EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY |
CPAs WHO SEEK TO DEVELOP A
BV NICHE should first determine
the areas in which the firm can
demonstrate expertise to referral sources.
Prospects want to know that a firm
understands their business. CPAs need
technical training and specific valuation
credentials to become credible providers
of BV services.
CLIENTS SEEKING A
VALUATION typically rely on
professional advice about whom to
engage. That makes the individual who
will recommend the firm the important
party to reach, rather than any
particular client. CPA/ABVs should
organize referral sources into A-, B-,
and C-lists. Face-to-face contact with
A-list sources is the most powerful
marketing tool.
INDEPENDENCE RULES
PROHIBIT CPAs from performing
BV services for attest clients, but
nonattest clients provide opportunities.
CPAs should make sure all partners
understand and help market the firm’s BV
practice.
A WEB SITE IS OFTEN THE
FIRST CONTACT with potential
referral sources and clients. All
information on the Web site should be
current. A user-friendly subscription
mechanism and format help.
TRAINING PEERS BUILDS
CREDIBILITY. CPA/ABVs should
try to speak at valuation conferences
and seminars and write articles for
publication. Teaching through a
professional association or at local
colleges helps practitioners stay
current.
CPA/ABVs BENEFIT FROM
SERVING on BV association or
state society committees. Networking
with other BV professionals can lead to
cross-selling opportunities. Other
networking ideas are conducting BV
seminars for referral sources (offering
CLE and CPE credit) and sponsoring
informal receptions with referral
sources. | Barbara Walters Price, senior
vice president of marketing at Mercer
Capital Management, oversees the firm’s
marketing strategy, including business
appraisal product development. Price
speaks and writes frequently on valuation
topics. Her e-mail address is
priceb@mercercapital.com . CPA/ABVs
can find practical marketing tips on her
blog, BWPrice’s Marketing U, www.bwprice.blogs.com
. |
usiness valuation (BV) is a
fast-growing niche with a unique marketing
challenge. Valuators such as CPA/ABVs assist in
mostly one-time engagements—expert witness and
litigation services, estate and gift tax
compliance, business purchases and sales, goodwill
impairment analyses or intellectual property
valuations. That makes marketing them different
from marketing traditional tax and compliance
work. To build this unique niche here’s what you
can do to make the phone ring—again and again—with
real prospects.
IDENTIFY YOUR INDUSTRY STRENGTHS
Almost every practice develops an
industry specialization over time. You can use
yours to increase your BV marketing effectiveness.
The first step is to determine your firm’s
industry specialty (such as construction,
restaurants or retail). List current and past
clients and the industries in which they operate
and note the client-base concentrations that
distinguish your firm from the competition. That’s
where you can demonstrate expertise to referral
sources. Write a simple statement about how your
firm’s service is special—then use it as the basis
of your campaign. Marketing should address the
audience where you have depth of knowledge.
“Prospects want to know you understand their
business,” says Donna Erbs, marketing director of
Anders, Minkler and Diehl LLP in St. Louis.
Presenting your firm as an industry specialist
doesn’t close the door to other types of BV
engagements, either. On the contrary, industry
specialization expands your efforts to those
outside the specialty, some of whom will see the
firm as a valuation resource first.
Growth Area
A survey of 70 top 100 firms
showed 89% planned to increase
business valuation services.
Source: Accounting
Today.
|
PINPOINT YOUR MARKET
Because the ultimate user of a
valuation typically relies on a professional’s
advice about whom to engage, referral sources are
a BV practice’s lifeblood. Thus the individual who
will recommend your firm, rather than any
particular client, is the important party to
reach. A “referral source becomes your annuity,”
says Ed Morris, CPA, of CDH Valuation Services LLC
in Itasca, Ill., and your goal is to locate the
right ones for your firm’s technical strengths.
To build a BV practice, your firm needs to
market to appropriate sources such as
For calculation of business
damages: litigation attorneys, corporate
attorneys and insurance companies.
For divorce: divorce
attorneys and mediators.
For employee stock ownership
plans: business owners, CPAs and trust
officers.
