We all want to measure social media’s return on investment (ROI); but, because it is rarely the last marketing touch point before a conversion (sale), it may be hard to accurately track its direct impact on your marketing efforts. In measuring your firm’s social media marketing ROI, assumptions may be made because there is often ...

Start Using Twitter To Develop Thought Leadership Twitter is often a misunderstood social media platform – especially in business.  However, Twitter has unbelievable power and reachthat can build credibility and thought leadership for your firm in your targeted niches, industries and specialty services.  My partner Jennifer Wilson shared five of the important Twitter benefits in ...

It’s Urgent… How many times have we heard those two words?  In our 24/7 world, response times have contracted, and things that used to be just “important” have now become “urgent” thanks to our constant smart phone availability, and the expectations of our customers, clients and colleagues.  In a sense, it’s a trap we set ...

Anyone who walks in the door willing to engage your services is not necessarily the next RIGHT client. Conceptually, most of us agree with that statement.  However, very few of us practice this in reality – especially given the slow recovery from our recent economic downturn and the struggle many firms are experiencing retaining their clients ...

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet:  What’s The Question? Twitter (www.twitter.com) has a bad rap.  Most of us think of it as a platform that celebrities use to share meaningless information about their most recent meal or to promote their latest product.  But the application has unbelievable power and reach – all at your fingertips ...

The AICPA’s Private Companies Practice Section (PCPS) group has again conducted a survey in which they asked their members to reveal their most significant struggles.  The PCPS “Top Issues” lists are published based on firm size – from sole practitioners to 21 or more professionals.  There were differences in the results based on firm size, ...

I was sitting in the Minneapolis airport Monday morning when a colleague from Lansing, MI, came over and said hello.  Then I turned around and two other colleagues from a local Minneapolis CPA firm said hello, too.  We were all on our way to the BDO Seidman Alliance Conference in Las Vegas, and it was ...

Many of our CPA friends will be meeting with a large number of clients over the next several months.  To maximize this face-to-face time, take the opportunity to find out how your clients feel they are being served, what your team may be able to do better, and what additional services you could provide them ...

When I teach topics like deepening client relationships and delivering exceptional client service, I discuss the importance of proactively meeting with clients outside of your regular engagement to further your relationship, identify any potential service issues and uncover new opportununities to add value.  Participants nod their heads in agreement and some even approach this discussion ...

When potential clients are listening to you explain your services, there is always one burning question on their minds.  When prospective employees are evaluating your firm as a possible place to work, they have the same burning question.  And when you’re trying to convince people to adopt a new way of doing something, they also ...

Last month, I had the great privilege to hear motivational speaker W Mitchell speak to my local NSA (National Speakers Association) chapter. Mitchell, as he likes to be called, was a tremendous inspiration and made many great points throughout his talk. But, something that he asked during the introductions portion of the program really struck ...

In last week’s blog post, Michelle Baca presented the first four steps for developing winning proposals, which focused on the internal preparation of your proposals.  This week, Krista Remer will complete the series on proposals by sharing steps five through seven with a focus on how to actually deliver your proposal and then follow up ...

Have you noticed that at nearly every major accounting conference, there seems to be a session on how to develop effective proposals? It also happens to be one of the topics that we are asked most frequently to offer our advice on. Because this continues to be on the minds of our clients, we wanted ...

If you have followed my social media journey, you’ll remember my initial reticence to spend time on Facebook.   Even though Facebook has over 400 million users, 50% of whom are logged in on any given day, I have avoided investing professional resources in the platform because I thought it was mostly to be used for ...

Over the past year, IRS Section 7216 has been a hot topic. Since it went into effect on January 1, 2009, there have been many questions, concerns, and confusion over the legal implications to tax preparers. The intent was to prohibit tax preparers from “knowingly or recklessly” disclosing or using tax related information other than ...

According to the 2009 AICPA PCPS CPA Firm Top Issues survey (http://tinyurl.com/ydx8alr), the most significant concern facing CPA firms today is client retention.  This is certainly a shift from previous years, where the quest to find and retain talent were the top concerns of the profession.   Clearly, this is due to the recession, increasing competition ...

It’s hard to believe, but our blog, Inspired Ideas, celebrates its first birthday today.  In the inaugural post, I shared my epiphany about the power of social networking – in particular my exposure to the LinkedIn platform (www.LinkedIn.com) – and how I really believed that the groundswell of web-based networking and communications tools would drive ...

One of our most popular training sessions this year has been our course entitled, “Embracing Social Networking in Your Firm.” The session covers the most popular social networking technologies including LinkedIn, Facebook, and of course, Twitter. Twitter is a tool that allows people to know the answer to the question “What are you doing?” Twitter ...

Recent economic conditions have caused us all to refocus on our marketing and business development strategies. It used to be that firms struggled just to keep up with the work that they had and were more focused on recruiting staff than generating new opportunities. The tide has certainly shifted and marketing and business development are ...

This week, we wrap-up our five week series of posts on Marketing Strategies to Drive Your Firm’s Growth with the fifth P – Promotion.  Too often, firms jump right into marketing promotion without first defining the other four P’s (Positioning, Product and Service Mix, Pricing, and Place) in their marketing strategy.  Unfortunately, when you start ...