Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
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4 April 2016 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com By Gail Perry, CPA, Editor-In-Chief FROM THE EDITOR Published by SouthComm Business Media, Inc. PO Box 803 | 1233 Janesville Ave. Fort Atkinson, WI 53538 920-563-6388 | 800-547-7377 VOLUME 26, NUMBER 3 Publisher: Barry Strobel Editor-in-Chief: Gail Perry, CPA Managing Editor: Isaac M. O'Bannon Assistant Editor: Taija Sparkman National Sales Manager: Jim Colford Columnists: David McClure Doug Sleeter Jim Boomer, CPA.CITP Kristy Short Randy Johnston Rene Lacerte Roman H. Kepczyk, CPA.CITP Art Director: Rhonda Cousin Site Manager: Lester Craft Production Manager: Barb Evenson Audience Development Manager: Terri Petitt Editorial Advisory Board: Bob Cedergren, CPA.CITP, CISA, CISM, CISSP, CGEIT Chris Fraser, CPA.CITP, CISA, MCP Jason Lawhorn, CPA.CITP Gary A. Masino, CPA Ryan McCowan, CPA.CITP Linda O'Neal Troy Patton, CPA David Primes, CPA.CITP Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP Doug Sleeter SOUTHCOMM, INC. 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All trademarks used are the property of their respective owner. 4 A p r i l 2 0 1 6 • w w w . C P A P r a c t i c e A d v Gail is the Editor-in-Chief of CPA Practice Advisor and a CPA. She is the author of over 30 books (including "Mint.com for Dummies" and "QuickBooks 2014 on Demand") and she maintains a small tax practice. She earned a bachelor's degree in journalism fom Indiana University and studied accounting at Illinois State University before starting her professional career at Deloite. Gail is the former publisher and editor-in-chief at AccountingWEB and is a former columnist for the Indianapolis Star newspaper. Accounting Firms and the Art of You can learn the basics from a variety of resources, but to excel at marketing, you must be able to see the path between where you are and where you should be, between who you are and who you can be. W hen you ask a musician the diference between playing or singing the notes on the page and making music, you'll get a response that includes a visualization of the musical experience that involves those notes. W hen a painter looks at the jars of paint and the blank canvas, that artist is visualizing the potential end result and the path the colors will take to get there. Likewise, when a marketing profes - sional is given the task of creating a message that will present your frm and your services to potential recruits and clients, the expert marketer can visualize the desired end result and the creative ways in which to get there. With marketing, as with the other art forms, there are right-brain principles in motion that not everyone can grasp. So don't be alarmed if you, untrained in the art of marketing, cannot connect the dots between where you are and where you want to be. Tat is why we have marketing professionals. Complicating the mater is the situation where an accounting frm tries to market itself as something it is not. No amount of creativity can mask the truth of who you are. Trying to be everything to everyone is a substitute for not embracing your own reality. Marketers will tell you that the place to start is with an analysis of where you are, not who you are tr y ing to atract. Under- stand the features that make you you: your strengths, your idiosyncrasies, your specialties and talents, the things that you do best as well as the things that you do worst. You must know all of that, the colors in your jars, before you can proceed to thinking about the ideal recipient of what you have to ofer. Understanding your frm, your people, your profciencies will prepare you to understand who are the best fts for your oferings and capabilities. Identif ying your potential audi- ence involves not just contemplating the types of clients or coworkers you would like to have, but the combina- tions that will make your frm stronger and beter. You might think it would be benefcial to be the accounting frm for the movie stars, but if your expertise is in serving companies that provide manufacturing or health care, you won't be serving the actor com- munity with the expertise they need, and you won't be improving on your own strengths, solidifying your frm's place in the structure of the economy. By all means, include a willingness to grow and evolve when you think about your future, but frst ground your expectations in the reality that defnes you. Working with a marketing professional, someone who can help you visualize your music and paint your canvas, will advance you in the direction you were meant to atain. — Gail Perry, Editor-in-Chief Follow me on Twiter at @GPerr yCPA GPerry@CPAPracticeAdvisor.com Y ou can go to college and major in marketing , you can take classes, read books, talk to experts, pursue a variety of avenues for gaining mar- keting expertise, and while all of that will be interesting and helpful and may even help you create a boilerplate marketing plan, at the end of the day, marketing is an art form. It's a way of recognizing how to build a conduit between two groups of organizations or beings.