FINANCE EXECS: Who’s the Real Decision Maker in Your Company?

The odds are, it’s YOU! Finance execs pass judgment on hiring, firing outside CPA firms.

by Rick Telberg
For the Finance Executive

Who decides which CPA firm to hire? The Chief Tarot Officer? The Vice President of Entrails Interpretation? The Directors of the Ouija Board?

So it seems, sometimes.

But according to more than half of the finance managers who have responded to our survey so far, the decision-makers are most likely to be corporate finance managers and executives. Tied for a distant second place are company owners and boards of directors, each making the decision at about one quarter of companies.
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Posted on May 31, 2006
Filed Under BSG FINANCE PROFESSIONAL | Leave a Comment

You Are What You Deliver

It’s the “little things” that count toward keeping clients happy.

by Rick Telberg

You already know what it means to be a professional. It starts with technical competence, personal integrity, a commitment to the public trust and putting the client’s interest above your own.

But being the perfect professional and succeeding financially as a practicing professional are two very different things.

There are many good CPAs, and that’s good for the American public. But the practitioners and firms that profit and grow are an exclusive group. They seem to understand that good work is just the beginning. To really succeed in the tax and accounting business, they understand that the CPA’s real value lies in the eye of the beholder — the client.

Exceptionally successful practitioners understand how to communicate to the client what’s important to the client. And what’s important to the client is not just the work-product, it’s an assuring sense that the CPA cares, that the CPA is anticipating their concerns and that the CPA respects them as an individual, not just a customer.

So what you deliver is more than a tax return, a compilation or a bank rec. What you deliver is a sense of caring, assurance, the gift of a good night’s sleep. But how do you convey that relatively intangible kind of deliverable?

The answer is: It’s in all the “little things” you do. But they aren’t “little things” to the client. Those “little things” are your real deliverables. And to the client they are completely tangible, concrete and measurable. Now you’ve made the leap from the “intangible” to the “tangible.” And it’s the “tangible” that sets your market value in the client’s eyes. You are what you deliver. And what you deliver translates directly into the bottom line.

Take Hereford, Lynch, Sellars & Kirkham, for example. At the Conroe, Texas-based CPA firm, the husband-wife team of Debra and Mike Seefeld are developing an Eldercare/PrimePlus practice with an acute understanding of the unique needs of their mature clients. Written reports, for instance, are printed in an extra-large font, so they are easier to read. The Seefelds are available for house calls. “We remember birthdays, holidays and other occasions with handwritten notes,” Debra Seefeld says. She and her firm are delivering value that’s tangible and understood by their clientele.

Or ask Rob Hoxton, a financial adviser in Sheperdstown, W. Va., how important his deliverables are. Simply engaging a client may take four months. The prospective client may be at a crossroads, facing a death in the family or the dissolution of a business. Hoxton painstakingly walks the client through an analytical process, supported at a key juncture with an informational package assessing risk tolerances and investment preferences. And even though his may be a small firm, he does everything he can, to project a high-quality prestige image, down to the look and feel of his business cards, the firm brochure and the printed report covers he uses. “Our marketing materials show we’re in the same league with firms in larger cities,” Hoxton says.

CPA Phil Liberatore in La Mirada, Calif., displays the same passion for attentive service and a stellar image at his firm. Liberatore favors a “high touch” approach with all of his clients ? they receive two-day turnaround on their tax returns and a response to their phone calls within 24 hours. When clients enter his office, they are greeted by not one, but three receptionists, coffee and donuts, and he’s shopping for a fish tank. Sure Liberatore does taxes ? and he does a ton. But his firm’s impeccable service and high-class presentation may be his most distinctive deliverable. It’s an element in providing the kind of assurance and comfort his clients are looking for.

What makes these firms different?

The answer lies not in what they teach in accounting class, but what many learn the hard way in business. The answer is in everything you do — in your service, your image, how you link the two together and how you communicate the connection to clients at every turn.

Since all professionals provide essentially the same services and products, the professional seeking to be distinctive, to be special, must provide something extra, deliver something more, nurture it in everything they do and in every contact with the client. That ranges from how you dress to how you dress your office; from how your receptionist answers the phone to how soon you respond to a client’s call; from what’s in the tax return to how the cover is personalized for the client.

All three firms have found ways to do more than just provide great service. They also know how to communicate — at every client touch-point, with every piece of paper that leaves the office — that they are, indeed, superior and distinctive. They are for real. They are, indeed, what they deliver. There’s no more powerful element in building trust — or building a business — than that.

