Growth is important to CPAs and their firms because it provides additional capabilities, opportunities, revenue and profit. Growth can be organic or from mergers and acquisitions. Many firms are doing both, but growth requires planning, people and processes. Growth doesn't just happen because the partners in your firm decide they need to grow by 10 percent annually in order to maintain partner income. The focus of this article is on five strategies that will help your firm grow organically. They all require thinking, planning and execution, and accountability. The past two years have been challenging for all firms. The ability to grow will be even more important in the future than it has been in the past.

Over the past 15 years, I, along with others at Boomer Consulting, have had the good fortune to participate in Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach Program for entrepreneurs (www.strategiccoach.com). We have learned about many strategies that apply to our consulting business as well as to the CPA profession.

One of the most important lessons is that every industry goes through what is known as an industry life cycle, where an emerging industry grows into a growth industry to a status industry and finally a depleted industry, at which point an industry bypass takes place and the cycle repeats itself. The cycle can take many years, but the trend is toward faster life cycles. Industry transformers are those leaders who can take their firms from the depleted to the emerging stage.

Financial services and accounting have both been impacted by technological, scientific, economic, social, cultural and political change. How firms deal with this change is the key to growth and success. Some of the more prominent characteristics of a depleted industry are:

Commoditization - fee pressures;

Increased litigation;

Increased regulation;

Increased complexity of the business model; and,

Unique processes and branding become extremely important.

The challenge for firms of all sizes is how to transform themselves into the new emerging and growth industries. This requires vision, leadership, discipline, risk management, and a set of core values that foster innovation, growth, trusted relationships, integrity, teamwork and accountability. This is by no means an easy task, as the gravity of the past is typically stronger than the potential of the future for many CPAs and their firms. This requires that firm management continue to manage the current firm while leadership is developing the future firm. These are not sequential, but rather simultaneous events that require time and capital.

While there are numerous strategies that firms can implement, the following five transformational strategies have proven to provide value to firms and their clients.

1. Listen to your clients.

2. Identify, name and package your unique processes.

3. Move to fixed-price agreements and change orders.

4. Leverage technology.

5. Move up the value chain - information, knowledge and wisdom.

I will further define and summarize each strategy, with specific examples and action steps you can implement in your firm.

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