SUMMARY OF JAY HAUCK INPUT RE DFKUS MEMBER RECRUITMENT 16/8/07, LB.
Background
I noticed that DFKUSA was successful last year in recruiting new member firms. So I followed
up with Jay. I gave him the following background on our past and recent activities:
1. DFK sent letters as cold call to firms in the past with no success
2. Personal contacts and recommendations have brought in some members
3. Advertising brought in 1 member
4. Cold call phone calls from Chair to Perth and NZ looked good early this year.
I skyped with Jay and asked the following questions:
1. what steps do you follow to recruit a new member.
2. Since you are not an accountant nor a member firm partner, do you have any
credibility issues when you talk to a prospect?
Jay’s feedback:
His key comments:
 there is no “magic bullet”.
 Momentum is key – you must maintain the momentum when a firm shows interest.
 DFKUS has a 10k budget for membership recruitment annually.
 (DFKUS charges 5k per firm as an ‘initiation fee’ when they first join the DFK group to
help with working capital )
 Meetings with prospects are with a best fit exec member + EO. (the US exec is like
dfkanz board). The exec member talks from personal experience re DFK value to a
firm etc, Jay talks about admin, conferences, fees, DFKUS being a quality network,
its technical expertise, leadership, etc. Jay uses a football analogy and likens himself
to the ‘play by play commentator’ delivering facts, and the exec member as the
‘colour commentator’.
Credibility:
I was concerned I would lack credibility not being a partner in a member firm. Jay agrees he
has that problem, plus he is younger than the typical target firm partner who is male in their
50’s. He adds credibility by having a DFK Exec member with him during any meetings.
(I surmise I would have the same difficulties with my gender replacing the youth component.)
He doesn’t cold call via phone. (Our Chairman, Rob Shelton, did this successfully - his title
opened doors for him. )
Jay’s Method:
He generates leads, organises meetings and follow ups ensuring the meetings and phone
calls happen (in his words he does “ the leg work and rides herd”).
Leads are from the following sources:
 “broad” direct mail + occasionally “focussed” direct mail (where he feels a personal
letter from the DFKUS President, a Managing Partner (MP), is best to write a letter
‘MP to MP’ to a particular prospect firm.)
 referrals from what he called ‘facilitator consultants’
Direct Mail – both ‘broad’ and ‘focussed’
Key points which Jay has learned
 Mail to all the partners of a firm, not just the Managing Partner
 Mail twice a year, for several years – once straight after tax time, once after summer
holidays (equivalent to our February) when people are getting back into the work
mind set
 Phone 1-2 weeks after the mail ‘ to check you received our letter’
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Mail includes a letter – one for firms with an existing alliance, and one for firms
without) + a card to catch their attention and make them look inside the card (see end
of this document for a previous version of the US - I attach ours in the email – we
changed the wording and quotes etc for Australia and NZ.).
the envelope has DFK branding
Estimate failure rate is in high 90’s, however, sufficient success for them last year to
bring in 2 member firms using direct broad mail (Orlando and Philadelphia), 1 firm
using direct focussed mail (Houston - Jay felt DFK was a stronger organisation than
the group this firm was already affiliated with - the president elect wrote personally to
the firm)
If any interest is shown, he mails them brochures, world directory and gets an
appropriate exec member to contact them.
Jay then follows through and sets up a face to face meeting with an exec member
and himself, and if possible, all the firms partners.
Exec has to OK sending an app form+Managing Partners Conference invitation (if
right timing) to the prospect.
To close a deal it is essential to have an exec member – sensibly he tries to select
someone with similarities to the prospect firm.
Facilitator consultants
In the US it is common for firms to go on an annual ‘retreat’ just after tax period, where they
work through the firm’s strategy, SWOT etc. For this, firms generally use a facilitator. Jay tries
to engender relationships with them, periodically sends them email to remind them DFK is
looking.
DFKUS pays a finders fee of 5k.
Facilitator consultants were responsible for two of the new firms being introduced last year
(Fort Worth and Pasadena).
Ideas being considered by Jay
To vary the approach Jay is considering using postcards instead of letters.
MY STEPS WERE:
Mail
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Built ANZ card using US artwork with Jay’s permission
I compiled a mailing list on excel using google, yellow pages, any link I could find.
This restricted us to firms with websites – but lists of accounting firms are not easily
available and websites enabled me to assess the size and services of a firm so I
could vet them or keep them as a prospect.
I adapted the US letters for ANZ in Word
I used mail merge to merge excel entries into the Word letters and generated all the
letters
I did the same for envelopes printing names and addresses automatically.
I mailed
I phoned 1-2 weeks later – initially I used a script I wrote (telephoning like this is not
in my comfort zone) – I practiced making it sound ‘ad lib’ until colleagues agreed it
sounded unscripted when I spoke.
Some people asked for an emailed version – so I developed this – see attached on
my email – I built 2 kinds - one with letter embedded like a newsletter and one
without.
For NZ it was easy to get straight to the partner (providing they were in which meant
heaps of calls until I found people) but in Australia the PA’s (secretaries) filter the
calls and its hard to get past them. I called myself ‘CEO’ and that helped!!
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In my call to them I suggested they might want to meet with a director (and me) so
they can hear ‘directly from a member’ and ‘from a board member (to show they are
important) how dfk benefits them
For some which showed interest I sent our new member booklet (heavily using US
concepts / artwork again), world directory.
I go 4 firms in Gold Coast Australia to agree to meetings.
The director to meet them rang them direct and organised the meetings
At the meeting they received our ‘promo folder’ which contains our new member
booklet, world directory, 1 page inserts (see attached in email), new DL flyer (see
attached in email) and the promo card again.
AND IMPORTANTLY we made sure our new website was up to give a better image
2 firms are interested – but no commitment yet.
We’ve just agreed to offer them free registration to our next conference (in May or
Feb).
Its hard to keep ‘the iron hot’ without pestering them – frustrating!
Facilitators – Other referrers
We don’t know facilitators as such. However, we’ve had a few firms volunteering sponsorship
for our conferences – they are different service providers – but with accountants being their
target market, they would know of other firms in our target cities. So we are approaching them
– and we just approved AUD5k to pay as spotters fee for a successful membership
recruitment as per the US. I need to ask Jay for his fee payment rules – I expect we would not
pay the 5k until we at least recover the 5k in membership fees from the firm – this would be
quite a few months as we don’t have the 5k initiation fee the US has.
Scroll down for the card info…………the US has revamped this a little – we used their latest
version.
I’ve also attached on the email
1.
CARD
Jay’s description: “Attached is the brochure we include with our letter in our mass mailing –
it’s a bit confusing looking at it in PDF – on the first page of the PDF, the top is actually the
back cover and the bottom is the front cover – page two of the PDF appears as if you had
the brochure open.
Again, the objective is just a quick tease that might cause someone to pick it up out of
their in box and actually look at it, a quick summary of what we offer, and a way of
contacting us for more information”