December 2008

Recession Strategies:

• Provide help in benchmarking as a means of cost control. Click here for more details. (December CPA Leadership Report: “Filling Your Pipeline in a Slow Economy”)
• Ask clients about the effects of the downturn on them, and help them deal with their problems and exploit their opportunities. Click here for more details (December CPA Leadership Report: “Strategies for Today’s Environment”)
• Look for new business from start-up companies. The net number of small businesses actually grows during a downturn. The number of start-ups actually increases compared with previous years. Click here for more details (December CPA Leadership Report: “The Recession Offers Growth Opportunities for CPAs”)

Understanding Your Team Members:

If you can learn how to understand different personality types, acknowledging that there is a place for each one, you will experience an increased level of interaction and more open sharing with each other. The “making each other wrong for all the irritating little things” starts to dissipate into understanding. Click here for more details. (December CPA Leadership Report: “Helping Team Leaders Understand Their Members”)

Retreats:

A retreat buys very little unless at its conclusion each person knows who must do what and everyone is prepared to actually do what they have committed to. In other words, the partners are willing to be managed. Click here for more details (December CPA Leadership Report: “Don’t Retreat at Your Retreat”)

Client Surveys:

Client surveys are more than tools to measure satisfaction.

Use them to help you learn things that lead to a closer relationship. For example, ask them if they clients prefer:

• One-on-one meetings?
• To meet more or less frequently than has been your custom?
• E-mail or snail mail?
• Not to work with juniors on your staff?

Click here for more details: December CPA Leadership Report: “Client Surveys—The Only Thing to Fear is Not Doing Them”)

Incentive Plans

One reason incentive plans don’t work is that they don’t include new business from existing clients. Cross selling is often thought to be part of the job and not to be specifically rewarded. But rewarding cross selling will make it happen. Click here for more details (December CPA Leadership Report: “Why Most Incentive Plans Don’t Work”)

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