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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.

Ensuring Efficient, Effective Growth

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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.

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Interview with Gale Crosley

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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.

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Sitting Down with Gale Crosley

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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.

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Waste Not, Want Not

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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.

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Beyond Client Service

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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.

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Ready for Rough Times

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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.

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Prune Your Client Base for Strategic Growth

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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.

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Business Developers – The Value of Rings

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I know many partners who are seriously conflicted about whether to include business developers in their firm’s present and future. Yet in corporate America, can you imagine firing an entire sales force? Okay, products and services can’t speak for themselves, so perhaps there isn’t much choice. And maybe that’s the problem. We have a choice. Your professionals can speak for themselves. Unfortunately, the vast majority are not persuasive communicators, or have never had any sales training. Inconsistent practice growth is often the result.

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Business Developers are from Saturn… Partners Are From Mars

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If the prospect of hiring a business development specialist gives you pause, you’re not alone. Although this practice was historically embraced among the Big Four, mid-size CPA firms have been slower to jump on the bandwagon. Until now, it’s been largely unnecessary. But Sarbanes/Oxley reforms have upended a formerly predictable cosmos. Today, significant conflicted-out opportunities…

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Walking the Halls

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I’ve heard far too many CPAs refer to business development – with denigration – as “scheduling appointments” and “walking the halls”. To borrow a phrase, it often seems that business developers are from Saturn and CPAs are from Mars. Despite a shared purpose, their methods often appear dramatically divergent. Behind closed doors, CPAs candidly ask me, “What the heck are these people doing? They walk the halls, flit from meal to meal and attend social events. It doesn’t look like work to me. I wish I could have that much fun. Is this really necessary?!”

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Winning More Significant Opportunities in Today’s Environment

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Recent events in the profession will continue to result in more and larger clients evaluating a potential change in their CPA firm over the next couple of years. Firms which invest in the expertise necessary to win significant opportunities have a once-in-a-lifetime ability to grow their revenue substantially. In evaluating this ability to win, I…

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Herding Tigers and Other Lone Rangers

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For CPAs, winning significant opportunities is the ultimate team sport. If you or other tigers in your firm are accustomed to going it alone, you’ll find it’s next to impossible to do this consistently when the business is large and complex. The reluctance of CPAs to recognize this keeps many from conquering high-value targets.

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Build Value to Grow Revenue

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Remember the theme from Cheers, the TV series about a friendly Boston pub and its memorable ‘regulars?’ The refrain says: “You want to go where everybody knows your name.” Something similar is at work when it comes to building value propositions to grow revenue. To succeed, you’ve got to determine what makes the buyer tick.

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Client Opportunity Planning

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Promising opportunities may not be sporting overalls at your firm, but it’s likely a number of them have successfully camouflaged themselves from you and your partners! Sure, you’re busy these days, but sheer momentum isn’t enough to guarantee long-term sustainable growth. For that you need an orderly approach to opportunity planning.

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Why Can’t CPAs Get Traction with New Services?!

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Not so long ago, the business of an accounting firm was as predictable as men’s business attire. Tax preparation and audits were about as far as it went. Unfortunately, as firms have attempted to branch out into an array of related services, their experiences have been hit or miss. More often than not, the reason is that they are unfamiliar with some of the fundamentals in bringing a new service to market, and often incorrectly pattern their efforts after bringing products to market.

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Mistakes Made – Lessons Learned In Developing a Niche

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Mistakes can teach us a great deal. The lessons can be difficult, even costly, but there’s no better teacher. When the goal is establishing a technology niche, or any new service, I’ve seen a pattern of errors worth identifying and avoiding.

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Marketing and Managing Professional Service Offerings

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In today’s sophisticated marketplace, professionally marketed and managed services stand the best chance of gaining notice and winning market share. What’s true for consumer goods, health care and telecommunications, also applies to professional services such as those offered by CPAs and lawyers. Many firms that have acknowledged the need have been richly rewarded. Those that have embraced the need and acted on it have seen even more impressive results.

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Product Management – The Secret Weapon of Growth

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It’s fair to say that CPAs have ‘gotten the memo’ when it comes to the importance and value of marketing. Telling their story to those who need to hear it – and are in a position to respond – is a concept many now understand and even embrace. But in today’s demanding marketplace, it’s not enough to market an offering; you’ve got to manage it – from incubation through birth, innovation and beyond. Sharply designed brochures, hard-hitting direct mail and interactive websites simply won’t get you where you want to go.

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Designing the Perfect Service

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After several years of searching, I’ve finally found a top-notch book that discusses how to innovate services – Tuned In, by Stull, Myers & Scott. It encourages the reader to listen closely to their markets for signals about what’s really on the minds of the people they serve.

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Change the “Channel”

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this statement: “You know, Gale, once I get in front of a prospect I have no trouble selling them!” “Well, gee,” I want to respond but restrain myself, “that’s a real surprise!”

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