It happens each year like clockwork. Tax season ends, everyone takes time off to recharge their batteries and then it’s full steam ahead — working to accomplish everything that wasn’t considered urgent since mid-January. Atop the priority list for May, June and perhaps well into the summer, is a renewed infatuation with practice development. Unfortunately CPAs don’t stop long enough to make sure they are engaging their energies in the right initiatives to produce the desired results.

Before you dust off your prospect list and crank up the marketing machine this year, step back and conduct a little due diligence. Make sure you’re focusing your time and resources on the activities that will enable you and your firm to achieve its growth goals. In an environment where new client opportunities are plentiful, but not always desirable and when retaining staff is a constant battle, you need to focus on the right results-oriented actions.

Seven Steps to Successful Growth

Don’t worry, this self-assessment won’t take long, but it can be some of the best time you spend all year in determining what you needed to drive smart practice growth.

1. Adopt a Growth Focus. There is a lot of buzz about marketing, one of many tools that can help your firm reach its desired destination. But marketing alone will not be enough to sustain your firm’s ongoing growth. You need to integrate many tools and strategies that take advantage of the unique market opportunities of your firm. Tools that are often included in a firm’s growth plan are niche development, marketing, mergers/acquisitions, product innovation, technology and targeted sales activities, to name a few. Although there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution, it’s important to focus on the end result in order to find the right mix of tools, enabling you to achieve success.

2. Audit Your Growth Plans. Take a hard look at everything you and/or your firm are doing to build the business. Be tough — put your auditor hat on during this exercise. In your due diligence, seek answers to the following, which are key to your improved growth:
    
• Do you have clearly-defined growth goals?
• Do these goals tie into the firm’s growth agenda?
• Will achieving these goals help to make your firm a place that people will enjoy coming to work more each day?
• How are these growth goals communicated to the firm?
• Does the firm have a coordinated growth plan that ties firm growth goals to the marketing strategies and business development initiatives?
• Are there substantial untapped opportunities that you are missing?

3. Adopt a Litmus Test for Growth. Time is always at a premium. The average CPA is reported to have at least 500 hours of non-chargeable time during the year. The challenge is to make the most of the time you have, focusing your attentions on the things that will yield the results you are looking for. So a little reprioritizing can go a long way in making your day more enjoyable and fruitful. Ask why you are doing each of the things in which you are spending time and money. Does it still make sense to serve on a certain committee or would your time be better spent on a new board? Determine if each activity or groups of activities are producing results.
   
   Prior to engaging in growth-related activities, ask yourself three simple questions. This easy-to-use gauge will help ensure that you and your firm are focusing on the right stuff. From advertising to sales calls to niche development, apply these power questions before committing any resources. Will the initiative result in one of the following:
   

• Growth of the organization?
• Growth of its people?
• Growth of its clients?

4. Improve Your Recruiting Results by Applying Growth Principles. Since staffing shortages continue to challenge CPAs and financial firms, you may decide it will be more important for you to focus a good portion of your time seeking new employees as opposed to new clients. What a perfect time to review your recruiting efforts for both recent graduates and experienced professionals alike. Is there an opportunity to improve your ability to attract new staff by aligning activities related to growth with your recruiting? Get your marketing and recruiting professionals together to collaborate on how to bolster your firm’s efforts. Pull in your recent hires to help identify best practices they found attractive during their recent job searches. Poll them about the new social networking tools such as LinkedIn and MySpace. Consider adding them to your firm’s recruiting efforts. With a better system for getting the right people in place, it will be easier to focus on developing new business.

5. Build Growth Skills. While practice development is not taught in most accounting curriculums, nor do most firms offer business development training in their continuing education programs, these skills need to be learned if we are expect our staff to help grow our practices.
   
   Growth skills can include core competencies such as sales, client service, networking and presentations skills. What are you doing to provide these skills to your staff? There are a number of options for in-house classes or outside training programs to provide these essential skills. Don’t underestimate the importance of mentoring the next generation as a part of this skill-building process. It may be one of the most valuable uses of your business development time.

6. Measure ROI. One of the biggest struggles we financial types have with investing in growth activities like advertising, Web sites and marketing is the inability to correlate the expenditure with top-line and bottom line results.
   
   To get a better read on your ROI, track each activity or groups of activities working in tandem. For example, track the number of sales calls you go on each month. Identify how many of those calls turned into the opportunity to propose some new business. Determine how many of those proposals resulted in new business. Your results will allow you to not only uncover trends but understand the costs and the associated payoffs with the growth process. These trends will become clear over time and then you will be well on your way to getting more return from what you already have.

7. Celebrate and Reward Success. Everyone loves to be a part of a winning team. Unfortunately we get so busy that we often forget the importance of celebrating our success. While CPAs are well paid, money alone is not enough. To maximize your growth efforts, it is extremely important to recognize the contributions that individuals are making. This recognition not only helps grow the firm, but it also motivates your people to grow throughout the process. As a result, it will foster the activities necessary to help your staff take your firm to the next level.

So take the smart practive development challenge. Conduct some due diligence before moving forward. It will be well worth your while. Now is the perfect time before you jump back into another routine. Not only will it open your eyes to wasted time and resources, but it will guide you to improved growth by greater efficiencies and identification of missed opportunities. Here’s to gearing up for growth.

Tracy Crevar Warren, president and founder of The Crevar Group, advises professional services firms striving to grow and maximize performance. Warren was named by Accounting Today as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the accounting industry. She is an author and frequent speaker on various growth, business development, and marketing topics for local, regional, national and international audiences. Warren can be reached at (336) 889-GROW (4769).