growth

3 ways to test your revenue forecast

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hand drowning in money holeit comes down to what’s in your new client funnel.

by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

you may have heard about the marketing funnel before. there are lots of variations, and i want to cover it in a way that helps us examine our mix of products, services and prices.

more on small-firm growth strategies: 8 must-haves for a prospect kit | whip out the wow factor for clients | how to work the same hours and make more money | if you’re a ‘best-kept secret’ cut it out! | busy season surval tips: 5 ways to turn a tough day into a great one | take advantage of 4 key marketing strategies  | four ways to stop leaving money on the table

the funnel can be pictured like a big “v.”  at the top, wide-open part, there are a lot of prospects interested in your services and products. at the bottom, narrow part, there are a few select customers who buy the most from you. read more →

8 must-haves for a prospect kit

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businesswomen shaking hands and exchanging a folderand 10 ways to go beyond the expected.

by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

if you’ve spent any time at all in business talking with prospects on the phone or in person, then you probably have a list of benefits or advantages that you like to mention about your company to every prospect. you may have a very structured way of going about this, and you may not.

in any case, building a prospect kit will help you become even more consistent in the presentation of your company’s strong points to prospects. and, it’s absolutely essential as you move into larger and larger business deals.

read more →

how to work the same hours and make more money

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time is money : clock hands on $100 billsstart with these six strategies.

by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

when i worked in the corporate world, it was always great to get a raise. now that i am an entrepreneur, raises are replaced by increases in revenue and profits. more revenue and profits are nice, as long as we’re not working correspondingly more hours.

so how can we give ourselves a true raise: work the same amount of hours or less and make more? here are a few strategies for your consideration:

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2015 forecast: healthy revenue gains nationwide for firms of all sizes

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business hand holding hot chart in crystal ball

exclusive to 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

tax and accounting firms across the nation are projecting in the new “national map survey of cpa firm statistics” steady revenue gains through the end of 2014 and into the new year.

a big chunk of cpa firms are increasing their reliance on consulting services as a fee generator during the profession’s third year of steady expansion in 2013, according to the report, best known as “the rosenberg survey” for its founder, 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 contributor marc rosenberg. read more →

big firms keep getting bigger

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good news for small firms, too, but not as much.financial graph on blackboard

for cpa firms, bigger is better and keeps getting better in terms of revenues and profits for the practices and income for their individual practitioners.

so say the results of one of the profession’s best-respected monitors of practice management trends and cpa firms’ financial performance, “the national map survey of cpa firm statistics: the rosenberg survey,” which is based on data from across the profession from solo practitioners to firms with more than $20 million in net fees.

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four ways to stop leaving money on the table

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young woman using a calculatormost cpa firms miss 60% of their potential revenues. here’s how to start fixing the problem.

by sandi smith leyva
the accountant’s accelerator

accounting firms have done a great job adopting paperless office technologies, the web and even cloud computing, so you may feel you have been doing all you can to streamline margins, become “client-centric,” as some consultants call it, and grow your practice. but i believe there is even more opportunity that very few, if any, in the accounting profession have fully identified or embraced. read more →

reality check: achieving world-class growth requires real-world intelligence

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why you can’t believe your own press clippings.

by gale crosley, cpa
crosley+co

ever run a race and immediately sense that you got off to an exceptionally fast start? it’s a good feeling, but if your goal is to beat out the competition there’s really only one way to know for sure how you’re doing. and that’s by marking your progress toward the finish line relative to the other racers.

the same can be said of efforts to grow your firm. to gauge your progress you have to get outside your own four walls and see how you measure up to the competition. read more →

who’s better at marketing? lawyers or cpas?

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is the question ludicrous? by bruce w. marcus looking at the question from a different point of view, the international consultant patrick mckenna said, “if you’re trying to determine which of the two professions (lawyers or accountants) are the more … continued

stop thinking like a cpa and start building a growth machine

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the four keys driving expansion at middletonraines.

editor’s note: in this first-person account, one of the profession’s most dynamic managing partners shares some of the methods behind his firm’s recent successes.

wesley middleton
middleton

by wesley middleton, cpa
managing partner, middletonraines + zapata llp

as the managing partner of a firm of 37 people, i have felt protective of the strategies we are employing to be successful. i think that is the cpa in me. we will have almost doubled in year two of our firm over year one at the end of this calendar year. how have we done that? by not selling, marketing or managing like a cpa.  read more →

three must-have checklists for your practice

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checklists work for astronauts. why not accountants?

by sandi smith leyva
accountant’s accelerator

airplane pilots and astronauts have checklists for just about everything they do.  checklists promote performance consistency, make it easier to learn new procedures and increase safety exponentially.  in accounting, we can learn from the airline industry and apply checklists to certain areas of our practices in order to reap similar benefits.   here are three areas of your accounting practice that can benefit from checklists: read more →