Dominic Scine operates from a comfortable office nestled within a serene, rustic setting in Crofton, Maryland which serves as the home base for Scine Accounting LLC. Scine, a Certified Public Accountant, obtained his Bachelors of Science degree in Accounting from Flagler College, in St. Augustine, Florida. His brother Michael holds a Masters in Taxation and runs their St. Augustine office. The two along with a small administrative staff offer an array of accounting services that includes very aggressive tax planning, tax preparation, the preparation of financial statements, business and personal financial planning, private audits and reviews along with online bookkeeping solutions.
A true believer in the power of the Internet, Dominic Scine remains convinced that relying on client referrals to build his accounting practice that may come from his friends and relatives along with a few colleagues in the banking and legal professions is not exactly his idea of a real marketing plan. Dominic wanted something more substantial and a lot more tangible than that. What Dominic wanted was a way in which he could insure his accounting practice would have a dependable stream of new clients; but not just any old clients. Dominic wanted clients whose annual accounting budgets were minimally $5,000 to $10,000 and up. He wanted corporate clients that require servicing year round.
Presently with 300 individual clients and approximately 75 to 80 corporate clients Scine readily admits that he does not look forward to expanding his roster of individual clients and in fact will not take on any additional tax work from individuals unless it’s for someone who owns a company. As an added convenience for the principals of the companies he serves Dominic also provides personal tax and accounting services. “His choice is clearly small to mid-size corporations who require ongoing yearly accounting work and not just the filing of a tax return,” says Patty Schoenfeld, a senior consultant with GoodAccountants.com. “Scine loves to do tax planning, internal controls consulting and wealth and succession planning; the stuff that evolves around wealth development and asset protection,” adds Schoenfeld.
But before Scine and Schoenfeld crossed paths he was convinced he could go it alone. Among a growing number of young Certified Public Accountants who successfully use the internet to grow their accounting practice, Scine turned to the top search engines. He would quickly discover how difficult and costly it was to get his accounting firm up near the top of the search engine rankings so that it could benefit from key-word searches conducted by corporate clients looking for local accountants. But the one thing that impressed Dominic the most was there seemed to be a predictable result each time he conducted a search engine query using the word “accountant.” How was GoodAccountants.com able to consistently remain the top result each time he initiated a key-word search? Scine was determined to find out but he decided to go about doing it in a somewhat surreptitious manner. He would call GoodAccountants.com and pretend to be a business owner seeking a referral to a local accountant. That was when Dominic Scine first came to the attention of Patty Schoenfeld who happened to take his telephone call.
“We were able to increase our profit margin by about 18 to 22% on every engagement that we got from Patty once we joined GoodAccountants,” says Scine. To date Scine’s firm has received just over $100,000 in billable referrals from GoodAccountants.com that it has engaged as its clients. Among these is a $4 million defense contracting company headed by Greg Yette who provides contract management and logistical support services to the United States Coast Guard, the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and the Department of Homeland Security. Yette’s firm has become a $48,000 yearly receivable for Scine and has provided him access to other defense contracting firms in the area. Now at capacity, Scine is no longer able to accept additional referrals from GoodAccountants which he says is his biggest regret because of the caliber of clients he has already received however his first commitment of being able to deliver a quality service precludes him from taking on more.
Patty Schoenfeld is a Senior Consultant with GoodAccountants.com and can be reach at 1(800) 505-7861 or by email at: [email protected]
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