Creating Strong Sales Tax Partnerships with Brigitte Merten of Avalara
Brigitte Merten is a Strategic Alliance Manager at Avalara, and she strives to create strong partnerships in order to make everyone more successful and profitable. For the last five years, Brigitte has been specializing in helping accounting firms grow their practices while at the same time helping their clients achieve sales tax compliance. Avalara was started 16 years ago, went public in 2019, and currently has more than 1600 employees.
In this episode…
There are many accountants and other professionals who provide accounting services to their clients who are not conversant with sales tax. But the process of finding the best partner to help in managing this very important tax can be a challenge - especially when the accountant does not know what to look out for.
Avalara is known as an expert in sales tax among other types of taxes. They are a 1600-strong company and this begs the question, “how do you find the best direct contact within the company to help you with your sales tax needs?”
In this week's episode of Sales Tax and More, Michael Fleming and Ellie Moffat interview Brigitte Merten from Avalara to find out how she helps accountants and their clients manage their sales tax requirements. They also touch on the services Avalara offers to various businesses, the benefits of being part of their accounting partner program, and why it’s advisable to work directly with Brigitte Merten. Stay tuned.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
What is Avalara and what does the company do?
Brigitte Merten talks about working with Avalara, their accounting partner program, and the benefits it offers
Avalara’s capacity of working with businesses selling overseas and why accountants
Avalara’s concierge service and why it’s best to reach out to Brigitte as a direct contact person in Avalara
How to get in touch with Brigitte Merten
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Brigitte's email: brigitte.merten@avalara.com
Connect with Michael
Sponsor for This Episode
Sales Tax and More assists companies and their trusted advisors like CPAs with sales tax needs. They offer consulting and research, registrations, returns, and so much more. Over the years they have assisted thousands of sellers both foreign and domestic with their tax issues in the United States and in Canada.
Episode Transcript - Audio Version
[0:10] Intro: Welcome to Sales Tax and More, your go-to resource for all things state tax related. Now, here is your host, Michael Fleming.
[0:26] Mike: Hi, Mike Fleming here. I'm the founder of Sales Tax and More and today's co-host of the Sales Tax and More podcast, where we talk about everyone's favorite topic, which is, of course, sales tax. So, today we have Brigitte Merten with us from Avalara. But before we introduce Brigitte, I'd like to introduce my co-host, Ellie Moffat.
[0:46] Ellie: Hi, everyone. It's always great to be here on the podcast. I'll do a quick introduction for Sales Tax and More. Sales Tax and More is a full-service consulting and solutions firm. We have a really great team of experienced tech professionals who are very dedicated to fulfilling your state tax or related needs. We do a lot of consultations, registrations, returns, research and like our name states, more. So if you have questions about our services, please reach out and ask. We are more than happy to tell you about those. But that's enough of that will flip it back over to you, Mike.
[1:20] Mike: All right. Thanks, Ellie. And as I mentioned, today's guest is Brigitte Merten, and she's a strategic alliance manager at Avalara, where for the last five years, she's been specializing in helping accounting firms grow their practices while helping their clients achieve sales tax compliance. I've known Brigitte for this whole time she's been at Avalara. We've done many shows together. She's been a great partner and helped us out in many ways. And I can tell you that she really strives to create strong partnerships in order to make everyone more successful and profitable, and she likes having fun while she's doing it. So when she's not talking tax, which is a lot of the time, she enjoys talking with her friends or family, her poodle, Pepper, she loves going to the beach, she loves the mountains. So hello, Brigitte, you want to say hi to the audience here?
[2:17] Brigitte: Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm excited to be here on this podcast. Thanks, Mike and Ellie for having me, and I'm looking forward to having that great fun conversation.
[2:26] Mike: All right. So let's, uh, let's start off. You know, most of our audience does know who Avalara is, but every once in a while, I'll get a question. And it goes something along the lines of who is this aloe vera? So
[2:44] Brigitte: I love it. I love it. I know we do give out sunscreen at our trade shows that I think we should give out aloe vera. Like, we're totally missing the mark there.
[2:53] Mike: Absolutely.
[2:55] Brigitte: Yeah, those of you who don't know, Avalara was founded in 2004. So we're 16 years old now this year, we went public last year. So an exciting time to be at Avalara. Now you got me saying it wrong!
[3:11] Mike: Sorry.
