Today's Features
MANAGEMENT

Why You Need Progress Billing

smiling woman wearing glasses, looking at computer screen

Seven steps to setting it up and four benefits.

By August J. Aquila
Price It Right: How to Value Accounting Services

There are many things that are critical for a successful client service engagement. In my mind, there are two that should be at the top of your list.

MORE: Sixteen Marketing Activities to Try | Make Your Practice Better | Eleven Marketing Strategies for Smaller Firms | Five Questions for Developing Your Marketing Plan | You Only Have Four Strategies | The Damage That Traditional Fee Methods Do
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Number one is providing the client with a progress report or reports. Number two is making sure that you progress bill and provide a change order if the scope of the engagement changes. Doing both ensures that you will have a happy client and get paid promptly for your services.
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MARKETING & SALES

Four Things to Know About Social Media

Man's hand writing social media strategies on a whiteboard

Talking to prospects when prospects can talk back.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

There are four things to know about what we now call the social media.

First, it’s media – a means of communication, a medium, not of itself a magic carpet. Which means that its value lies in its ability to convey ideas and facts to a vast world of viewers. Which means, as well, that we’re back to the old computer nostrum of “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Or to paraphrase another (if contrarian) view, it’s not the medium, it’s the message.

MORE: How and Why Client Service Teams Work | When Clients Think They Know Marketing | How to Put Target Marketing into Context | Everyone in Your Firm Is Marketing | Accountants vs. Lawyers: Who Wins the Marketing Battle? | Professional Services Marketing Requires Flexibility | How to Set Marketing Objectives
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Second, it substantially changes the world of marketing. In the old marketing, we talked to people who couldn’t really talk back (other than by buying or not buying what we were selling). Very primitive and cumbersome.
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MARKETING & SALES

Five Ways to Target the Low-Hanging Fruit

ripe apples are hanging on a branch covered with first snow

Easy tips you can implement right now.

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

If business has slowed for you, it’s not just you. With people finishing their holiday preparations, getting ready for school vacations and trying to keep from falling to the latest batch of colds making the rounds, it’s all most of us can do to stay on our routines.

MORE: Eight Ways to Build Busy-Season Stamina | Five Things That Clients Don’t Know about Accountants | You’re Missing 60% of Your Revenue | Beyond Compliance: Six Tips for Adding Value | Track Six Figures to Test Your Marketing | Eight Things to Give New Clients | Four Ways Small Firms Can Beat Large Ones | Five Emotional Skills for Entrepreneurs | Transform Your Marketing with CRM | Five Kinds of Small Thinking | Five Tests: How Open Are You to Change?
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As entrepreneurs, we still need to make payroll, meet our budget goals and get enough cash in to keep our doors open. So how can we cash in on the low-hanging fruit?
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MARKETING & SALES

Bissett Bullet: Beware Scope Creep and Seep

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “‘While you’re there, could you just …?’”

By Martin Bissett

The scope creep is all of those seemingly small requests that fall outside of your agreement, for which you generally do not charge, out of a desire to please a new client or to avoid an awkward conversation. Seep occurs when you volunteer to do that extra work and it becomes an issue when we are too busy doing that free work over and above the original scope to spend time winning any paid-for new work.

When presented with requests for additional tasks, it is important to say that a particular task is not within the original agreement but that absolutely, you would be very happy to raise a new invoice or undertake a new project for them.

Today’s To-Do:

Practice confidently responding to a “Can you just …?” request with a client so that the conversation feels natural when it next occurs.

See more Bissett Bullets here

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PAY & COMPENSATION

Top 20 Tough Choices for the Partner Comp Committee

man, woman, man having serious discussion around conference table

Production isn’t all that matters.

By Marc Rosenberg
The Rosenberg Practice Management Library

Increasingly, CPA firms are adopting the compensation committee system for allocating partner income. Firms are finding that systems such as formulas, pay based on ownership percentage or pay-equal no longer work.

MORE: Voting on Ownership Basis? Three Better Methods | What Partners Do and Don’t Deserve | Tell Potentials What Partnership Takes | Fifteen Big Questions for Your Next Strategy Session | Five Steps to Transition to Partnership | Disturb the Present to Improve the Future
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If there is one overarching cause for this significant trend, it’s that firms are understanding that their partners need to be something more than production machines. In addition to bringing in business, managing a client base and working billable hours (all of which continue to be important values in a compensation committee), partners need to excel in intangible areas such as helping staff grow and develop, developing specialized expertise and teamwork. The compensation committee is one of the best systems available to CPA firms to allocate income based on this diverse array of performance criteria.
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