Dan Hau is the founder and managing partner of Hau & Associates, S.C., a four partner, Milwaukee, Wisconsin based, accounting firm comprised of twenty-five accounting professionals. The firm is among an emerging group of accounting practices across the country that exclusively utilize the Internet and cloud computing to grow their client base. A member of GoodAccountants.com since May 2010, Hau & Associates was first approached by Stephen Mack, a senior business consultant with GoodAccountants to meet with Homestead Independence Inc., a $7 million medical products company based in Cudahy, Wisconsin. Deeply frustrated with the lack of QuickBooks competency of the accounting firm they had been using Homestead Independence turned to GoodAccountants.com to find a new accounting firm for them. “The billing for Homestead was $30,000 and although Hau’s group was one of the company’s top two candidates the deal did not work out for them,” says Mack. Undaunted by the experience, Hau & Associates continued meeting with other companies that were referred to them by GoodAccountants.com and most recently landed a $15 million agricultural seed and chemical wholesaler which has resulted in annual billings of $50,000 for Hau. According to Sherry Reisenauer-Stillman, a partner at Hau & Associates, this one client could ultimately bring in more than a half million dollars in billings to the firm since they have committed to a long term relationship with them.
“Hau & Associates is one of our top member accounting firms,” says Johanna Laurent, President of GoodAccountants.com. “They’re a joy to work with because they take advantage of every marketing tool we provide our member accounting firms here at GoodAccountants.com and are what I call ‘internet ready’ as it relates to their grasp of the role of technology in today’s accounting industry,” adds Laurent. “They were among the first of our members to completely develop their GoodAccountants.com Profile Page and they never meet with any of our clients without immediately submitting feedback to us through our proprietary instant messaging platform,” explains Laurent.
The accounting firms that fully understand and take advantage of all the technology that GoodAccountants.com offers them according to Laurent, are consistently among the highest billers in her network. “Whenever we provide Hau & Associates a lead from our website they are in touch with the business owner literally within minutes after we have downloaded the information to them,” says Laurent. “Their utilization of all of the marketing tools we make available to them is making a huge difference in the number of clients they’re converting from the leads we send to them and it makes our job so much easier,” explains Stephen Mack. “When we send a profile page to Google for indexing without the accountant’s photo on it we find that page will rank lower than a profile page with a photo attached, yet some accountants still do not respond to our requests for their photo,” he adds. “We now live in the age of ‘social networking’ where people who use the Internet are accustomed to seeing whom they are interfacing with especially when it comes to entrusting someone with your financial information,” says Laurent. “If you are a financial professional and you want to gain clients through the Internet but yet you refuse to put a face on your accounting practice then you had better think again,” she adds.
Hau and Associates has billed a total of $60,000 with GoodAccountants.com in the first year of their membership and has just upgraded to the company’s $25,000 Designated Service Provider marketing program which guarantees a minimum of $75,000 in billing for the accountant.
This article was written by Omar Reed, a freelance business writer and financial analyst
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