Today's Features

Client Acquisition Never Stops

nine businesspeople talking in trios at a gathering

Six ways to draw people’s interest.

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

A good marketing program never stops marketing the firm. You must always think about acquiring new clients to replace lost ones and to improve the quality of your client base. It’s a fact of life that some clients will move, go out of business, merge or even leave us for another firm.

MORE: Make Sure You Know What You Will Get from Your Marketing | Ten Questions to Refine Your Successful Marketing Plan | Four Questions for Choosing Your Marketing Audit Strategies | Four Steps to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign | Five Reasons to Implement Change Orders | 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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Let’s look at some basic client acquisition activities that should be part of your marketing plan. You may be asking yourself, “Which ones work?” They all do. The secret of business development is to constantly be in the marketplace because you never know when a prospect is ready to buy from you or to move from their existing accounting firm.
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Bissett Bullet: Make Good Use of the Time You Save

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “The cost of cloud-based software or automation tools is no longer prohibitive for smaller firms so if everybody is using them, how do you stand out?”

By Martin Bissett

If technology is readily available and at a cost that makes it viable for firms of any size, then what sets you and your practice apart from your competitors is the way in which you use the time that the technology saves you, to better support your clients.

Today’s To-Do:

Estimate the amount of time you save in a week in comparison to before you upgraded to your current software. How much of that time do you spend reaching out to clients just to check on them or add value?

See more Bissett Bullets here

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Business Booming, but Not as Much as Last Year

How does your firm compare?

By CPA Trendlines Research

If the early results from the CPA Trendlines 2024 Busy Season Barometer: Emerging Issues, Opportunities, and Trends hold true through April, this will be a pretty good year for the vast majority of accountants and tax practitioners – not quite as good as last year, but still, pretty good.

MORE: Busy Season Barometer Offers Clues for Better Business | Tax Practitioners Say Happy Days Are Here … Again | Brandon Hall: Firms Try to Make Too Much on Tax Prep | If Only the IRS’s Tax Pro Were Useful | ID Theft a Problem for IRS Even When It Doesn’t Exist | IRS Still Falling Short on Service | Eight Ways the IRS Can Speed Up Processing Tax Returns | Treasury IG Sees Progress at IRS | How Tax Practitioners Became Cybersecurity Risks
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Despite difficulties finding staff and professionals, 45 percent of respondents say they have increased their client list by at least 5 percent. (Last year, it was 65 percent.)

In fact, 14 percent have seen an increase of over 10 percent. Good, but not as good as last year’s 22 percent.
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How to Use ChatGPT to Create Images

If you can dream it, ChatGPT can build it.

By Sandi Leyva

ChatGPT 4.0 is enabled with computer vision, which means it can derive information from images that you input. It can also create images that you can use in your business.

Check out our courses on ChatGPT,
offered as a deep discount bundle or separately.
Webinar Schedule:
MORE ChaptGPT here

Here are just a few things I have found when using ChatGPT 4.0 for image creation:

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The Radical Pricing Model: Start with $25K

Deliver more value to clients while freeing your team from timesheets.

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

Consider the $25K Rule.

Because this method requires heavy lifting on the front end, a good rule of thumb is to only value-price engagements of $25,000 or more. If the client falls below $25,000, they are eligible for a fixed price or fixed price plus a value add. This rule is important because if your client is a small business, it doesn’t matter how much value they perceive in your services; they will not be able to afford value pricing above a certain level.

MORE: Three Critical Factors Drive the Value Pricing Trend | Accounting Disruptors Are Heading Your Way … with Deep Pockets | The Convergence of Trends Makes Pricing Changes Imperative | Stop Looking for Talent that Does Not Exist | Advisory Work Must Be Priced by Value, Not Hours
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Most services are fixed-priced, but based on conversations with the client, those prices may drop or be raised accordingly. Some of the data points used to set pricing are the PITA factor (pain in the a#%) and the client’s gross revenue.
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Busy Season Barometer Offers Clues for Better Business

workers in busy office

Take a tip from a peer.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The CPA Trendlines Busy Season Barometer: Emerging Issues, Opportunities, and Trends is more than just a survey of the state of the industry at CPA firms across the nation. It also offers clues to what firms are doing to make the busy season better, easier and more profitable.

The clues are in the comments – open-ended answers where practitioners tell us what they’re doing, how they’re feeling and where they’re going.

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One of the best questions is “What are you doing differently this year?” Each answer reflects an attempt to make the best of a stressful situation – the annual tax season.

Here are a few quotes to think about, categorized by how well various respondents’ seasons are going this year. Each is an idea that might make your year better.
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Tax Pros Take the Edge in E-Filings

data table

Refunds up 5+ percent.

By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research

The machine that is the Internal Revenue Service keeps clicking along. As of March 15, the IRS had received 71.6 million individual income tax returns, down 0.4 percent from the same period in 2023, and had processed 70.6 million, down 1.2 percent.

MORE: Tax Pros Handle 46.4% of E-filing | Tax Refunds, Tax Pro Market Share Trending Up | Refunds Up as Tax Pros Tackle 41.5% of E-filings | Tax Pros Handle 37.7% of E-filings | Tax Pros File 33% of Early Returns
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E-filings

Electronic filings totaled 69.5 million, down 0.3 percent.
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Lenovo Readies New ThinkBook Laptop with a Transparent Display

 

Will see-through screens become the latest trend? 

By Rick Richardson
Technology This Week

Lenovo’s translucent laptop is said to revolutionize laptop design. But until the company can demonstrate how useful this is compared to more conventional models, the novel idea risks being dismissed as a gimmick.

MORE: Breakthrough Implant Uses Excess Blood Sugar to Generate Electricity | One State Is Now America’s Clean Energy Paradise | Did Ancient Romans Find a Solution for Climate Change? | Telehealth Advances with AI-Powered Clinics | FCC Approves Superfast Wi-Fi Tethering | Bill Gates Says America Has a Math Problem | What Is an HEIC File? | Bill Gates Behind Next-Generation Nuclear Plant | Congress: Tax Prep Companies Shared Private Data with Google, Meta for Years | What an A.I.-Powered Workforce Means for Accountants | Smartwatch Saves Two Lives
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There are rumors that Lenovo will present the world’s first transparent laptop at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month. According to leaked photos obtained by WindowsReport, the laptop may have a see-through keyboard and display, introducing transparent technology to PCs for the first time. READ MORE →