Survival Strategies for Today's Market

Source: CPA Trendlines

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Marc Rosenberg.

To thrive in today's tough and fast-changing market, accounting firms must become more agile and adaptable than ever before. What are the characteristics of an agile, adaptable, quick-learning CPA firm? And how does a firm get that way?

Here are some suggestions:

Managing partners and other key partners should belong to roundtable groups and CPA firm associations and regularly attend practice management conferences. If they don't, their firms will always be in a cocoon, unaware of changes taking place and unexposed to new ideas.

Many have heard the mantra regarding a key strategy of CPA firms: “Grow or die.” Expand that to “Develop young talent or die.”

One of my most profitable and favorite clients regularly invites me to facilitate its retreats. Each year, I get nervous and anxious about it. Why? Because the MP refuses to allow any aspect of the retreat to be normal or routine. He challenges and pushes me to think of ways to make each year's retreat an “outside the box” experience. He knows that good CPA firms benefit from stretching their minds and dreaming of what they need to become.

Training must not focus exclusively on the technical; it must also accommodate soft skills and technology skills.

Benchmarking establishes a relentless regimen of comparing your firm's performance to national and regional norms so that problems are identified and can be addressed when they surface.

For the complete article, read “Marc Rosenberg: Slow Learners Need Not Apply.”

From CPA Trendlines, http://cpatrendlines.com, November 2, 2010.