Seven Steps to Success

DeAnn Hill's four-person firm is located in a Kansas town of 5,000 people--Baxter Springs--which is the hi biggest city in a county with only two CPAs. Hill's clients, mostly closely held family corporations or mom-and-pop sole proprietorships, represent many different industries, and she performs mainly traditional services--compilations, reviews and payroll; reconciling state tax incentives; and job investment credits for business expansions. By following seven simple steps, Hill has been able to integrate progressive approaches into her practice so she can continue to offer quality services to her niche. Her method illustrates a way to combine time-honored; practices with up-to-the-minute approaches to meeting clients needs.  To create a successful practice, Hill has branched out onto the Web, but she has also remained sensitive to her clients' and staff's more basic concerns. 1. Don't underestimate small clients' technology need,. Hill does not want to become complacent about her client base or about her clients' capabilities, so she has begun to investigate online opportunities for her firm and her clients. She has learned about Web page development and taken a CPA WebTrust seminar--the first step to becoming qualified to offer C,PA WebTrust, the se al offering assurance to consumers about online transactions that is available only from specially licensed CPAs. Even among her smaller clients, many have Web sites they use to offer potential customers information or product samples, but some are interested in online retail and wholesale transactions, and Hill believes the CPA WebTrust service will be in demand when they reach that stage. "My clients and I are troth in the education stage," she says, but she wants to continue building her knowledge so she can meet clients' increasingly complicated needs. Moving online to create Web pages or offer the CPA WebTrust seal could mean branching out beyond her immediate community, but Hill believes this will work in her niche. "Family-owned and small companies often like to conduct much of their business with someone from out of town because they don't want neighbors knowing their business." For this reason, Hill tries to focus her recruitment efforts on out-of-towners. "If I hire the local attorney's spouse, the attorney may represent my client's top competitor." She relies on local universities and word of mouth to help in the hiring process. 2. Dare to downsize. At one point, the firm performed government and not-for-profit audits, but Hill decided she was spreading her resources too thin, so she stopped providing these services, letting go of one CPA staff member in the process. "Ironically, we've seen our fees rise as a result," she says. "In a small firm, timing is everything," and during the five years since her downsizing, some of Hill's clients have doubled sales to as much as $4 million a month because of a strong economy. And when those clients needed more complicated consulting services, "we had the time and resources to devote to them." For clients that once needed only traditional services, the firm now also does studies of internal policies and procedures, helps them analyze production and budgeting or performs time management studies. "We help them grasp information they have lost touch with as their companies have grown. The information is easily available, but the clients don't have the time or the knowledge to find it or analyze it. They don't have time to figure out what the numbers mean." Clients aren't always aware of what services they need or what Hill's firm can do for them. "If see a client's internal controls are found to be insufficient in the course of a compilation or bank reconciliation, we talk to the client about how we can help." Because the firm also does PFP and estate work, "we get to know our clients very well. We don't often lose clients because we are so close to them. …

Field of study: Business