Eight Ways the Smallest Accounting Firms Compete and Win

What Big Firms Can Learn from Sole Practitioners and Small Firms.

“The best independent practitioners have a singular focus on helping their clients achieve their goals,” according to Andrew Sobel, author of the exemplary “All for One: Ten Strategies for Building Trusted Client Relationships.” “They deliver value at every stage of their work, and they do so as quickly as possible and with ruthless efficiency,” he says.

The most successful independent professionals:

1. Create personal brands by building individual market renown. They create notoriety for themselves through publishing, speaking, and networking, and by focusing on a core specialty for which they become well known. All too often, professionals in large firms spend years sheltered under their firm’s brand.
2. Regularly develop and disseminate intellectual capital. Often, there are just a handful of partners in large professional firms who create all of the intellectual capital, and everyone else feeds off of it.