bury the non-billable hour

call it “the investment hour” and go hunting for business. by bruce w. marcus professional services marketing 3.0 if the accounting firm’s management hasn’t made clear that participation by every professional in the firm is an integral part of recognition … continued

two steps to easy upsells

by sandi smith leyva
accountant’s accelerator

adding revenue does not have to take much time or money. start by going after the low-hanging fruit.

open excel or your favorite spreadsheet tool, and make a worksheet from the sales numbers in your accounting system. list the name of each current, active client you have in the rows of the spreadsheet. across the top, make columns for each service you offer. for example, if you offer tax, bookkeeping and quickbooks consulting, you will have three columns.

you can break your revenue out any way you like. the more columns, the better.

then, drop in your revenue numbers from your accounting system. in quickbooks, you may be able to run your sales by customer summary to make it faster. you can create the columns by class, if that’s what you use to break out your revenue by service line.

that’s step one, to create your spreadsheet. step two is the fun part.

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get real: 15 questions for achievable growth

by bruce w. marcus professional services marketing 3.0 in building a growth plan for your firm, perspective is important. objectives, clearly defined as they should be, should not be overwhelming. nor should they be adhered to slavishly. it’s often enough … continued

how to build a marketing plan on an excel spreadsheet

7 key elements.

by sandi smith leyva, cpa
accountant’s accelerator

it’s quite common for accounting firms (even the regionals) to have no marketing plan in place. the marketing plan might very well be, “get as many referrals as we can.” or it might be a number for each partner (which is not a marketing plan). or it might be, “if it’s not busy season, i’ll go to my business networking international group.” none of these are plans. they are individual marketing tasks and components. read more →

the cpa’s castle is crumbling

by bruce w. marcus professional services marketing 3.0 i’m puzzled by the accounting firm that continues to function today as it did many decades ago – in so many areas, as if the world continues to be as it was … continued