"Xero did a really nice job of using accountants to augment their own distribution efforts." As usual, Intuit is much more complimentary (in public) about Xero than Xero is about Intuit. Despite opening up the sales process, Intuit believes most accountants in the United States prefer to recommend, not sell software, and that has been the standard view about the accounting profession for a long time. Intuit has not given any indication of the amount of product moving through accountants and it would be surprising if it did. The company has 100,000 ProAdvisors and it would be doubtful that more than 1,000 of them made significant sales, and probably 500 would be high. Most are likely to be one-sy-two-sy, a pure guess. Despite talk about accountants bringing clients to QuickBooks Online, the talk I hear is still more "if my clients use it, I will support it."
INTUIT ADOPTED XERO SALES TACTIC Featured
Intuit's decision to allow accountants sell its QuickBooks products stemmed from watching the success Xero had with that method. "The thing we learned from them [Xero] was their partnership with the accountants as a sales channel," said Jerry Natoli, Intuit's VP of corporate finance and treasurer, said during a webcast this week from a presentation at Barclays Global Technology Conference
