Communicate Your Worth and Value

Search for valuePut it all together for both clients and coworkers to see.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

An advisor is trusted when they can show that they

  • took responsibility for their end of the bargain in the client engagement,
  • educated the client of their responsibilities,
  • offered prompting and assistance throughout but then allowed the client to ultimately govern themselves in terms of following through on their commitments.

MORE ON THE PASSPORT TO PARTNERSHIP: 5 Ways to Evaluate Your Communication | Why Communication Matters So Much | 3 Questions to Evaluate Your Firm Culture | Competence: More Than Technical Skills | Are You Partner Material? Maybe Not
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This then empowers the advisor to make a commercial decision when the client now faces the consequences, as to whether they want to communicate even more assistance to make things all better for the clients and gain huge appreciation and emotional capital.
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The Four Basic Parts of CPA Firm Partner Agreements

Time to retire clock faceIt’s complicated. But proper policies ease buyouts and transitions.

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli

Here is a list of common policies regarding partner/shareholder agreements that we cover with our firms, as well as some common issues that are important to address in the policies.

MORE ON PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: Developing a Three-Year Vision [VIDEO] | Why the Partner Agreement Matters | Younger Partners See Succession Differently | How to Compensate Your Managing Partner | The Job of Managing Partner: Empowered or Emasculated? | How the Best Managing Partners Turn Ideas into Reality | How Retired Partners Are Robbing their Own Firms | Action Plans for Transitioning Partners | How Retirement Issues Affect Succession Planning | Develop Your Employees or Suffer the Consequences
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The SOP (standard operating policy) categories are:
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30-Item Checklist: Getting People to Listen to You

7 businesspeople in meeting

Lessons in effective communication for partners and wanna-be partners.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

The Passport to Partnership study collated a number of responses in a conversational style.

MORE ON THE PASSPORT TO PARTNERSHIP: 3 Questions to Evaluate Your Firm Culture | Competence: More Than Technical Skills | Partnership: Competence Is Just the Foot in the Door

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A couple examples really stood out as the first steps in effective communication: READ MORE →

Why the Partner Agreement Matters

Illuminated glass pyramid at the Louvre, Paris at nightMany agreements have long outlived a reasonable foundation for the firm’s current success level and size.

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli

Most of the time when we are called in to work with firms, it is to help them plan for or implement significant change. The dialogue may start out with a general firm retreat, or it might simply be a session devoted to solving a few specific problems.

MORE ON PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: Younger Partners See Succession Differently | How to Compensate Your Managing Partner | The Job of Managing Partner: Empowered or Emasculated? | How the Best Managing Partners Turn Ideas into Reality | Make Accountability a Process | Accountability Requires Clear Expectations | Base Retirement on Today’s Operations

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Visionary firms are always looking to make changes long before their operating environment forces them to, from enhancing their ability to compete, making changes to improve profitability, building infrastructure to support succession, upgrading their people development, modifying the compensation process, increasing revenues and more.
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Why Communication Matters So Much

Two businessmen talking at officeThe experts weigh in. Hint: It’s not about you.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

What does communication mean at the partner level?

MORE ON THE PASSPORT TO PARTNERSHIP: 5 Ways to Get Buy-In for Firm Culture | Competence: More Than Technical Skills | Partnership: Competence Is Just the Foot in the Door

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Ask yourself and answer these questions when considering the current and future communication tactics that you’ll employ.
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Four Problems That Prompt Mergers

Six businesspeople in meeting around tableAnd three ways you win by tackling them now.

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli

When firms first start considering the idea to merge into a larger firm, they do it with the intent to solve a problem. Common problems distressing enough to motivate this transaction are:

MORE ON PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: Younger Partners See Succession Differently | More Merger Questions Than You Imagined | MPs: How to Elect Them … and Fire Them | Partners as Role Models: The Good, Bad & Ugly | Managing the Managing Partner | Pay Varies When Performance Varies | Accountability Is for Everyone | Who Decides What? | Firms Say What Would Change Retirement Pay | Action Plans for Transitioning Partners | How Retirement Issues Affect Succession Planning

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  • Leadership: Not enough future partners on the ground or in a near-future pipeline to be able to take over and retain the client relationships of the retiring partners while simultaneously continuing to nurture and develop new clients. This concern tends to be expressed frequently by senior partners when they share their discomfort with the level of risk they are accepting regarding their future buyout.

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Best Practices for One-on-One Communication

4 winning habits of top accountants.

Component parts of how the other person perceives your in-person communication
Component parts of how the other person perceives your in-person communication

By Martin Bissett

I’ve had the benefit of meeting, speaking and observing hundreds of very successful and unsuccessful partners over the last two decades and there is indeed a set of differentiating factors that set a partner apart from the chasing pack.

MORE ON THE PASSPORT TO PARTNERSHIP: 3 Questions to Evaluate Your Firm Culture | Learn to Read Your Firm’s Culture | 5 Ways to Get Buy-In for Firm Culture | Competence: More Than Technical Skills | Experts Advise What Partnership Takes | Partnership: Competence Is Just the Foot in the Door | Are You Partner Material? Maybe Not

Here are the four “best-selling behaviors” that I’ve observed:

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Younger Partners See Succession Differently

Young woman driving a carAre you acting like an owner or an employee?

By Bill Reeb and Dominic Cingoranelli

Several of our younger partner readers have posed a couple of questions to us on the topic of mergers, as well as succession in general.

MORE ON PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: More Merger Questions Than You Imagined | Merging for the Wrong Reasons | Why Accountability Falls to MPs | How to Implement Strategy, Step by Step | How to Decide Who Decides Pay | Accountability Includes Partners | Succession Plan Requirements | How Retired Partners Are Robbing their Own Firms | 4 Ways to Create More Capacity | Partner Retirement and the War for Clients | Succession: The Questions to Care About | Hazards of Not Reallocating Equity | CPA Firm Performance Assessments: 15 Core Competencies, 21 Questions | 5 Harmful Management Attitudes (and How to Fix Them)

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At the end of the day, remember that just because junior and senior partners may be in different positions, have diverse perspectives and at times, opposite expectations, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t find resolution in the same solutions. So, let’s pick up with a question/comment or two.
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