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Why Accounting Firms Feel So Unstable Right Now | Accounting Voices

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The truth about PE takeovers, mergers, consolidations and shifting partner models.

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Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

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If you feel like your accounting firm has become unpredictable, you are not imagining it. The ground is moving under your feet. People who spent years feeling stable and secure are suddenly unsettled. Partners are leaving. New leaders appear from nowhere. Titles change. Policies change. Strategies change. And no one explains why.

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Right now, the accounting profession feels like someone picked up the entire industry, shook it hard and said, “Good luck.” Private equity is buying firms. National groups are rolling up mid tiers. Regional firms are merging into larger firms. Advisory practices are being carved out. Tax teams are being shifted. Audit is being restructured. And firms everywhere are rewriting their business models in real time. READ MORE →

Five Best Practices for Sales and Conversion

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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 →

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

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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

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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 

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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 →

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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Bissett Bullet: Could You Do More?

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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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