[3:12] Brigitte: Yeah! And so, we are actually now 16 over 1600 employees that live and breathe sales tax compliance every day, right? So our end clients don't have to. So that's kind of our passion, we are passionate about the color orange. Back in the day, when we first started, all the software companies were wearing blue. And so our founder Scott, we had a Tiki booth to be fun, and orange, so we'd really stand out in the crowd. And, you know, that's really worked for us and I think how people know Avalara today.
[3:4] Mike: Yeah, it's amazing. You guys are up to 1600 employees
[3:53] Brigitte: Oh I know
[3:54] Mike: When I first started working with you, it was like 50 some odd employees. And yeah, you were bursting at the seams. So, at that point, it's just such tremendous growth since that time.
[4:05] Brigitte: I was gonna say when I started there about 500 people here, and the year I started, we hired another 500 more and it's just been, you know, expanding ever since then.
[4:16] Ellie: Yeah, you guys have had a lot of great success. And I think, Mike and I actually joke about this off and on but you don't really grow up dreaming of working in sales tax. It's not really something I expected for myself. I doubt it something like that Mike expected. So what really what drew you to Avalara? And did you see sales tax in your future?
[4:40] Brigitte: Well, I'll say no, I never thought I would know this much about sales tax. Um, but you know, so I think what really drew me to Avalara and kind of, my career has always been in technology, right? And what's out there from a technology automation standpoint that can help people. I've been in The software industry for about 20 years, and so I think that you know, Avalara is a great software company that can help people out and has a fun culture you know, obviously, the orange the Tiki booth back in the day we had margaritas, so you know, who wouldn't want to work at that company?
[5:18] Mike: And you look so good in orange, too.
[5:21] Brigitte: Luckily
[5:22] Mike: Yeah.
[5:23] Brigitte: I was, they always say it’s surprising when you start the section of clothes in your closet that's orange, you know, I had more than I thought. But now, it's like slowly taking over the whole closet. Which is fun. Yeah. So I just wanted to work with fun people, great technology, great solution. I thought it was a win-win to come work here.
[5:44] Ellie: Yeah, and it's great interacting with you guys when we see you out and about of events. The entire Avalara team, you guys are a lot of fun and very nice and very helpful. We definitely appreciate your existence. So, Mike had mentioned before that you have an accounting partner program. Can you share a little bit about that with us? And tell us a little bit about what the benefits are of that accounting? Of being an account partner?
[6:11] Brigitte: Yeah, absolutely. And one of my favorite parts of my job is sharing, you know, the accounting program with so many great partners like Mike and letting people know, you know, the benefits of partnering with us. So I think first, from an educational perspective, there's, you know, Avalara is a marketing machine. And we have, because of that, we have so much great educational content in Avalera University. So as a partner, you have access to Avalara University. And there are, you can test drive the products in there, a lot of them, probably something a lot of people don't know. There are online classes, you can type in questions you might have about the software. You can even take tests to see how much you know about our software to get you up to speed and kind of finding that pillar content in there. We're always refreshing it. So I think that's one great perk. Avalara offers also tons of webcasts, and many of these are available for CPE. So I know that's really important to the accountants out there, heavily focused on thought leadership. A couple we have right now are on the 2020 sales tax changes. I know people are really interested in to see what's changed between last year and this year. Everyone wants to know what's new. So especially accountants can share that with their clients. And we have a new one coming up on scaling and multiple states. Obviously, and Mike and Ellie, you know this well, with economic nexus, right, so many companies now have to scale and so many states. I remember, you know, back when I started, that wasn't the case. So it's really, really changed a lot in five years. I think another great benefit of partnering with us is you can come to our conference for crush, which is in St. Louis this year in May where you can network with other sales tax professionals. Mike's been many times, he's been a speaker. So just a great area for partners to come as well.
[8:08] Mike: Lots of fun, I want to tell everybody, right now, there's no one who throws a better party than Avalara. And while crush, very serious in some ways, you know, lots of great information, lots of great connections to be made. But it's a heck of a lot of fun too. So I've been to every one since the beginning, and it's something that if you can take advantage of, you really do want to go to crush.
[8:38] Brigitte: Yeah, great. Thanks for that. Yeah, and another benefit if you'd like to have the benefit of the partnership program is you can also earn commission too. And a lot of accountants don't work commission, some people do; however you want to work, you know, we'll work with you that way. A lot of accountants pass it along to their clients as well, so it's another perk of the partnership program.
