Marketing

Every firm has markets in which they focus with products and services. These entities (a firm, its markets, products and services) all begin in an Emerging quadrant, and then as they become a more stabilized entity, they move into a Growth quadrant, and over a period of growth they then move to the Maturing quadrant, and finally they move to the Aging quadrant, where they pass away.

I reached a stage in my career when I thought it was important to write articles. I wrote quite a few and sent them to editors, only to have them rejected. The nice ones wrote back a rejection. The not so nice never bothered to respond at all.

Picture this scene in households across the country: the daily fat stack of mail arrives. Among the magazine subscriptions and car insurance junk mail is an odd-sized, but strangely familiar envelope. The W2 has landed—the annual scorecard of the year that was.

I certainly have been fortunate in my career to become involved in a wide range of activities including interesting clients, great staff and partners, appearing on television, writing articles and books and presenting speeches.  People always ask me what I did to get started. My answer is simple: “I never passed up an opportunity that came my way.”

Clients know you're smart; they want something else

Connecting to the next generation

To grow your business, you need a new business model

Like the advent of the Internet, social media has proliferated in everything we do.

A common mistake among retailers is selling based on price rather than on value, a retail industry consultant wrote recently. When retailers focus on price, it results in customers “cherry-picking the best item while avoiding the profit-filled add-ons,” said The Retail Doctor founder Bob Phibbs. “It’s like they go to the bargain matinee but never visit the concession stand.”

Accountants who offer business valuation services can bring in new business for their practices, although perhaps not as frequently as they would get from more familiar bread-and-butter services.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about QuickBooks and how we became the largest QB consultants in New Jersey along with receiving a few clients with very substantial fees. I’ve gotten some calls asking about them and what we did, so here is a description of three of them.

Grant Thornton reached record combined global revenues of US$4.7 billion, achieving 4.6 percent growth in U.S. dollars (or 4.9 percent in local currency terms) for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2014.

Ah! Creative accounting! No! Stop! There is only one way to account for activity and that is the right way.

Accounting and professional services marketing pioneer Bruce W. Marcus died in early December at the age of 89.

Accounting Today is in the midst of compiling its annual lists of the Top 100 Firms and Regional Leaders, and is looking for more top-notch accounting firms to consider.

A few simple questions can dig up valuable info

Adam Blitz, a manager at the accounting firm Wiebe Hinton Hambalek LLP in Fresno, Calif., discusses why it's a good idea to sell more services to existing clients, in an interview with AccountingToday.com editor-in-chief Michael Cohn at Accounting Today's Growth & Profitability Summit in Boca Raton, Fla.

ClientyWhys has launched TaxBuzz.com, a free online directory of tax professionals.

SocialCPAs and Inovautus Consulting have released the results of their annual survey of how accounting firms use social media, and the results are not encouraging.

Jill Lock, director of marketing at Isdaner & Company, discusses how her firm gets the word out about services such as art taxation, in an interview with AccountingToday.com editor-in-chief Michael Cohn at Accounting Today's Growth & Profitability Summit in Boca Raton, Fla.