five skills that spell success

and none are tax or accounting.

by sandi leyva
the complete guide to marketing for tax & accounting firms

we’ve worked hard on gaining our accounting tax and auditing skills. those skills alone will keep us working as employees for someone else, but what if we want to go out on our own or grow our business beyond what we have now?

more: the seven-step plan for marketing by spreadsheet | five things clients have taught me | beyond compliance: what more you can provide
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.

here are five skills to consider adding to your toolbox to get ahead faster.

how do you rate in each of these areas?

1. marketing

when you start your business, it can take up to three years to fill your practice up with referrals. the problem is that relying on referrals is no longer enough to make the numbers you want.

small accounting firms must step beyond referrals to fill their practices for the first time. this trend is driven by competition because there are more options and more noise than ever before. another factor is the decline in the trust level. we need more marketing skills than we did ten years ago for all these reasons.

the good news is that marketing does not have to be distasteful, only an extrovert’s game, or require a lot of time.  marketing can be learned just as any business skill can, and it’s now become essential to do so for those who want to grow their practices. marketing includes many subskills, such as pricing, putting together service packages for clients, understanding your value in your clients’ eyes, metrics analysis, and even confidence building.

2. technology

clients want options today. they want their data entered quickly and cheaply, so we need to look at tools to speed up that task. they want to do accounting on their tablets, which means we need anywhere, anytime solutions. third, they want more than compliance, which means we need more tools to slice and dice the data. we even need to consider learning more than one accounting system to give clients a choice. it can be easy to get overwhelmed in this area with all the options we have to learn.

listen closely to your client’s pain points to gain new technology skills. are they all in inventory? then look for solutions in that area. are there mobile needs? focus on those apps. let the clients’ needs drive your education program, and set some time aside once a quarter to learn about new opportunities within those areas. that will help to avoid feeling overwhelmed and keep your profitability up. plus, you’ll be able to implement what you learn immediately with a client.

3. project management

as we move up the value ladder with our clients, we may take on larger projects. project management skills include tracking and running large projects and planning and estimating upfront. in addition, we need to break down our projects into manageable tasks to assess our time and costs and provide the right kind of pricing information to the client. hourly billing should go out the window when you can get a year’s worth of data entered in a day using the new slick technology tow. instead, it would be best to account for the latest technology costs, your research and development costs to get up and running on the new technology, the value to the client, and a reasonable profit for you. all of that takes new skills.

to gain new project management skills, look for a course on the topic and find one specific to accounting.

4. customer service

customer service is one of the more critical skills on this list, and most of us do not have any formal training in this area. yet, i’ve seen spectacular receptionists hold together entire cpa firms single-handedly just because they were personable (more so than the partners).

there are plenty of courses on customer service to choose from out there.

5. staffing

one of the most common ways to grow your business is by taking on staff to help you do more client work. this provides you with leverage, extending your expertise to more clients while increasing your bottom line and providing jobs for people.

one of the reasons why many people prefer to remain in solo practices is they do not want or have the skills to hire or supervise people. so it’s an acquired skill. but it’s also painful when the hire is bad. and it’s heaven when the hire is good.

there are plenty of courses available that can help you hire and supervise people.

your new skills

these five areas can provide you with some new ideas for training in 2022 that can get your business growing and get you where you want to be.

posted on april 14, 2022