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Gale's Cornerstone Book
Gale’s book, At the Crossroads: The Remarkable CPA Firm That Nearly Crashed, Then Soared is a delightful parable about a sleepy, uninspired CPA firm that transforms into an accounting powerhouse.
Meet managing partner Joe Abriola who has just learned that his partners are on the verge of mutiny. How does the firm recover and thrive? Spoiler alert—Gale’s growth model swoops in to save the day! The book is an instructive tale that’s filled with valuable insight on achieving growth despite the odds.
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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. How big is too big? I’m frequently asked this question by firms that have successfully grown a particular niche. “Can we expect the needle to continue to rise, or are we relegated to low growth and thin margins?” they wonder. My answer is unequivocal. “You bet that Cat can…
If your goal is to grow your firm and you haven’t considered a qualified business developer, you’ve tied one hand firmly behind your back. A business developer (BD) is a professional salesperson hired to sell your firm’s services.
Developing and closing an opportunity is difficult, even in the best of times. The added challenge of today’s highly competitive (and slightly skittish) marketplace underscores the importance of vigorously and purposefully qualifying leads.
Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today Sometimes it’s not what we’re thinking, but how we’re thinking that keeps us from the success we deserve. In this case I’m referring to the limits we impose on ourselves, which I call thought borders. While not necessarily geographical, they constrain our forward movement much as the absence of…
Reprinted with permission from CPA Practice Management Forum An Internet search for the term “predictable growth” yields millions of links to websites, videos, books, and consultants. There seems to be no doubt about the idea that growth can be planned and charted. But for accounting professionals who are trying to grow their firms, it may…
By 2001, the year the high-tech boom went bust, I had been in the technology field for more than two decades. When the bubble finally burst, the repercussions were many and ugly. I’ve thought more about those times recently than I have in years, and for good reason.
Admit it. You’re good at what you do. Your clients trust your proven ability to help improve their businesses. Perhaps it’s time to take the step of enlarging your vision of yourself from accountant to consultant.
In the past, the notion of retaining top clients was one of those motherhood/apple pie kinds of things. Nobody could argue with it, but nobody was doing much about it either. Today we know a lot about the art and science of client retention. The good news is you don’t have to be an artist or a scientist to achieve success.
When working in the high tech sector, before the dot-com bust, we were engaged in sophisticated and powerful growth strategies. After the bust, it became apparent to me that these could be replicated within public accounting firms. I just had to understand how the model applied to the uniqueness of accounting firms in general, and to the needs of individual firms.
For nearly a half-century, the Iron Curtain was the most mysterious geopolitical symbol in the world. Behind it, American school children were taught, people lived colorless Communist lives, waiting in long lines for shoddy goods, hungry for freedoms Westerners took for granted.
Our yard was inundated with bird food-eating squirrels and we were desperate. So we did what desperate people do. We fell for a shiny advertisement promoting a highly specialized (read “expensive”) squirrel-defying bird feeder.
Gale Crosley has built a successful consulting business by making it her mission to help accounting professionals increase their firms’ revenues with strategies she has learned from her long career in business.
The local diner was extremely bright for six in the morning although quiet. The coffee was rather weak, the muffin kind of tasteless, but the conversation was like a stick of Grade A butter. Gale Crosley consults with CPA firms to help them understand the challenges in growing revenue and to develop certain strategies to achieve aggressive revenue growth objectives.
Why focus energy and resources on growing your business when it seems to be expanding nicely on its own these days?! The question is much more than rhetorical; it has strong practical implications. Practice growth specialists like me speak at conferences and in private to our clients, making the case for ongoing, strategic planning to…
The Supreme Court’s 1977 decision Bates v. State Bar of Arizona allowed lawyers to advertise their services, opening the gate for CPAs to enter the world of marketing. In Bates, the justices held that advertising was a type of free speech and as such, was protected by the First Amendment. Many CPAs believed that marketing would enhance their firms’ visibility.
Listen closely and you’ll hear it ….the sound of pessimism. The pundits are saying the glory days are behind us. They’re predicting that the flood of business we’ve seen in the past five years or so will soon slow to a trickle and manna will no longer fall from the skies.
In recent weeks, I’ve observed a sometimes subtle, but significant, shift among forward-looking CPA firms, away from filling the pipeline with leads and toward managing the leads coming in the door.
Many firms are so awash in business right now that the idea of growing their firms is, quite honestly, kind of scary. Meanwhile, they’re painfully aware that holding onto low-end work may prevent them from moving up-market to attract larger pieces of business.
The days of building business by doing good work and chatting over lunch, ending with a firm handshake are the historical legacy of our profession. But what about the future? Don’t get me wrong – CPAs like a good meal as much as ever. But these days, lasting growth is a systematic process based on proven methodologies and metrics.
For years your firm has done just fine, thank you, without the assistance of a business development executive, or BDE. But is it time to reconsider? The changing professional environment and new demands on CPA firms and partners suggest that it just may be.