For estate and gift tax
compliance: trust and estate attorneys, tax
attorneys, trust officers, insurance advisers and
investment advisers.
For goodwill impairment analysis:
CPAs and CFOs.
For intellectual property
valuation: CPAs, CFOs and corporate
attorneys.
For purchase or sale of a
business: business owners.
Begin With the
Basics A CPA designation
alone is not enough to make you a credible
provider of BV services. You need
technical training and specific valuation
credentials. The AICPA offers the ABV
(Accredited in Business Valuation)
designation. For requirements go to
www.aicpa.org/BVFLS and see “ Resources ” for
more information.
|
TARGET YOUR SOURCES
Targeted marketing helps you woo BV referral
sources efficiently. Identify your best,
second-best and third-tier prospects and rate them
A, B and C. A-tier sources likely are few in
number, but they will be the best source of
interesting, profitable engagements. You seek
top-of-mind awareness with those who can refer
business to you, so make your contact with the A
group highly individualized and frequent. Find
reasons to meet with them face to face. Referral
sources in the B tier, which have the potential to
become A’s with relatively little effort, call for
an individual approach, too. Focus on moving them
to the A-list. Face-to-face contact is the
most powerful tool at your disposal, says CPA/ABV
Harold Martin, partner-in-charge of BV and
litigation services for Keiter, Stephens, Hurst,
Gary and Shreaves PC in Glen Allen, Va. “Referral
sources and prospects have to trust you, and
that’s only going to happen face to face,” agrees
Morris. Having breakfast or lunch with a
referral source, taking in a ballgame together or
just dropping by an A or B source’s office to say
hello are simple, powerful networking activities.
You also can hand-deliver a service proposal or
even a final invoice, attend trade association
meetings, ask a referral source to be a cospeaker
or a coauthor with you, and conduct quarterly
“how’s business?” meetings where you discuss
their business challenges and
opportunities. Referral sources in the C
tier are the most plentiful. Although they
certainly are valued, too, the most effective
marketing to this group is by informing them of
what your firm is doing in the BV area in
newsletters, monthly calls and on your Web site.
CROSS-SELL WITHIN YOUR FIRM
Independence rules prohibit CPA firms from
performing BV services for attest clients, but you
can provide BV services to nonattest clients
within your firm. Such cross-selling is akin to
picking low-hanging fruit. It helps to make sure
all partners understand the nature and benefits of
your firm’s valuation services. “Monthly marketing
meetings are a great communications tool,” says
Barbara Oswalt, CPA/ABV, a partner with Hoyman,
Dobson and Co. PA in Melbourne, Fla., who uses
monthly team meetings to update partners on the
activities and services of other areas of the
firm. Martin swears by monthly marketing meetings
and in-house seminars, too. “We constantly
reinforce things our peers should be looking for,”
he says.
MAKE A PLAN AND A BUDGET
Marketing plans don’t require detailed
manuals, so keep yours simple. Before you add a
strategy or action to the plan, ask yourself,
“Will this ultimately make the phone ring?” Pare
your program down to crystal-clear, actionable
goals, such as “I will have lunch with two current
or potential referral sources every week.” Make
different marketing plans for your A- B- and
C-lists. You have to invest in the
marketing effort, and that means budgeting for it.
There are two possible approaches here. You can
forecast expected future revenues and then set
your marketing and business development budget to
support activities that will help you attain your
goals. Or set your marketing objectives and then
determine the cost to reach them, giving priority
to the activities that produce the highest return
on investment. In either case, spend
at least 2% of your firm’s gross
revenue on marketing activities and plan to
increase that to 3% to 5% (or more) over time.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Besides the all important face-to-face
networking, there are other tools you can use to
attract BV clients. Not every tool mentioned below
is right for every firm or professional. Choose
those that will work best for you.
