Voices

What's your excuse? It's time to pick sides

IMGCAP(2)] I recently had the opportunity to speak at a small business workshop called “My Job to M.O.B.”. It was a three-day conference held in Chicago focusing on those who were interested in “my own business” planning.

What was my biggest takeaway? 

CPAs are not informing, helping, servicing, delivering, and, much less, delighting their clients. 

I know this is a strong statement. 

I am sure there are a few of you out there who are doing it, but in an audience of 30 small business owners, not one said my current CPAs is using the cloud to help me proactively run my business.

What is wrong with this picture?

When you’re in a room full of hungry entrepreneurs with various size businesses and they are all lacking help and insight from their CPAs – there’s a problem.

Why are we losing this game? Why are we losing this opportunity? Why aren’t we meeting our customers’ needs?

We can no longer say the technology doesn’t work. It may not be feature perfect, but there are enough working choices to service most small business. There is Xero, QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks, SageOne, Kashoo and we always have the option to use desktop software in a hosted environment. Yet, CPAs as a whole are not meeting the demands of today’s consumer.   

I’m not going to answer these questions for you. But take a long hard look at your CPA practice and reply in the comments why you are choosing not to be engaged with this current cloud-ready small business consumer. They are ready and waiting.

And of course, you can always choose to ignore this question.

Be forewarned, because after I spoke, it was all hands in the air as I walked away with 30 follow-up conversations. Those customers are another CPA’s long time clients. 

Let me ask you this: What side of the conversation do you want to be on?

Jody L. Padar, CPA, MST, is the CEO and Principal at New Vision CPA Group and author of The Radical CPA attheradicalcpa.com

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