Clients want an accountant who 'nerds out’ on their numbers

You work at the intersection of accounting firms and business owners actively searching for help. What are clients expecting from firms today?

Overwhelmingly, the number one thing business owners are searching for is vibes. I know that's juvenile to say, and maybe it's a reflection of the average age group running $500K to $20M companies, but it's true. I'm seeing it on Sam's List when users contact someone, and I'm seeing it at founders events I go to here in New York. People are using words and phrases like "easy to talk to," "not stiff," "someone who gets it." 

People will ask me, "Who's someone cool that you think I'd get along with, I can trust, they get what I do, and they're good at communicating?" I get that variation of request weekly. I don't give personal opinions, though. I don't want to be held accountable for someone else's massive financial decision! 

People want the vibes, and they also want you to be a nerd. They want to vibe with you, but you're still our numbers person, and we want you to nerd out about accounting. Like you're actively studying it. That combo can be hard to come by. Also, out of 5,000+ business owners who've used Sam's List, maybe one has ever asked about a specific software that a firm is using. That seems to be the most popular topic when I speak to accountants, but on the client side, it's rare for that to be considered in the early stages. 

What are business owners hoping a new CPA relationship will feel like that they may not be getting from their current accountant?

Most people coming through our platform aren't looking for their first accountant; they're replacing one. I think that's something firms don't sit with long enough. These are people who already found someone, handed over their financials, built some trust, and then something broke badly enough, or something broke multiple times, that they're willing to do it all over again. 

Roughly 70% of our quiz leads say they need help within 30 days. I just spoke to a CPG founder whose accountant sent her tax info to the wrong person and then filed her returns incorrectly. She's the one who caught both errors, not the accountant. That's an extreme example, but everything adds up.

If you're the accountant reading this, thinking, "Well, I would never do that," ask yourself, when's the last time you reached out to a client when they didn't reach out first? When's the last time you flagged something proactively instead of waiting for them to ask? 

When business owners start searching for a new CPA, what are the first things they typically evaluate before ever scheduling a call?

Reviews, specificity and how easy it is to get on a call. A lot of accountants I've noticed want to do it all: work with every industry, serve the higher-end client, cast the widest net. But you need an identity. If you don't have one, the exact person you want to bring in is going to notice. Especially ultra-high-net-worth individuals. I've met with a handful of these people, and their biggest concern is that they'll be your biggest client. They don't want that. 

I met a gaming founder recently who did $500K in a single month and was rapidly increasing. He wanted to know if there was anything unique to the accounting of his business, how similar companies maintained growth, and he was specifically looking for a firm that talked about gaming. That's the level of specificity people are searching with. 

What are some overlooked ways smaller firms can compete with larger firms when trying to attract new clients online?

Reviews!!!! Every day when I check our Google Analytics, I see people landing on Sam's List because they're typing in a firm's name plus the word "reviews." If that firm has reviews on their profile, the page comes up, and people are using it to vet them. We're not paying for that; that is genuinely organic behavior. 

People are searching for social proof about you, so it's a massive advantage if there is chatter about you online. There's also a massive advantage 99% of firms aren't thinking about yet—AI search engines are weighing reviews more heavily and are more likely to reference them. 

When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, any of them, "Who's a good CPA for e-commerce businesses?" those tools pull from real client reviews. Firms stacking reviews now will have a compounding advantage as AI search becomes how people find professionals. And what we're seeing on Sam's List is that people who find us through AI recommendations convert at a completely different rate. When an AI suggests you, people trust it the way they'd trust a friend's suggestion. That's a new kind of referral that didn't exist two years ago.

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