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Posted on May 29, 2006
Filed Under BSG FINANCE PROFESSIONAL | Leave a Comment

NEW STUDY: “MOBILE CPAs: TECH 2006″

FREE! Technology Issues, Trends and Strategies in the Mobile CPA Workforce

FREE! DOWNLOAD NOW

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Prepared by
Rick Telberg, Principal
Bay Street Group LLC

FREE! DOWNLOAD NOW

KEY FINDINGS
? 84% of respondents spend at least half their time working on a computer, with 48% spending ?more than 80%? of their time on a PC.
? 89% spend at least one-quarter (25%) of their time working outside the office ? i.e.: traveling, a client location, home office, hotels, etc.
? The most common pieces of mobile equipment currently in use are, in order, a mobile phone (92%) and a laptop PC (73%).
? The most often mentioned mobile device respondents are considering for purchase is a PDA, BlackBerry, Palm Treo or HP iPAQ (42%), followed by a new laptop PC (34%), and a new mobile phone (28%)
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Posted on May 24, 2006
Filed Under BSG MARKETPLACE - Products, Services and Vendors | Leave a Comment

What Do Clients Want? Ask Clients!

CPAs in industry furnish friendly advice to CPAs in practice: Mind your P-Q-R-S-T-U’s.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

The customer’s always right, right?

Right.

Or so think the customers. And what the customers think counts a lot because they’re your best sales reps, especially when someone asks them to recommend a tax or accounting firm.

How worrisome it is, then, that fully half ? precisely half ? of surveyed chief financial officers, chief executive officers, finance managers, staff and business owners would not recommend their own outside CPA firm to their closest friends, according to our ongoing study.

Yipes! What are these people saying? Statistically, there’s a 50-50 chance they’re directing potential clients to other firms. Read more

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Posted on May 21, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment

What Makes Good CPAs Jump Ship?

Hint, hint: It’s not just the money.

Staff retention secrets: What’s yours?

Download “Staff Management Do’s and Don’t's.”

by Rick Telberg
On Careers

Nothing ? really, nothing ? hurts a CPA office as much as losing a good employee? except losing a good employee for a bad reason.

In search of the reasons that good people go elsewhere, we’ve been asking accountants and finance managers whether office atmosphere ? the mix of management style, office politics, and co-worker personalities ? is enough to get people dusting off their resumes and checking out the want ads.

The results are disturbing. Forty-five percent of respondents said they’d consider quitting if they didn’t like the office “atmosphere”. Read more

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Posted on May 18, 2006
Filed Under BSG FINANCE PROFESSIONAL | 1 Comment

Kowabunga! Hawaii Issues Record Number of CPA Licenses

As goes Hawaii, so goes the rest of the nation?

The state licensed 2,577 new CPAs in 2005, up 5 percent over the previous year, according to the Board of Public Accountancy. That figure also represents a 16 percent jump from 2000 as auditing firms, companies and even the local offices of the Internal Revenue Service rush to hire. It’s no coincidence that the profession has been growing steadily in Hawaii since 2002, the same year that the federal Sarbanes-Oxley securities-overhaul act was passed.

Nevertheless, local recruiters still report a shortage of qualified accountants.
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Posted on May 16, 2006
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What 3 Percent of CPAs Know That You Don’t

Would your clients recommend you to a friend? Finance managers and accountants compare notes in new study.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

It has been widely established that new clients are most often found not through direct mail or Web sites, but through the recommendations of friends, or at least friendly clients. With that in mind, we’ve been exploring the territory shared by CPAs and their clients.

We weren’t too surprised to find that 43 percent expected “nearly every client, or over 80 percent” to recommend them. Another 38 percent said “most” (60% to 80%) would do the same, and 15 percent figured that at least half their clients loved them.

That’s not bad. In fact, it sounds pretty good.
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Posted on May 14, 2006
Filed Under BSG ENTREPRENEUR | 1 Comment

An Enron Factor at Top Business Schools

The Enron scandal factors in a current report on America?s leading undergraduate business schools as identified in a BusinessWeek survey, and that bane of the accounting profession is also part of the thinking at some of those top schools. [Get the full story citing Bay Street Group research... ]
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Posted on May 9, 2006
Filed Under BSG [CPA TRENDLINES] | 1 Comment

Do You Have What It Takes?

Global report shows entrepreneurial ambition. Vision knows no boundaries.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor has just issued its seventh annual survey of entrepreneurship in 35 countries. The report looks at some of the characteristics of entrepreneurs and what seems to be contributing to their success. Blended together and averaged out, the characteristics give us a composite portrait of a certain type of person who’s found all over the world.

One purpose of the report was to compare entrepreneurialism in high-income countries (with Norway at the top of the GDP per capita list and Greece at the bottom) and middle-income countries (with Slovenia at the top and China at the bottom). Enterprises in low-income countries did not participate in the study.

The report found that middle-income countries tend to start more businesses than high-income countries. Entrepreneurs are six times more likely to pop up in Venezuela than they are in Belgium, and in Thailand, bootstrap business people outpace their peers in Japan by a factor of 10. Read more

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Posted on May 7, 2006
Filed Under BSG ENTREPRENEUR | Leave a Comment

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