How to Get CAS Clients to Blow Your Horn

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Including templates you can use today.

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

To expand and grow your client accounting services practice, you need a steady stream of new prospects. While referrals have been accountants’ #1 source of getting new clients, this method gives no predictability and control to accountants on which types of prospects come in their doors. You need the ability to attract CAS-fit clients continuously. Hence, your lead generation process needs to be adjusted accordingly.

MORE by Hitendra Patil: The DNA of Advisory-CASAdvisory Is Not Consulting | What Exactly Is Client Advisory Services? | Review Your CAS Offerings | CAS Prospects Want Proof? You’ve Got That | What AI CEO’s Warning Means (and Doesn’t) for Accountants | Ditch the Sales Pitch | How to Get CAS Clients to Blow Your Horn | Four Questions for Choosing CAS Clients | What Is Your Firm’s Marketable Value? | Seven Tips for CAS Marketing | Twelve Things That Kill Your CAS Profits
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The accounting profession’s largest CAS survey revealed that along with the firm’s website, “proactively seek referrals” is the top marketing method for firms to get new CAS clients. How do you proactively seek referrals without waiting for them?
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How to Price and Package Advisory Services

Hand moving triangle along beam to indicate balance between price and value

Three reasons that hourly billing fails.

By Hitendra Patil
Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Success Guide

For decades, hourly billing was the primary pricing method in the accounting industry. Charging based on time seemed fair and simple. However, as your firm shifts into Advisory-CAS (Client Accounting Services), that model starts to show its flaws.

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Why? Advisory services focus on the impact and outcomes they provide, with time becoming less of a priority. If a CPA firm partner spends 45 minutes advising a business owner and that conversation prevents a six-figure mistake, what is that advice worth? Much more than what a typical $200/hour rate suggests. In this case, the time spent is less important than the value provided.
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Relevance Is a Cornerstone of Value

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Five real-life examples.

By Hitendra Patil

Providing value to clients involves thoroughly understanding your client, anticipating their needs, and offering advice that is both timely and highly relevant.

We discussed earlier why timeliness is the first essential element of valuable advice. Yet, advice given at the right moment but disconnected from the client’s real-world challenges is like a GPS giving directions without knowing your location.

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In this article, we examine why even the most technically sound advice often falls short when it fails to resonate with the client’s actual context, goals or concerns. Through real-life examples, from generic guidance that missed the mark to targeted insight that drove results, you will learn how to shape advice that fits the moment. It is not just about knowing the client’s business, it’s about understanding what matters most, right now.
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How to Price, Measure and Fund a Firm Built to Last

Business hand holding hot chart in crystal ball

There are four numbers worth calculating before you decide anything.

By Hitendra Patil

There is a version of the independence story in which the independent firm is the more affordable alternative to the larger private equity-backed firm. That story is worth examining carefully because, in my experience, it rarely ends the way the firm owner hoped.

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Competing on price against firms with institutional capital is a long game you cannot win. PE-backed platforms can subsidize below-market pricing during a growth phase in ways that an independent firm’s income statement cannot absorb. If your primary competitive argument is that you cost less, the positioning battle is already lost.
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Only Timely Advice Has Value

Meditative businessman is pondering time management while surrounded by alarm clocks

Four key elements for implementation.

By Hitendra Patil

Good-fit clients who hire professional accountants usually expect more than just basic bookkeeping or tax preparation. They seek deeper, more strategic value.

What they truly value is advice that is specific, insightful and actionable, which helps them:

  • Make better business decisions
  • Reduce financial risks
  • Grow with confidence

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However, even the most brilliant advice can become irrelevant if it comes too late. More than the brilliance of the advice, the value of advice is often judged by its timing. In the world of advisory, insight delivered too late might as well not be delivered at all.
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