Bruce W. Marcus, Author at CPA Trendlines

Managing Risk in Client Relations

Wishful thinking?

by Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

CPA Trendlines research has uncovered the startling fact of the wide disparity between how accounting firm management perceives their own performance and how their clients see their performance. (Join the survey; get the results.)

Another consideration of risk lies in a tendency to ignore or distort reality, which can lead to a vast expectations gap. READ MORE →

MARKETING & SALES

The Competition for Talent: It’s All About Motivation

At Microsoft, they worry about motivation, says Bruce W. Marcus, author of Professional Services Marketing 3.0. When everybody who holds any kind of a responsible job is making more money than any of them ever dreamed they would, and when they’re in an industry that would pay anything to hire them away, how do you motivate people? How do you get them to stay, and to produce at the high levels demanded by Microsoft and other high-tech companies? Two ways.

In this report:

Five mistakes firms make.
Four strategies that can’t miss.

MARKETING & SALES

The Secret Formula for Getting New Clients

The 16-step plan to focus on landing one new client at a time.

By Bruce W. Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

Here’s a little secret about accounting marketing: It always comes down to selling the individual clients – one by one.

More Professional Services Marketing 3.0: 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 •

You can talk about strategies, and image, and niche marketing and branding. You can talk about blogs, and social media, and press releases and webinars. But it always comes down to selling the individual clients – one by one.

Well… if you’re going to have to do that anyway, why not start with target marketing to begin with? READ MORE →

MARKETING & SALES

What We’ve Learned Since Accounting Marketing Was Legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977

For good, bad or indifferent.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared in the September 1980 issue of The Virginia Accountant. It is one of the first articles – if not the very first article – on the advent of legalized marketing for accountants after Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. It is as viable today as it was then.

By Bruce W. Marcus

When, a few years ago, the codes of ethics were changed to allow straightforward marketing by professionals, there came into play a new configuration of circumstances and activities that will reverberate throughout the accounting profession for years to come.

More for CPA Trendlines PRO members: 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

For generations, concepts of probity have pervaded public accounting. Accountants were to be not merely independent, but well beyond the fray of public quarrel of exposure. The sword of the CPA has always been independence and, it was long felt, independence is compromised by public debate. And now comes marketing, the crux of which is visibility. READ MORE →

MARKETING & SALES

The Three Degrees of Risk

R-I-S-K: It’s amazing that so simple a four-letter word can be so complicated.

By Bruce W. Marcus

There are risks with dire consequences and risks with negligible consequences. There is risk in every human enterprise; in every trade or endeavor. We take risks, in varying degrees (and sometimes unwittingly) every day of our lives. There is even risk inherent in getting out of bed in the morning. But what – on any level – does risk really mean? Can risk be tamed? READ MORE →

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Bruce W. Marcus

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Bruce W. Marcus remains a pioneer in the modern practices of professional services marketing even after his death in 2014 at age 89. He is the author of the seminal work, Professional Services Marketing 3.0, published by CPA Trendlines. The Association for Accounting Marketing named a lifetime achievement award in his honor.

Hall of Fame: The Association for Accounting Marketing Award, named in honor of Bruce W. Marcus.

In 1951 (with a degree in Economics and Philosophy), he joined the then-Big Eight accounting firm, Peat Marwick Mitchell to establish the firm’s library, where he developed an article writing and seminar program that successfully promoted the firm’s reputation.

He has served as a public relations and marketing executive or consultant to most of the international accounting firms, and many large and small law firms.

His book, Competing For Clients (1986) was one of the first to delineate the new practices of professional services marketing, followed by more than a dozen books on professional services marketing, real estate marketing, investor relations, and international accounting standards.

His first newsletter, The Marcus Report (1986), was followed by the award-winning www.marcusletter.com in 1995 — one of the longest-running letters on marketing for lawyers and accountants.

He served on the editorial boards of several leading professional services publications, a contributor to many publications, and has been a keynote speaker at major conferences.

He taught one of the first courses in professional services marketing at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business, and lectures frequently at the Fordham University Law School.

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