Marketing and CPA Firms -- Who to Hire?

Source: Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Rita Keller.

Last year, I heard an interesting story from a mid-size CPA firm. It seems it had hired its first marketing director and then its second and was now on its third person for the marketing role inside the firm. For this third attempt it hired a marketing manager rather than a director.

This firm had found that an experienced marketing director assumes his or her role will be a high-level decision-maker included in high-level strategies. In reality, many CPA firm owners do not open their high-level meetings or decision-making responsibilities to a marketing person (at least not as quickly as the marketing director might expect).

Qualified marketing directors then get frustrated very quickly and move on. The CPA firm environment continues to be a puzzle and a challenge to those with no prior CPA firm experience.

Inside your firm have you had a new HR person, marketing person, or administrative person ask any of the following questions?

• Why do the partners ignore my emails?
• Why do partners sign up to attend a chamber event and then never show up?
• Why do we have to continually nag them to take action on an internal matter?
• Why can't we make a hiring decision without every partner being involved?
• Why do decisions take so long?

The firm above hired a marketing manager and clarified the role very clearly. I find there are usually three roles for marketers inside the average CPA firm: Marketing director, marketing coordinator, and administrative marketing assistant. Some firms need all three and some just need one. Consider your needs, your expectations, and the reality inside your firm before you hire.

For the complete article, read, “Clearly Define Your Marketing Role Before You Hire.”

From Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders, the newsletter of Rita Keller, http://www.ritakeller.com.