fill out every field in the firm’s Google Business Profile, including services, hours and the areas you serve, and list each advisory service by name.
- Ask happy clients for a review right after the return goes out, when the relief is fresh.
- Reply to every review, including the grumpy ones, in a sentence or two.
- Add photos of the office and the team, because a firm with faces looks like a firm that picks up the phone.
This takes about an hour a month, and it decides whether the firm shows up in the map results or on page two, where owners rarely look.
Marketing for CPA firms when the partners have no time to market
Gartner’s research on how B2B buyers make purchases found that buyers spend only 17% of their buying time meeting with potential suppliers. The rest goes to researching on their own and talking it over with their own team. For an accounting firm, that means a prospect has usually read the website, checked the reviews and compared two other firms before the first call.
For a small firm, a clear advisory page, a visible price and a few strong reviews can do most of the selling before a partner picks up the phone. The work is mostly writing and setup, and once it’s done it keeps working through every busy season.
This is the part of marketing for accounting firms we spend most of our time on at Leapyn, and the pattern we see most is firms that do excellent advisory work and describe it in a single line on a services page. The firms we see grow advisory fastest explain one service clearly, put a price next to it and follow up with every tax client while the return is still on the kitchen table.
Tracking which tax clients are ready for advisory work
The firms that grow advisory revenue keep a simple record of who asked. Every time a tax client replies to a follow up email, books a planning call or asks a question outside tax prep, note it in the client file.
By the next filing season, you’ll have a short list of clients who already raised their hand. The team can bring up advisory work in person while the return is being prepared, and clients hear it as good service.
The same notes tell you which service to promote next. If most of the questions are about cash flow rather than tax planning, that’s your next advisory page.
A plan for the months between tax seasons
- May. Pick one advisory service, write its page and add a starting price.
- June. Write the three follow up emails and schedule them for every return filed this year.
- July and August. Update the Google Business Profile, ask for reviews and reply to the ones you have.
- September. Send the third email ahead of the September estimated payment, and add any interested clients to your list.
- October through December. Hold planning calls with the clients who raised their hand, and turn the best of them into quarterly engagements before year end.
- January. Review the list, pick the next service to add and go into tax season with advisory work already on the books.
By the following May, the firm has one advisory service with paying clients and a list of who might want the second one.
More for firms building advisory practices
CPA Practice Advisor covers the firm side of the profession every week, from pricing and staffing to the technology firms use to deliver advisory work. Browse the firm management coverage for more on building year round revenue, and subscribe to the free CPA Practice Advisor newsletters to get the next ideas in your inbox before the next filing season starts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joanna Tarnawa is the founder and chief marketing officer of Leapyn, a B2B marketing agency in Nashville that works with accounting firms, financial advisors and other professional services firms. She writes about how firms can win more of the right clients without adding to their workload.
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Tags: Firm Management
