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The Benefits of Cause Marketing Outweigh Your Accountant's Protests
Tip #359 - Don't Let Your Accountant See This
Dear Tip of the Weeker,
This week's Tip is my response to an email sent from a member of the Retail Mastery Group (the community of really smart people who have purchased the Retail Mastery System).
Her name is withheld to protect the identity of her accountant!
While you may feel you've spent entirely too much time focused on your accountant recently (tax time!), I thought this was an important question to answer...
Dear Bob,
I was sharing with my accountant/counselor my excitement about my success with your cause marketing strategy and he freaked out! He said giving 10% of my sales back to my cause marketing partner made cost of goods sold higher by 10%.
He did not get it at all!
I explained to him that everyone paid full price for everything and I would have normally had to take a much larger percentage off during a big sale to attract this many customers.
I generated tons of goodwill in my community, got lots of new people in my store, and really created a lot of buzz. I LOVED what happened!
Any ideas on how to get through to an accountant how this works?
Sincerely,
Annoyed with my Accountant
Dear Annoyed,
Well, you could loan him your copy of the Retail Mastery System. That might help him understand the wonderful benefits of cause marketing and get him on board with your new initiatives, but my guess is that it won't do any good.
Accountants are, by their very nature, risk averse and therefore usually not very creative. In my experience, most of them are primarily tax preparers - a very necessary function, and having a good one is absolutely necessary. But they often have very little hands-on, real-world, small business experience. Keep in mind that as tax preparers accountants are paid to look backwards at the numbers that have already happened.
Your job as an entrepreneur is to look forward and find creative ways to build your business into everything you want it to be. Entrepreneurship, by it's very nature, involves taking risks and trying new ideas.
Small business owners have a tendency to treat the advice from their accountants with more weight than it deserves. Not to say you shouldn't ask for, and carefully consider their counsel. Just recognize that they only see your business from a single perspective; your job is to see the entire thing.
So listen to your accountant, but don't worry if he doesn't "get" your marketing strategies. When he sees your increased sales and higher profits, THEN he'll get it!
Best regards,
Bob
P.S. Great job on your cause marketing event! Keep up the good work.
Wishing you great sales and lots of fun,