Newsletters. It is vital
to communicate regularly with all
segments of your referral base. Whether delivered
in print or by e-mail, newsletters disseminate
information about your firm and the profession and
help establish credibility. You can have a
business valuation newsletter separate from your
firm’s general corporate newsletter or incorporate
BV content into it. Firms that market to an
industry niche typically have industry-specific
newsletters with BV content. If creating
customized content for a newsletter is not
possible for your firm, you can purchase “canned”
BV newsletters that are personalized with your
firm’s logo and contact information. Practice
Development Institute offers eight valuation
and/or litigation support newsletters in both
print and electronic formats (
www.pdiglobal.com ). Valuation Information
Inc. offers three print newsletters ( www.valuationinformation.com
). You also can send e-mail notices to your
referral base of gift and estate attorneys when a
new tax court case of interest is announced or
even e-mail them articles and columns from the
JofA or other publications.
Web sites. Your firm’s Web
site is more than an electronic billboard. It’s an
important and often overlooked business-generation
tool. Bob Grossman, CPA/ABV, a partner at
Grossman, Yanak and Ford LLP in Pittsburgh, says
many BV opportunities come directly from his
firm’s Web site. A Web site’s strength is
its unique ability to use technology to involve
readers in different ways. Content and navigation
are the keys to an effective Web site. Posting
valuable, easily accessed data is an excellent way
to interest readers. Keep the copy brief and
informative and have a visual format that’s easy
to understand. Present information in short
paragraphs that lead into bulleted copy.
Provide a user-friendly subscription mechanism
and post your firm’s newsletters, partner
speaking-engagement schedules (with related
handouts) and articles written by staff. Make sure
all information posted to the Web site is current.
Successful client case studies are another
powerful and underused tool. A Web site
with text and graphics, promotional offers, data
and devices to elicit reader response is a form of
direct marketing (see “
Be a Standout on the Web ,” JofA ,
Apr.01, page 43). You can use yours to showcase
your firm’s specialized services. Anders, Minkler
and Diehl LLP ( www.amdval.com
) and CDH Valuation Services LLC ( www.cdhvaluations.com
) use a separate site with a distinct Web
address specific to their BV practice.
“Your Web site is often the first point of
contact between your firm and a potential referral
source or client. It’s very helpful in the selling
process,” Martin says. His firm’s Web site lists
what a client should look for in a business
appraiser and describes each BV credential.
Speaking engagements and articles.
Never forget that clients and
referral sources seek a firm with a reputation for
expertise, which is built in large part through
speaking engagements and published articles.
“Writing and speaking activities let us
demonstrate our knowledge and expertise in a
particular area and educate the audience in the
services we provide,” says Tracy Crevar Warren,
marketing director of Dixon-Hughes PLLC, in High
Point, N.C., and often-published former president
of the Association of Accounting Marketers. “In
the process, we develop some trust factors that
must be present for someone to want to work with
us.” Spend the time to consider which
venues best reach the audience you prefer. If your
firm has industry specializations, look to
industry groups, publications, associations and
conferences. Neil Beaton, CPA/ABV, Grant Thornton
partner in charge of valuation services in
Seattle, for example, spoke on the topic of
valuation and succession planning at a conference
of the National Association of Electrical
Distributors (NAED). “After the speech I got three
valuation engagements on the spot, and NAED asked
me to speak again on the topic,” he says. Although
walking away from a speech with an engagement is
rare, it isn’t unusual for a prospect to contact a
firm weeks, months or even years later. Beaton
says a client held on to his card and contacted
him four years after one talk. Also offer
to speak at business valuation conferences and
seminars and present articles for publication in
BV journals. Training your peers is a powerful
credibility builder.
Teaching BV courses. For
many professionals, teaching business valuation
courses through a professional association or at
local colleges or universities is an important
part of the marketing mix. Teaching forces you to
stay current on all aspects of the discipline,
builds professional credibility and is personally
rewarding.
Advertising. Advertising
is primarily a brand-building activity. Targeted,
ongoing advertising demonstrates devotion to an
industry and puts your name in front of those who
can use your services. While it’s unusual to
receive a prospect call based on a specific ad, it
does happen. But effective advertising is based on
frequency. Anders, Minkler and Diehl spreads its
advertising dollars over several publications and
supplements the ads with articles written by
business valuation professionals and press
releases. “Whether an ad appears one month or not,
it seems as though we are always present in that
publication,” Erbs says. Target the industry or
professional publications your referral sources
read, such as legal journals, and be prepared to
commit to an advertising strategy for a lengthy
period of time before you can expect to see
results.
