Sales and Marketing

Becoming a Business Development Black Belt (1-day workshop)

Developing new business from existing clients, prospective targets, and referral sources is both an art and a science. If you’re committed to develop your business development skills,impact the firm’s top line and build a practice you love, attend this interactive course where you will:

• Define the kind of marketer and business developer you are committed to be
• Apply personal marketing activities that build your personal brand and the firm’s brand, including:
  • Networking and association involvement
  • Speaking and teaching
  • Article writing
  • Building your social media presence
• Generate confidence in targeting specific prospects, outreaching to strangers, and asking for opportunities
• Learn strategies to develop long-lasting referral source relationships
• Outline and articulate the right unique selling or value proposition for each circumstance
• Recall methods totrack and report your personal marketing activities to monitor your progress and share your successes with others, too

Leave this session armed to develop business like a black belt!

Becoming an Unstoppable Business Developer

Attend this session to gain insights and skills to develop your confidence and ability to become a business developer and drive new resources and revenue for your firm. We will explore five critical business development skills where you will:

• Understand the kind of business developer you are – and strive to be
• Identify key strategic relationships with referral sources, prospects, and clients
• Outline strategies to build your network to expand your sphere of influence
• Identify specific accounts to target to close the right business
• Recite ways to position yourself as a thought leader

Leave this session with specific actions and ideas to master your business development skills that generate new opportunities for your firm.

Business Development & Sales Skills Workshop (1-day workshop)

Attend this course and learn how to identify opportunities with your prospects and existing clients and then package and position your firm’s products and services so that they are understood and accepted. You will also learn how to identify and qualify opportunities while applying our proven sales methodology to your sales opportunities. In this workshop,  you will:

• Recognize the emotions and needs that drive our clients to choose to work with us
• List the methods for developing rapport, deepening relationships, and gaining clients’ and prospects’ confidence in sharing their true needs and wants
• Distinguish qualification techniques and other identification methods to help you uncover client and prospect needs
• Demonstrate approaches to articulate your solution, product, or service – and know when to “tell” versus “ask”
• Describe closing approaches that will help you win engagements
• Generate ideas for managing your personal sales processes and tracking and prioritizing your prospects so you can focus on the most strategic opportunities

Participants will identify one client or prospect opportunity they will approach as a result of this discussion, together with one commitment of a new behavior they will adopt.

Client Retention and Cross-Selling: Mining Gold in Your Own Backyard

Finding new ways to add value for your clients and help them solve problems to achieve their goals is the holy grail of public accounting and critical to retaining clients and growing your firm. Meeting with clients, or mining your existing client base, to understand their needs and uncover how you can address them is essential for the continued success of your firm. In this session, you will:

• Assess methods to deepen your client relationships and uncover new service opportunities
• Identify a consistent cross-selling strategy to address your clients’ needs
• List marketing techniques and activities to ensure client retention
• Discuss methods for tracking your client prospect opportunities to increase your effectiveness

Leave this session with practical, effective client communications and marketing ideas you can implement in your organization to realize immediate results!

Consulting Services vs. Compliance Services: Managing the Difference

CPAs have worked hard to become not just historians (dutifully ensuring clients are in compliance) but trusted advisors (regularly offering fresh ideas, proactively identifying needs, and consistently recommending innovative solutions to client challenges).  You know you can’t continue to market, grow and manage your consulting practice like a traditional compliance practice – but what’s the difference?  In this session, we’ll explore strategies to feed and grow your consulting practice where you will:

• Understand where, how and why consulting fits
• List the differences between consulting and compliance services in your:
  • Business model
  • Staffing
  • Marketing and sales approach
• Recall ways to manage your consulting practice to drive sustainability and profitability

Leave this session with an understanding about the differences you need to apply to gain momentum and growth of the consulting services in your firm.

Creating a True Business Development Culture

Most firms say that they are committed to creating a business development culture and developing new rainmakers to replace the rainmakers who will retire in the next 10-12 years. Yet many struggle to truly achieve these goals. When the right expectations are set and the roles and support are in place, firms experience a real commitment – and real results – in terms of new business. In this session, we’ll explore the “must haves” for a thriving business development culture where you will:

• Understand and identify the four types of business developers on your team
• Identify and develop new rainmakers in your firm and then deploy and support your rainmakers and thought leaders to build future capacity for your firm
• Define your team approach to selling and identify the resources required at each sales stage
• Identify ways to use personal marketing plans to drive participation by all types – and levels - of business developers in your firm

Leave this session with a plan to drive your firm’s marketing and business development culture!

Creative Ways to Deepen Your Client Relationships

Nothing is more important to firm growth and stability than retaining key clients. Attend this session to explore creative programs that firms are using to deepen their client relationships and become an indispensable asset. In this session you will:

• Learn ideas to position yourself as a true trusted advisor and consultant
• Identify methods for ensuring you introduce the right firm services to clients at the right time
• List ways to run client service team meetings that allow you to assess client relationships and strategize to improve them
• Discover easy ideas for staying in touch with clients

Leave this session with practical and innovative client service ideas that will ensure your clients look to you and your firm for services for years to come!

Deepening Your Client Relationships to Enhance Your Value (1-day workshop)

If asked, most of us would say that we’re committed to 100% client referenceability and client relationships that last a lifetime. Yet few of us really measure how we’re doing in this area or what else we can do to better serve our clients. Great client relationship managers learn how to maximize the value of their client relationships, beginning with the first meeting with a prospect during the sales process. In this session you will:

• Understand approaches to build rapport with prospects and clients by:
  • Asking the right questions
  • Applying real listening techniques
  • Uncovering common goals or elements that develop relatedness
  • Discovering your client’s goals, values, and work-style
• Discover strategies to learn about your client’s business by understanding their industry and the unique challenges, cycles, and other impacts on their success
• Identify methods to become indispensable to your clients by being a trusted advisor – or coach – rather than just a “reporter” of historical information or deliverer of goods
• Define processes to proactively understand what issues or challenges your client is facing and how you can help, including:
  • Client surveys
  • Meeting with your clients
  • Client management systems or databases
  • Cross-selling processes
• Identify communications mechanisms that would enhance your client relationship
• Recall internal communications strategies to keep others in your firm informed and current on your clients

Leave this session empowered to deepen – and secure – your client relationships while helping them achieve their goals!

Delivering Exceptional Client Service

In a professional services firm, our people make or break the quality our clients perceive. Still, we seem to take for granted that everyone knows the foundational elements of exceptional client service and may not spend enough time training or communicating on this critical subject. Attend this session to explore the most important elements of exceptional client service including:

• Ensuring that you and your team have a client-centered mindset
• Methods for building rapport and trust
• Developing a problem-solving culture and toolset
• Developing a consistent project management approach
• Follow through and internal communication techniques
• Tips and ideas to enhance your firm’s client service

Leave this session with a more thorough understanding of the “art” of client service and enhance your firm’s ability to make your clients feel valued.

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.