Discover how a focus on providing personal accounting advisory services can elevate your practice.

As accounting technology advances, it becomes more and more important for industry professionals to pivot their services from compliance to advisory. By doing so, CPAs will distinguish themselves from their competition and develop a loyal client base.

Sounds great, right? But how can professionals make this key transition to offering accounting advisory services? It’s all about getting personal.

Personal Brand

It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that developing a personal brand plays a key role in setting yourself apart from the competition. There are a number of different methods for doing this, including:

Specializing in a niche market,
Embracing new technologies,
Offering unique accounting advisory services, and
Taking the time to focus on key marketing efforts.

Building a personal brand is critical not just to accounting firms as a whole, but also to accounting professionals as individuals. This recent article from Forbes offers some great advice to company leaders on how to encourage employees to develop their personal brands—and explains why doing so will benefit the firm as a whole.

Personal Relationships

Secondly, beyond just establishing a personal brand, it’s important to encourage the development of personal client relationships. This is an area we’ve covered a lot on the ABLE blog. Check out these articles for some advice in this area:

Perhaps you serve a wide variety of clients and need some help knowing which particular relationships to focus on? We recommend that you evaluate your client base, determine your top 20 percent, and put a particular focus on those relationships.

Personal Service

The last element of differentiating an accounting firm from the competition is to distinguish your practice for its particular accounting advisory services. This can come in a number of different forms. Perhaps you specialize in serving one or more niche industries, such as pharmacies or manufacturers. Maybe your focus is on a particular type of service—outsourced CFO services, for example. Whatever your focus, put effort into making yourself known for your specific specialty or specialties.

On a personal level, you can elevate yourself in the minds of your key contacts by making them aware that you pay to topics that are important to them. We refer to this as positioning yourself as a thought leader. Check out this article on making thought leadership a part of your routine, for more details.

Using ABLE to Develop Accounting Advisory Services

Maybe all of this sounds great, but you find yourself wondering, “Where will I find the time to focus on distinguishing my practice?” That’s where ABLE comes in. Designed specifically for use by accounting professionals, ABLE streamlines your contact relationship management and personal marketing efforts.

To learn how ABLE can help you enhance your personal accounting advisory services, schedule a demo today.