Today's Features
MARKETING & SALES

Reframe Your Thinking about Selling

Businessman with head in hands

Four reasons some accountants find it difficult.

By Martin Bissett
Business Development on a Budget

Let’s take a look at the last 20-plus years of my experience and my research as to where new clients come from in an accounting practice. I don’t think there are going to be too many shocks here.

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What I’ve found is that 82 percent of all new clients in a given year who come into an accounting firm come in from a referral source. This may be a bank or a lawyer or some other source, perhaps an existing client, who has recommended that a particular business meet with your firm and come on board as a client.
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BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Cannon: Busy Season is Self-Inflicted | The Disruptors

Exhaustion, chaos, and missed lives are the result of design choices—not destiny.

This is a preview. The complete episode is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

Brenda Cannon, co-founder of Cannon and Associates, has been pioneering a creative approach for taming tax season madness: every return is scheduled like an appointment. “We know how long it takes us to prepare a tax return. Why could we not control each week and the number of tax returns we prepare each week?” she recalls thinking after hearing Jason Staats introduce the concept on a podcast in 2022.  

MORE STREAMING: Carroll: When One Person Can Break the Firm |  Rampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not There | Chang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don’t Bill by the Hour | Kless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISE | Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | Carter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years |

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Over the last three tax seasons, Cannon and her team, which includes her husband and co-founder, Randy Cannon, have been refining the process. Clients choose a date on a calendar on which they will deliver their documents to her office, with the understanding that their return will be ready three weeks after that date.  

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MARKETING & SALES

Cross-Sell and Upsell to Earn More Business

person handing a folder to another person

It’s easier and quicker to sell to existing clients than to new ones.

By August Aquila
MAX: Maximize Productivity, Profitability and Client Retention

While most accountants and consultants struggle with trying to sell their services to the next new client, there are two ways to get new and additional business without moving too far out of your comfort zone.

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One way is cross-selling and the other is upselling. Cross-selling is persuading a client to buy other products or services to complement a purchase. Upselling encourages a buyer to purchase a higher-end, more expensive product or service. For example, let’s say you are currently providing estate-planning services to the client, and you get the client to invest in your wealth-management services. Or you have a wealthy tax client, and you advise her to use the firm’s estate-planning or retirement-planning services.
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PRO Member Exclusive

Focus on Working Capital

Woman with tablet showing man something on laptop

Show clients issues and opportunities in the current process.

By Domenick J. Esposito
8 Steps to Great

Presented below is an example of an effective tool for distinguishing your firm from the rest – the EBITDA/working capital improvements memorandum. This tool can be used when your client is owned by a large private equity group or other investment vehicle.

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The EBITDA/working capital improvements memorandum is designed as a unique byproduct of your attest services. At the conclusion of your attest services, you share preliminary thoughts and observations on how to improve EBITDA/working capital with senior management of the portfolio company as well as with an outside investor such as a private equity group.
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PODCAST

Dyo: It’s Not a Loophole; It’s a Missed Opportunity | The Concierge CPA

Charitable gift financing has been IRS-validated for decades, yet many still avoid it.

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The Concierge CPA
With Jackie Meyer
For CPA Trendlines

In this episode of the Concierge CPA podcast, host Dr. Jackie Meyer, CPA, puts a spotlight on a charitable tax strategy that sounds suspiciously modern — yet has been sitting in the tax code since 1978.

The strategy is called charitable gift financing, and, according to Meyer’s guest, Aleksander Dyo, founder and managing director of Wealth Excel, it remains largely invisible to many accountants despite decades of IRS validation.

More Jackie Meyer

Dyo frames the idea with a blunt comparison: Americans finance homes, cars, equipment — even vacations. So why not charitable giving?

Charitable gift financing allows high-income taxpayers to make significant philanthropic contributions by combining personal funds with borrowed capital, while claiming a charitable deduction for the full amount transferred to charity in the year of the gift.

This isn’t a loophole or a creative interpretation, Dyo says. It’s rooted in long-standing IRS guidance on the deductibility of charitable contributions made with borrowed funds, provided the funds are transferred to the charity in the same tax year.

In practice, that timing is everything.

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