Sales and Marketing

The CPA Consultants’ Alliance has appointed Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk of bbr marketing as the group’s new Marketing Chair and Carrie Steffen of the Whetstone Group as the new Deliverables Chair.

In last week’s column, I described various specializations for accountants. In this week’s column, we’ll talk about gaining the necessary expertise.

How can a CPA firm differentiate itself?

I was not a specialist. In some respects, I am the last of the “expert generalists” and generalists are fast becoming extinct.

Your firm could be in a heap of trouble if you tweet about #TeamUSA, post a photo to Facebook of the Olympic rings or even mention the term “Olympics” from your firm’s accounts.

I like to wear shirts with my firm’s logo. We have an arrangement with Land’s End where we can order what we want from their catalog and have the Withum logo applied. It is a very easy process.

Many accounting firms share a common problem. They need to get staff, especially younger staff, involved in business development. It often feels like an unending uphill battle. The question is, are we on the right hill?

Industry consultant Martin Bissett has tips for getting CPAs more comfortable with sales.

Tax lawyer Kelly Phillips Erb, aka “taxgirl,” has written for The New York Times and is now a staff writer for Forbes.com, but she never set out to be a famous blogger or national thought leader.

With the regulations that once kept financial advisors and other money-management professionals on the social-media sidelines a thing of the past, the floodgate of tweets, Snaps and Instagram posts should be wide open by now. But the response has actually been quite muted.