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,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!

Building Trust and Credibility to Enhance Your Professional Image - 1.5 Day Workshop

Participants will:

• Explore what they learned and have applied from the online time management course
• Explore how to convey confidence through a professional appearance and image
• How trust is earned and maintained
• Trust-building behaviors including integrity, accountability, and straight talk
• What to do when trust erodes or is broken
• The fundamentals of forgiveness
• Develop a code of personal conduct or behavior that demonstrates respect for your organization, co-workers, clients, prospects, and others
• Build confidence in making the right choices when ethical issues arise in your business environment
• Understand various CPA firm success metrics, such as fees per partner, income per partner, leverage, chargeability, realization, utilization, and more
• Identify the integration between the various metrics, the risks of statistic manipulation, and the need to focus on the right metrics for your firm
• Discuss ways that you can influence firm profitability in the way you manage your people and engagements

Leave this session with ideas to significantly enhance your professional image and be seen as a credible and sought-after resource!

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.

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 where you will:

• Identify 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
• Understand the means for valuing the practice that will work today and in the future
• Assess the elements of your partner agreement and your buy-sell agreement to ensure it addresses the critical components to minimize conflict in the future
• List the steps to develop an integration plan to ensure rapid assimilation and collaboration
• Assess the elements of a communications plan to share your strategies with your team, clients, and others in the right timing
• Understand how to integrate 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!

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 Compelling Presentations (1-day workshop)

Practicing your presentation in front of an audience, trying new approaches and getting feedback and ideas you could apply elevates your confidence and ability as a powerful public speaker. In this half or one-day workshop, you will:

• Practice extemporaneous or impromptu speaking
• Deliver a 4-6 minute presentation based on the guidelines given in
• the kick-off call
• Identify the do’s and don’ts for delivering powerful presentations
• Receive individual feedback from CC, LLC on their presentation to
• Reinforce what worked and ideas for improvement
• Learn from others’ presentations and the feedback they receive

Leave this session inspired to go deliver your next presentation with confidence and power.

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 where you will:

• Learn strategies to understand and confirm the needs of your client
• Identify approaches to manage 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
• Recall how to maintain a high level of internal team communications so that all of your service providers are unified in the approach to service for each client
• Discover methods to manage client upsets and disappointments when they occur and take responsibility and learn client from service failures. Learn 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!

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
• Understand how to objectively evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your niche
• Discover ways to select your niches to maximize success
• Apply important niche leadership behaviors
• Understand staffing and resourcing for your niches
• Learn methods to integrate your niche into the firm’s departments and service areas
• List 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, and focus precious resources.

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.