Client Advisory Boards Offer Significant Benefits

Source: Journal of Accountancy

CPA firms that have established and maintained client advisory boards say that the benefits far exceed the costs. Those benefits include:

• Valuable feedback from clients on what they want, what the firm does well, and what the firm can improve.
• Ideas – from clients as well as from non-client board members – for new lines of business.
• Opportunities to cross-sell services to clients who serve on the board – and to gain new business from non-client board members.
• Referrals from board members.

This article reviews the benefits of client advisory boards and the challenges of running one. (Finding the time and will is one of the biggest challenges.) It also offers tips on how to start a board, who should serve on the board, and how to decide whether to use an outside facilitator.

For the complete article, read “Board of education: CPA firms, businesses can profit from clients' advice.”

From Journal of Accountancy, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, November 2011, http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2012/Jan.