[9:00] Mike: I got maybe a little bit of a tough one for you, we know the easy answers. What do you think is a service that isn't talked about a lot, but that our listeners may benefit from that have Avalera offers?
[9:17] Brigitte: Yeah, I was thinking about this tough question. And I think really there's like a couple of things that they might not know about. But overall, I think it's saving time and peace of mind, right? And then that might not immediately come to everyone's like - Oh, you know, I'm gonna use Avalara, it's gonna automate this - but really helping companies save time and not have to deal with sales tax. As we all know, Mike and I, you know, people don't really want to talk about sales tax. Let's be honest, I'm sure. Sometimes I know, I hear this all the time.
[9:49] Mike: Who doesn’t want to about sales tax. Come on, it’s my favorite topic
[9:53] Brigitte: Like we used to, like, have people burying their heads in the sand like, you talk about it, you tell them their exposure, their risk. It's not something, it's not like you're going, hey, we found you a bunch of money. It's like, look, this is something you have to deal with. And so I think, you know, talking about that tough topic and letting companies out there know, there's automation that can help them and then give them peace of mind that their rate is going to be right, their returns are going to be filed on time. And they don't have to think about that anymore. I think those are like, the two huge benefits of Avalara.
[10:26] Mike: Okay, we have a lot of clients who are starting to, have been, or are starting to sell overseas. So does that, Avalera just work in the US, or can they help people overseas also?
[10:42] Brigitte: Yes, we definitely can. We actually have offices in six countries now including the UK, India and Brazil. And we have a VAT solution that companies can use as long as sales tax, and the average tax solution actually does work in in Canada, it's built-in Canada GSP, as well as sales tax and our court solution.
[11:08] Mike: Okay, so let me, I know the benefits of working with you, rather than just reaching out to Avalara directly. Why should an accountant reach out to you directly rather than going through Avalara?
[11:24] Brigitte: Yeah, I think a great benefit is we like to call it concierge service. So you have one point of contact within Avalara. Like Mike said, when he started there were only 50 people here and, you know, he could you know, call Scott on the phone. It was pretty easy to reach Scott, right? And 16 years later, and 1600 employees, like you can't really call Scott anymore, or Marshall. So, yeah, I think it's, I'm your contact to help navigate Avalara get you, you know, where you need to go. And more importantly, you know, give your clients that excelled service, right? That white glove treatment. So if you tell me, Brigitte, I have a client, and they're going to be looking at Avalara, in three months from now say - great, I can enter that into the system with notes like - hey, no one reached out to this person, right? So if they come to our website, you know, they're not going to get a lot of phone calls, like they might, you know, I didn't know that and protect that client and then also get them directly in touch with that salesperson, versus going through the whole call center process and really, just elevating that service. I think it's a great part of working with me. And a lot of accountants like we're doing right now, you know, I'm happy to do marketing with you, co-marketing projects to maybe help generate leads for your accounting firm as well and get the information about sales tax out to your clients.
[12:47] Mike: Getting in, I want to say one thing here. Avalara does a lot of marketing. So your clients probably know who Avalara is and may be reaching out. So it's important that you contact Brigitte so that she can make sure that they're not making outgoing calls or following up with your clients. We want to, they want to work those relationships through you unless you want to refer them directly to them. That's always an option. So Brigitte, how can people get ahold of you? Or, you know, how can they get ahold of get more information on Avalara? What's, what's the best way to do that?
[13:27] Brigitte: Sure. Yeah. If you want to talk with me and my email, brigitte.merton@avalara, you can reach out. We also, on our website, if you want to partner with us. There's a link under Resources Partners where you can sign up to partner with us and someone can reach out to you as well and are probably the two easiest ways.
[13:55] Mike: Well Brigitte, great information, and I want to you know, give my vote of approval for this partnership program. I think it's a great program. I think that if you are, you know, an accountant and you have clients who need sales tax services, Brigitte is the way to go. So thanks again, Brigitte, and any parting comments here?
[14:22] Brigitte: Thanks for helping me. You know, I think I have the best job in the world. I get to work with great people like Mike and Ellie, and also take everyone out to lunch. I mean, what who doesn't love that? I give people money. I mean, it's like a dream come true. So really looking forward to working with all of you out there and just helping your clients save time and money as well. So thanks for having me.
[14:45] Mike: Thanks, Brigitte. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Sales Tax and more Podcast. Bye-bye everyone
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