Tax season is over, now it's time to plan ahead. 

Four Simple Steps

Hope you had a great tax season. Now that it's over, if advancing your practice is on your agenda, here are some simple tips.

The Quandary

The first phase of any practice, of course, is to garner enough revenue to pay the bills. During this initial stage of their practice development, accountants are willing to take any clients they can get. But once they get beyond this survival phase, most accounting firms face a quandary.

AccountantsWorld asked accountants: "If you could do one thing to improve your practice in the next year, what would it be?" Over 36% of respondents said they would like to get more good clients. Yet when asked what's the biggest challenge they face, over 36% said, "Not having enough time."

How can you get more good clients if you don't have enough time?

The reason most accountants face this problem is that when they had more time in the early stage of their practice, they did not acquire the skills needed for enhancing their practice. However, if you face this dilemma, take hope: you can still turn the situation around by following these four simple steps.

The Solution

1. First, Make More Time

How do you do that? You must make an initial investment of time to make more time.

Take an inventory of your clients. Who are the bottom 20%? Try to get rid of some of them. This may sound drastic, but you have to do it. Raise your fees by 20%. You may well lose a good percentage of those at the bottom, but you'll get more time in the process, while you enjoy the offsetting increased revenue from those that stay. Simply put, it's the best thing you can do for your practice.

2. Add Value to Your Services

Now that you have some extra time, use the techniques described in "Sell without Selling" in the current issue of ABACUS to uncover the pain and problems of your existing clients and help them find solutions.

3. Enhance Communications

Once you improve your services, you will need to educate your clients about the enhancements you've made to your practice. This will not only help you sell your new services, it will also help you strengthen your client relationships.

4. Implement Time-Saving Technologies

Simply by implementing the right technologies, as described in the article "Technology and Practice Development: The 63% Solution" in ABACUS, you can gain hundreds of extra hours.

The Spring 2007 issue of ABACUS contains many useful articles on practice development for further reading. Watch for it in your mail. You may also access the online version of ABACUS by clicking below.

ABACUS Online

What do you think? AccountantsWorld would like to know! Share your views with your peers and be part of the growing AccountantsWorld community.

Thank you.

Dr. Chandra Bhansali
Co-founder and President, AccountantsWorld