Today's Features
MARKETING & SALES

Five Best Practices for Sales and Conversion

two women shaking hands across desk

Plus a six-step process for ushering prospects through to virtual CFO services.

By Jody Grunden
Building the Virtual CFO Firm in the Cloud

An important part of the overall process within the company is sales and conversion. For our virtual CFO service, there’s a six-step lead conversion process from when the prospect discovers our website to when the engagement begins.

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The Sales and Conversion Process

Our sales and conversion process includes six steps.

Here’s what that looks like and the typical timeline: READ MORE →

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Alan Whitman: Why the Next Big CPA Firms Won’t Look Like CPA Firms | Gear Up for Growth

And why culture matters more than ever.

Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil
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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

True Advisor: Buy now | Learn more

Alan Whitman isn’t trying to build a better CPA firm. He’s trying to replace it.

At Nichols Cauley, the former Baker Tilly CEO is recasting the traditional accounting practice as a “financial services company”—a structure that blends tax, insurance, risk, and transaction advisory into a single, continuous client relationship.

MORE ALAN WHITMAN: PE Deal Tracker Update: Alan Whitman Plants a Flag in the Private Equity Landscape | Breaking the Mold with PE Backing | Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Moss Adams-Baker Tilly Merger: Bigger Isn’t Better. Better Is Better.| Unlocking the Secrets to Smart Growth 

MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | MORE Gear Up for Growth | MORE CPA Trendlines streaming videos and podcasts here

The goal, he tells Jean Caragher in this episode of Gear Up for Growth, is not to expand services around the edges, but to collapse them into one integrated model designed to “manage, protect, and grow” client wealth in a recurring loop.

The shift reflects a broader rethinking across the profession, in which private equity capital, client demand for one-stop advisory services, and advances in AI are pushing firms beyond the partnership model that has defined accounting for decades.

Having previously led transformational growth at Baker Tilly, Whitman rejects the notion that rapid growth damages culture.

“That’s hogwash,” he says. “Culture comes down to one word: trust.” READ MORE →

PRO Member Exclusive

Five Thought Patterns That Stunt Your Growth

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Stop thinking small.

By Sandi Leyva
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Tax & Accounting Firms

If you feel you should be doing better than you are in business, your unconscious may be holding you back.

The first step is to bring it to the surface. Only then can it be addressed, released and replaced with a belief that will lead you to increased success.

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Here are five of the most common thinking patterns or beliefs that will keep your accounting business from growing.
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ABOUT US

Bissett Bullet: Could You Do More?

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “When marketing delivers us new prospect meetings, each interaction that prospect has with us influences them for or against using us.”

By Martin Bissett

New business meetings can be like gold dust given the amount of competition we are up against and they are too lightly treated by too many firms. Understand that the response that they get from us by email, the response that a prospect gets from us when they call us, the response they get from us when they see us, all influence their decision-making process. We need to ensure that every “touch” we have with a potential prospect is a positive one that puts another weight on our side of the scales.

Today’s To-Do:

Today review the number of interactions that we have with a new potential client from the first time they inquire to when we sign them up. Is there anything more that we can do to make them feel welcomed into the practice?

See more Bissett Bullets here

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ACCOUNTING ARC

When “What If” Becomes Reality | ARC

A near-tragedy sparks a critical conversation on business continuity, risk, and responsibility in accounting firms.

Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil |
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The step-by-step operating guide for firms building, pricing, and scaling advisory services that clients value—and pay for.

Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

Business continuity planning often lives in the realm of “someday.”

Until it doesn’t.

In the latest episode of Accounting ARC, hosts Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP; and Liz Mason, CPA, tackle a topic many professionals avoid: what happens when the unexpected actually happens.

The conversation opens not with theory, but with a moment that makes the stakes unmistakably real.

MORE Accounting ARC: Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn Out | Valuing More Than the Balance Sheet | Accounting’s “Untalked-About” Frontier | Why Happiness is Hard-Fought for High Achievers | The Fastest Way to Lose Talent Is “Dick Leadership” | Post-Holiday Fatigue Isn’t a Failure; It’s a Signal | OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | Return Season is the New Stress Test | Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a Megaphone |  Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC 

Mason, CEO of High Rock Accounting, recounts a recent skiing accident in which she fell roughly 200 yards and collided with a tree at high speed. She survived with a broken leg—but the incident forced a sobering question: What would have happened to her firm if she hadn’t?

READ MORE →