Increase Your Firm's Visibility

Source: Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from a blog entry by Rita Keller.

I talk to so many firm leaders who tell me, “Yes, we have one guy who's really our rainmaker. He's really the ‘face of the firm,' he's everywhere.”

Yes I hear it over and over, old Bob is the one who really brings in business.

Okay, keep Bob doing what he is doing but develop a plan for “the firm” to be visible – to be recognized by name and to be the progressive, involved, cool firm in your market.

You can do this by orchestrating your visibility. I call it “hitting the street” because I learned that term many years ago from a Big Four partner who lived by that term.

• Identify all of the business events in your town or city, and make sure two or three experienced people take a young accountant along so that your firm has more people there than your competitors.
• You know the restaurants in town where the attorneys, bankers, and other Chamber of Commerce business people eat lunch. Be there often, and be sure to take a referral source or a client and a less-experienced person from your firm.
• Make sure your young people know that it is very important to eat lunch “out.” Don't let them eat in the lunch room day after day. Business people in your community will recognize them; maybe not individually but as “those young people from Jones & Co.”
• Make sure your firm has a blog posted at least twice per week.
• Write thank-you notes and send them to clients. Yes, surprise them.

Take this list and add to it, then share it with partners and team members.

For the complete article, read, “How Visible is Your Firm, Really?”

From Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders, the blog of Rita Keller, July 31, 2012. Visit http://ritakeller.com/blog/.