Professional and community networking.
Serving on BV committees of your
professional associations or state society helps
build credibility, gives you a chance to network
with other BV professionals and can lead to
cross-selling opportunities. Community involvement
in your hometown is another networking tool, as
well as a way to give back. Conduct BV seminars
for your referral sources and offer CLE and CPE
credit (the NASBA Web site, www.nasba.org
, has a list of frequently asked questions
related to CPE). Sponsor receptions with referral
sources in an informal setting. A low-budget way
to put your name in front of clients and referral
sources you know is to send articles about topics
that interest them along with a brief note.
Hiring a marketing director.
A marketing professional brings a
set of skills to the process if your firm is large
enough. The larger your practice grows, the less
time you will have to devote to marketing your
firm. If you do decide to get help, look for
someone with experience in professional services,
an education in marketing and business
development, and an ability to think
strategically. A good marketing director will make
your firm look like a cohesive organization rather
than a collection of individuals and will build
brand equity.
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
The lure of varied, more interesting and
higher-fee engagements brings many practitioners
to business valuation. Begin today to set the
foundation: Analyze your firm’s client base to
determine its industry specialty; locate the best
referral sources for its technical strengths; and
write a simple position statement about what makes
your firm’s service unique. Use it as the
framework for your promotional efforts—your
publicity mailings, Web site and advertising—to
get your targeted group to think of you first when
it needs a business valuation. Ongoing technical
training is a prerequisite for technical
excellence and helps build a solid reputation, but
constant marketing is a prerequisite for practice
growth. Marketing makes the phone ring.
RESOURCES
|
ABV designation
For information about the AICPA’s
Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV)
designation, go to
www.aicpa.org/BVFLS , call the ABV
Hotline at 212-596-6211 or download the
ABV Handbook at www.aicpa.org/download/abv/abv_handbook.pdf
.
Conferences The
Accounting Firm Marketing Forum
November 10–11, 2005 AICPA
Boardroom New York (To
register call toll-free 866-265-1975;
outside the U.S. 201-938-3700.)
AICPA/ASA National Business Valuation
Conference November 14–16, 2005
Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas
CPE Successful
Strategies for CPA Firms, DVD (#
181831JA); VHS (#181830JA).
Publications
AICPA Statement on
Standards for Consulting Services no. 1,
C onsulting Services: Definitions
and Standards, paperback (#
005104JA); standalone document (#
055015JA).
CPAs That Sell: A
Complete Guide to Promoting Your
Professional Services, hardback
(# 090420JA).
How to Hire a Marketing
Director and Make It Work, The
Association for Accounting Marketing and
AICPA, paperback (# 090415JA).
Marketing a Consulting
Niche, paperback (# 056508JA).
Mastering the Art of
Marketing Professional Services: A
Step-by-Step Best Practices Guide,
paperback (# 090474JA).
Web sites
CPA Marketing Tool Kit,
http://www.aicpa.org/cpamarketing
.
PCPS Firm Practice Center,
http://pcps.aicpa.org .
For a list of AICPA
committees to join, go to
https://volunteers.aicpa.org/default.aspx
. For more information, to
place an order or to register, go to
www.cpa2biz.com or call the AICPA
at 888-777-7077.
Other accrediting groups
American Society of
Appraisers (ASA),
www.appraisers.org .
The Appraisal Foundation,
www.appraisalfoundation.org .
Institute of Business
Appraisers (IBA),
www.instbusapp.org .
National Association of
Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA),
www.nacva.com .
Recommended reading
The Little Red Book of
Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales
Greatness by Jeffrey Gitomer,
Bard Press.
Never Eat Alone: And
Other Secrets to Success, One
Relationship at a Time by Keith
Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz, Currency.
The Rainmaker’s
Toolkit: Power Strategies for Finding,
Keeping, and Growing Profitable
Clients by Harry Mills, AMACOM.
Selling the Invisible
by Harry Beckwith, Warner Business
Books.
Web site
www.BVResources.com has a variety
of BV resources, including a useful list
of “hot links.” | |