Workshops

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 and really impact the firm’s top line, you’ll want to attend this interactive course where we’ll learn to:

• Define the kind of marketer and business developer you are committed to be
• Engage in personal marketing activities that build your personal brand and the firm’s brand, including:
  • Networking and association involvement
  • Speaking and teaching
  • Article writing
  • Online social networking
• Gain confidence in targeting specific prospects, outreaching to strangers, and asking for opportunities
• Develop long-lasting referral source relationships
• Develop and articulate the right unique selling or value proposition for each circumstance
• Track and report your personal marketing activities to monitor your progress and share your successes with others, too

Leave this session prepared to begin building business like a black belt!

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

Business Development Workshop (½ -day OR 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 apply our proven sales methodology to your sales opportunities. In the full-day segment, we’ll explore:

• The emotions and needs that drive our clients to choose to work with us
• Methods for developing personal and professional rapport, deepening our relationships, and gaining our clients’ and prospects’ confidence in sharing their true needs and wants
• Qualification techniques and other identification methods to help you uncover client and prospect needs
• Approaches to use to articulate your solution, product, or service – and knowing when to “tell” versus “ask”
• Closing approaches that will help you win engagements
• 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.

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

Coming Together – The Art of Merging (1-day workshop)

Whether you’re bringing in a new partner from the outside, purchasing a niche specialty practice, or merging with another firm, navigating the nuances to ensure success can be tricky. In this session, we’ll remove the mystique of what it takes to bring two entities together so that you can enjoy the synergies of a larger, stronger practice. We will discuss best practices including:

• Identifying the due diligence that HAS to be done – and not just the financial aspects – to be sure you’re a fit or identify red flags to address before moving to the next phase
• Establishing a means for valuing the practice that will work today and in the future
• Updating your partner agreement and your buy-sell agreement to ensure it addresses the critical components to minimize conflict in the future
• Developing a communications plan to share your strategies with your team, clients, and others in the right timing
• Integrating your partners, teams, and clients so they think and act as one

Leave this session with a clear action plan of the steps you need to take to set you and your team up for a successful merger!

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

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.

When you attend this session, you will learn how to maximize the value of your client relationships, beginning with your first meeting with a prospect during the sales process, and identify methods 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
• Learn about your client’s business by understanding their industry and the unique challenges, cycles, and other impacts on their success
• Become indispensable to your clients by being a trusted advisor – or coach – rather than just a “reporter” of historical information or deliverer of goods
• Put processes in place 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
• Develop 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!

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

Delivering Compelling Presentations (1-day workshop)

Presenting your ideas with power and persuasion is a critical leadership skill and is both an art and a science. In this one-day workshop, you’ll discover the nuances of developing and delivering powerful presentations tailored for your audience, including:

• Exploring the natural inhibitors we experience when speaking to groups of people
• Learning how to research, organize, and develop effective presentations
• Understanding important presentation and facilitation techniques to keep your audience engaged
• Practicing your skills to become a more powerful presenter

Leave this session with the confidence to develop and deliver effective presentations to ensure that your message is heard!

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

Delivering Exceptional Client Service (1-day workshop)

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 As a result, we may not spend enough time training or communicating on this critical subject to explore the most important elements of exceptional client service. In this session, we will explore critical elements of client service and project management concepts, including:

• Understanding and confirming the needs of your client
• Managing your clients’ expectations effectively, including:
  • Scoping services and developing a budget to address those needs
  • Identifying milestones and managing progress against them using effective meeting and communication strategies
  • Managing budget against the original scope and milestones, including billing and relieving WIP
  • Managing and communicating scope changes when needed
  • Learning how to say no, or propose alternatives to what the client seems to be asking
• Maintaining a high level of internal team communications so that all of your service providers are unified in the approach to service for each client
• Managing client upsets and disappointments when they occur
• Taking responsibility and learning from service failures
• Learning how to ask for constructive feedback and take it, too

Leave this session with a more thorough understanding of the “art” of client service to genuinely differentiate your firm in the way you serve your clients and deliver value!

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

Developing Niche Opportunities (1-day workshop)

Every CPA or consulting firm that starts or acquires a niche practice does so with optimism and the intent to better serve their clients and increase firm profits. So why doesn’t it always work out that way? Committing to develop a niche and then doing so are significant undertakings that require strategic insight and then strong tactical execution. In this workshop, we’ll provide real-world solutions to the toughest challenges and traditional constraints you’ll find when starting and managing a niche consulting practice. We’ll begin by discussing how to determine which niche practices you should invest in to leverage the real opportunities available from your niche.

In this 1-day workshop, we’ll provide you with tools and know-how to enable you to:

• Identify your niche practice value proposition
• Objectively evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your niche
• Select your niches to maximize success
• Apply important niche leadership behaviors
• Staff and resource your niches
• Integrate your niche into the firm’s departments and service areas
• Develop marketing and cross-selling strategies to ensure your niche success

Develop synergies between your core services group and niches to allow you to successfully grow new practices.

Developing Your Advisory Skills (1.5-day workshop)

This workshop can be segmented into a virtual webinar series, a single-subject conference session, half-day and full-day workshops.

Compliance engagements are important, but they are rarely transformative. If you want to deepen your client relationships and make a real difference in your work, you’ll have to develop both your advisory skills and engagements. To make the shift to strategic advisor, you’ll shed old ideas and ways of working that won’t serve you or your key clients in the future.

In this 1.5-day workshop, you’ll collaborate with peers and experienced facilitators to explore new ways of thinking and behaving and develop an updated, practical approach to providing advisory services to your existing clients. During our time together, you’ll:

• Understand the attributes of an advisory mindset
• Learn ways to create capacity in your schedule so you have time to go deeper with clients
• Identify which clients to approach first and how to get started
• Develop query, strategic analysis and client account planning skills to facilitate client advisory meetings
• Create a structure for what you’ll do during and after advisory meetings
• Gain confidence in your ability to identify opportunities to help clients and then scope, price and sell the identified advisory services
• Explore possibilities for honing specific expertise and developing thought leadership
• Become a bolder, more authoritative coach to clients

This session is designed to address your individual learning style and client mix. Together, we’ll use a blended approach of pre-work, small group work, case studies, exercises, and large group sharing to applying these ideas to audit, tax, accounting and consulting clients. Afterward, you’ll have tools, templates and resources to get started advising clients right away.

Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your skills, value and ultimately, your fees, by becoming a difference-making advisor.

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.

Elevating the Role of HR (1-day workshop)

Today’s firm administrators and human resource professionals face unique challenges. Many times, you are asked to help implement a firm strategy or policy without having input prior to the decisions being made. Or, you find yourself in the middle of strategic or philosophical disconnects between key leaders or departments, attempting to mediate without feeling empowered to truly solve the issues. In addition, you may foresee the need to invest now in developing and retaining your best and brightest with the impending retirements of existing leaders. Attend to gain some perspective and ideas that will help!

In this action-packed session, we will:

• Discuss ways to elevate the HR function to actively participate in driving firm strategy, facilitate open and honest conversations, and have a bigger impact on your firm’s overall success
• Explore a strategic planning methodology that you can deploy to help uncover disparate viewpoints and unify your team around specific strategies
• Understand what motivates your staff and learn specific actions you can take to inspire them and keep them fully engaged with your firm
• Identify your high potential team members and discuss ways to develop them for long term success
• Learn how to organize your team and resources to ensure the successful transition of retiring leaders

Enhance your role as a strategic advisor in your firm, identify, retain, and develop your future leaders, and plan for succession!

Questions about this course or a training? Contact us.