Why Accountants Need to Embrace Obamacare
Video Q&A: What accountants need to know and how to get started and when. Five actions to prepare for Obamacare. Survey results on client service opportunities.
Monthly Archives: July 2013
Audacious Vision and Grand Purpose Prove Essential to CPA Success
Plain-vanilla goal-setting may be the single biggest problem plaguing today’s CPA partnerships.
Also in this report: The 11 traits of “one-firm” firms.
by August J. Aquila and Robert J. Lees
How to Engage Partners in the Firm’s Future
More firms now have a vision and a strategy in the hope of engaging partners and employees, according to our research.
But the partners aren’t always involved in their creation and often don’t buy in to the vision.
More on partnership management: Are You Creating a Sustainable Firm? | The Debilitating Effects of Denial at Accounting Firms | The Five Psychological Hurdles that CPA Firms Must Confront Today
This can be because the vision just isn’t compelling enough or because the partners are more interested in their own practice rather than creating a real firm. This type of accounting firm is usually referred to as a “siloed” firm and never succeeds in bringing the full capabilities of the firm to bear. READ MORE →
Take Six Big Steps to Go Beyond Compliance Services
Beat the billable hour by doing more than just taxes or QuickBooks.
By Sandi Smith, CPA
Accountant’s Accelerator
As compliance services become more commoditized and automated, accountants are faced with how this affects their practice and their bottom line. They can:
- Serve a higher level client that requires greater complexity, making themselves fairly immune to these changes
- Serve a larger number of clients to offset a drop in revenue per client averages
- Add new services to their practice to boost revenue per client
Those are pretty much the options available to keep profits from shrinking. But today I want to focus on the third point above, adding new services, and provide you with some ideas on how you may be able to serve your tax compliance clients in new ways.
More for soloists and small firms: When Your Business Needs to Be Rebooted | Two Steps to Easy Cross-sells | The Hot New Tech Product for Automated Data Entry | Five Value-Add Service Areas to Take You Beyond Bookkeeping | Six Money-Making Strategies to Take You Beyond QuickBooks | Proactive Ways to Get More Referrals | The Three Biggest Money Leaks in Your Practice | New Client Opportunities with Mobile Apps | Six Questions to Launch Your Summer Strategy Sessions | What Most Accountants Miss in the Five Simple Steps to Get More Clients | Accountants, Do You Know Your Opportunity Number? | Five Ideas to Reduce Client Price-Sensitivity | Rise to the Top with a Fresh Elevator Speech | Four Ways to Practice Entrepreneurial Perseverance | 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Seeking New Clients | The Top 12 Business Card Blunders Accountants Make | Seven Tips to Keep the Clients You Have | How to Attract Clients Like a Magnet | Eleven Easy Ways to Deliver More Value to Clients
Even if you don’t do taxes, you will find some ideas for new related services you can think about offering to your clients. (Remember, it’s easier to sell to existing clients than to acquire new ones.) READ MORE →
Nine Reasons You Don’t Want to Launch a Niche
If you’re thinking about getting into financial planning or business valuation, think again.
by Ed Mendlowitz
Author of The Tax Season Opportunity Guide and How to Increase Your Billing Rates
Question: Can you recommend a specialty I can get involved in to generate more revenue for my practice?
Response: My discussion with the CPA indicated that his practice consisted of a large individual tax return practice and many monthly business clients. He thought financial planning or business valuations would be a way to expand his services and make more money. It did not seem he had an intellectual interest in these areas. READ MORE →
News Releases: What Most Accounting Firms Are Doing Wrong
How to write a release that gets attention.
By Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0
A recent business communication book says that in writing news releases, the lead paragraph should include the five W’s—who, why, what, when and where. A textbook on journalism written in the 1920s says the same thing—the five W’s. Nothing has changed in more than 70 years? Don’t believe it.
More Professional Services Marketing 3.0: Same Game, Same Name, Different Rules | When Bad Things Happen to Good Accounting Marketers | When Being Nice to Journalists is the Wrong PR Advice | Everything You Need to Know about Your Next Brochure | Being Social in the New World of Social Media | There’s a Leak in My Firm | What Ads, the Web or Social Media Still Can’t Do | Advertising as a Marketing Tool that Sometimes Works | Eight Client Retention Strategies for the New Competitive Environment | Why “Niche Marketing” Should Be Superseded by “Total Context Marketing” | Ten Strategies for the Smaller Firm Facing Competition from Larger Firms | The Client Service Team in Action | Ten Things Every Firm Needs to Make Clear Firm-wide |
Just read any good newspaper in the U.S., Canada or Great Britain. And what newspapers do is what releases must do. Why? Because the simple release, the staple of public relations, is not simple at all. READ MORE →
17 Important Ways to Measure a Partner
By Marc Rosenberg
CPA Firm Management & Governance
One of the most common agenda items at partner retreats is the question of what it means to be a partner in the firm.
More CPA Firm Management & Governance: 17 Ways to Measure a Partner | How The Structure of an Accounting Firm Changes through the Years | Congratulations! Your Firm Needs a Human Resources Director | The 19-Point Marketing Director Job Description | Checklist: How the Best Managing Partners and Firm Admins Work in Concert | 21 Questions for Managing the Managing Partner | No Partner Vote Needed: 17 Decisions Best Left to the Managing Partner Alone | New Rules: 13 Items that Should be in Your Managing Partner’s Job Description | When Is It Time to Shift Your Firm from Partnership-style to Corporate-style Governance? | Not Every Firm Needs a General Patton |
So, what is a partner? Here are 17 metrics. READ MORE →
“Soft” Skills Make or Break Careers in Accounting
As business guru Tom Peters once said, “Soft is hard.”
The careers of finance and accounting professionals are increasingly driven or delayed by “soft” skills such as general business knowledge and interpersonal communications, according to new research reviewed by CPA Trendlines. READ MORE →
Today’s Top Trends in Deals and Valuations for CPA Firm Mergers and Sales
The eight most important facts in settling on a multiple.
With the merger-and-acquisitions frenzy showing no signs of slowing down, practice owners seem to be checking almost daily: What’s my practice worth?
“One thing is for sure,” says Gary Adamson, former CEO of Brady Ware, a top 200 firm, now providing advisory services for firms across the country, “Baby Boomers are selling at a rate that the profession has never seen before.”
It’s still a sellers’ market, he says. But that could change soon, he says, citing “the demographics and the thousands of practices that will soon come onto the market.”
In this report, Adamson addresses:
- the question of valuing a practice
- two basic types of deals
- the value of a multiple
- eight critical components to making a deal
- the effect of size of practice on valuation
- profitability
- down payment
- transitions READ MORE →