by Marc Rosenberg
Author of What Really Makes CPA Firms Profitable?
At a monthly roundtable of 25 managing partners from most of Chicago’s largest local firms, several highlights emerged, including insights into:
by Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0
While some firms have explored the idea of client service groups, and leading thinkers like Patrick McKenna have been training firms in the concept for several years, few firms have developed the art and science of the team as successfully as the Washington-based law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld.
More for mid-size and large CPA firms: What We’ve Learned Since Accounting Marketing Was Legalized • Do Accounting Firms Really Want an ‘Image’? • What Accounting Firms Need to Learn from Personal Financial Planning Specialists • The Delicate Art of Positioning Your Firm in the Mind of the Prospect • Even a Random Disaster Can Be Controlled with Risk Management •
This report includes:
Lessons from the best-managed firms.
By Marc Rosenberg
Author of “CPA Firm Management and Governance: The Managing Partner’s Guide to Running a CPA Firm Like a Business.”
Baby boomer partners are rapidly approaching retirement age, resulting in a dramatic increase in new managing partners at firms.
In fact, CPA Trendlines estimates that up to 25% of multi-owner firms are operating under managing partners who are relatively new to the job, with tenures under three years. And over the next five years, one-third of multi-owner firms will undergo a change in ownership and/or control. READ MORE →
Options to grow your profits besides raising revenue and lowering costs.
By Sandi Smith, CPA
Accountant’s Accelerator
Many accountants these days are anxious to hit the golden $100,000 mark this year. Others are interested in growing their revenues steadily and incrementally. Still others are focused on lowering costs, raising profits from that side of the equation.
More for soloists and small firms: Seven Checklist Secrets for Turning Tax Season into Opportunity Season • How to Stay Energized, Upbeat, and Thinking Bigger through Busy Season • Seven Ways to Wow Your Prospect • Rev Up Your Revenue with These Two Daily Rituals • 10 Tips for Creating More Energy this Tax Season • Take a Cue from Venture Capitalists: Your Firm Needs a Brain Trust Trinity • Five Ideas to Reduce Client Price-Sensitivity • Rise to the Top with a Fresh Elevator Speech
All of these approaches are well and good to help you keep more of what you make, but there are far more options to grow your take-home dollars besides raising revenue and lowering costs.
Here are six more ways to get more profit out of your practice: READ MORE →
Help them to do what you want.
by Ed Mendlowitz
Adapted from The 2013 Tax Season Opportunity Guide
Providing instructions of what a client needs to do must be clear enough so that the client doesn’t call you to find out what to do.
Sometimes taking an extra minute to lay out what the client should do can eliminate that call or indecisive moment a client might feel.
The object of the instructions is to have the client do what you want them to do. READ MORE →
Including a sample engagement letter.
Question: Some of my clients are getting older and are becoming unable to handle their own financial affairs and I have been asked if I could assist them. What is involved and how do I charge for it?
Ed Mendlowitz, VPA, PFS, ABV, responds: Many large firms provide “family office” services. This is a complete one stop financial service that helps clients manage their money, pay their bills, collect their dividends and interest, and make sure insurance isn’t cancelled, mortgage, car lease or condo fee payments aren’t skipped, and tax payments paid on time.
More from Ed: Seven Ways to Increase Fees in 2013 | 10 Best Practices for Tax Season | Nine Healthy Things To Do During Tax Season | 12 Reasons to Love Tax Season | FREE INSTANT DOWNLOAD: Sample fee schedule for 1040s | Ask the Geek: A Couple Great Gadgets for Saving Money on All Your Other Gadgets | Three and a Half Ways to Get Your Own CPA Practice | Also: “Implementing Fee Increases” and “The Tax Season Opportunity Guide.”
Following is a sample engagement letter that I use with clients needing such services. Also, this letter provides a detailed description of what the service involves. READ MORE →
How many has your firm implemented? READ MORE →
15 strategies for a first-time supervisor’s success.
Here at CPA Trendlines, Ed Mendlowitz answers some of the toughest questions practitioners can throw at him. He’s the right one to ask. After more than 40 years in the business – building his own practice, running the firm, and eventually selling it to a major regional firm, WithumSmith+Brown, where he remains a senior partner and consultant to professional services clients – he has the answers. We’re happy to have him at CPA Trendlines. Send your questions for Ed here, or chime in with Comments below.
More from Ed Mendlowitz, The Practice Doctor Q&A: Why No One Listens to You | Fun Reads for Busy Season | When NOT to Offer a Free Initial Consultation | Measuring Growth in Yourself, Staff and Partners | What Do You Think You’re Doing? | Can You Teach Judgment? | Clients’ Calls At Home | What You Need to Know before Expanding into Business Valuation |
Question: My boss asked me to call you. I am a staff accountant with five years experience. I am having a lot of stress trying to manage everything I have to do. I am juggling supervising people that I don’t know how to supervise, being managed less by those above me and having to figure out more for myself – including things I never did before or in industries I never worked on previously, keeping current with changes in accounting rules and taxes (since I am more like a generalist and clients ask me everything) never seem to have any free time, juggling my schedule because most of my clients are never ready when they say they will be and being accountable to my boss for everything I do plus what the staff working under me does. So how do I do it all? How can I prioritize all my responsibilities? READ MORE →