CPA Trendlines

Today's Features

Two Steps Toward Mastering Selling

It’s a new skill. You have to practice.

By Martin Bissett
Business Development on a Budget

If winning new clients is simply a matter of being yourself, why is selling so difficult for accountants? Well, it’s a combination of several factors, but there are two main reasons.

MORE: Rate Your Personal Purpose | Nine Checkpoints Before Every Prospect Meeting | Three Questions about Conversion | Six Keys to Turning Prospects into Clients | Don’t Overlook Internal Communication | Why Firm Culture Matters for Partners | Competence Is Step One of Seven
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First, accountants have not traditionally been required to sell. Maybe your practice has grown by referral – business has come to you and you haven’t had to do much to win that business. Unfortunately, however, business doesn’t always walk through the door; you don’t know how often it will, or what caliber it will be when it does.
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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Is Your Client’s Wealth Truly Protected?

Many policies are too small. Here’s another option.

By Anthony Glomski

No matter where your client grew up or how they accumulated their wealth, they can be a target for a host of unscrupulous people. Many affluent investors, including entrepreneurs, are worried about keeping their assets safe from potential creditors, litigants, children’s spouses, ex-spouses, and disgruntled former employees and partners. They also want to protect their assets from catastrophic losses that could cripple them financially. As a CPA, you have an important role here.

MORE: Eight Questions for Estate Planning | Check Tax Effects Before Liquifying | Why You Should Function As a Fiduciary | Your Entrepreneurs Need Advice, but Which Kind? | How to Implement Collaborative Wealth Management
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Wealth protection involves strategies you can use to ensure that your wealth is not unjustly taken from you by potential creditors, litigants, ex-spouses and children’s spouses. Wealth protection is also designed to protect you against catastrophic loss. Identity theft is another emerging threat to wealth protection that should be addressed carefully with your clients.
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PRO Member Exclusive

Empower Staff to Make Mistakes (Safely)

Think of it as teaching judgment.

By Ed Mendlowitz
202 Questions and Answers: Managing an Accounting Practice

QUESTION: Recently a colleague asked me: “How do you teach judgment?” and before I could respond, he answered it himself with “You can’t teach judgment!”

MORE: 47 Types of Business Valuation to Provide | Referral Fee? Forget It | How Much Is Your Tax Practice Worth? | Merge in Lower-Priced Work without Losing Out
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RESPONSE: Everyone working for you has and uses judgment – they have homes, families, organizations they belong to and they manage their career. Each of these requires their exercising judgment many times a day. They all have judgment.
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ADVISORY & CONSULTING

Seven Things You Must Know about AI

Be serious, not amused.

By Hitendra Patil
Rise of The AiCCOUNTANTS

Unless you live under a stone, you would have heard about all the craze ChatGPT has created recently. And most likely, you, too, are amused by it.

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An artificial intelligence-powered tool, it is one of the first that allowed people to directly interact with AI in a familiar way how we use chat functions on mobile phones and websites. This ease of access and usage gave it a huge fan following. Moreover, it triggered a tsunami of new AI tools emerging all over the internet.
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OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Remote Work Will See Cuts; PE Will Trickle Down

Corporate form of governance is seeing more acceptance.

By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg MAP Survey

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every year, the Rosenberg MAP Survey asks the industry’s top consultants to share their observations from CPA firms across the country. How do you think the next 12 months will unfold? Also, how would you assess the last 12 months?

Private equity shows signs of trickling down to sizeable local firms (say $15-30 million firms).
The aging of baby boomers – ages 57-75 – continues but at some time in the next five years or so, their tremendous wave of retirements will abate somewhat and there may be fewer sellers.

MORE: Three Ways Firms Can Succeed in 2024 | Firms Must Choose Best Workplace Model | Outsourcing, Remote Work Will Help Firms Grow Capacity, Revenue | Private Equity Leading to Corporate-style CPA Firms | Five Ways Staff Shortages Are Changing Firms Forever | Partner Incomes Surge 11.4%
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Artificial intelligence has ramped up its awareness in the CPA firm market. Though many have warned of the negative impact of AI, its upward trend is relentless and knows no bounds.