"Clients At The Core is an essential blueprint to helping us all take the next steps. The authors, battle scarred by the evolution of professional firm management and marketing from then to now, have captured the changing needs of the firms in this turbulent new economic era. This is a well-written book that uses plain language to convey practical, well thought-out ideas." -Patrick J. McKenna, a leading international consultant to professional service firms "The authors have captured the changing role of professional services marketing and firm management. There is valuable insight [in this] down-to-earth guide to competing successfully in the new environment." -David Maister, author and consultant "The book is a masterpiece! Aquila and Marcus have produced the essential guide for managing a professional services firm. They've marshaled their considerable real-life experiences and far-reaching vision into a veritable operating manual for the successful firm." -Rick Telberg, Editor at Large, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants "At its heart, this book is the running shoe for legal and accounting professionals who want to put the client first. Following the evolution of the industry over the past twenty-five years, this must-have for every professional services firm is the key to leading in the turbulent and highly competitive waters ahead." -Richard S. Levick, Esq., President, Levick Strategic Communications, LLC coauthor, Stop the Presses: The Litigation PR Desk Reference "Client selection and retention is one of the critical success factors for a professional services firm, and Aquila and Marcus do a masterful job at educating us on the necessary ingredients of each. The chapters on firm governance and paying for performance are thought provoking and certainly challenging to the conventional wisdom. If you want a better understanding of marketing and leading a professional firm in these turbulent times, this book is essential." -Ronald J. Baker, author, Professional's Guide to Value Pricing and The Firm of the Future "Client at the Core is a commonsense approach to keeping your professional services firm relevant in the twenty-first century's client-driven economy. Aquila and Marcus have hit a home run with their insightful analysis and poignant prose." -Jeffrey S. Pawlow, Managing Shareholder, The Growth Partnership, Inc.

Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Today's Professional Services Firm

Business & Money

Aquila, August J.

Marcus, Bruce W.

Economics

wiley

Shows CPAs how to develop sales skills and actively promote their services. Chapters on professional attitudes toward sales, the buying and selling process, adapting to a prospect's personality, overcoming objections, and closing techniques include self-assessment questions, numerous checklists, examples of fact-finding questions, and sample planning forms. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

CPAs That Sell: A Complete Guide to Promoting Your Professional Services

Pitts, Robert A.

American Institute of Certified Public Accountants

Koltin, Allan D.

Practice Development Institute

Professional Development Institute

Everyone wants to work at a successful firm where the rewards are both financial and professional. What makes the top firms successful is not merely superior execution, though that's a good place to start, what makes them stand out is excellence at hiring and keeping the best, and having a smart succession plan in place. Partner compensation can be an effective tool in achieving these goals. Authors Aquila and Rice show how to use recruiting, retention, goal-setting, evaluation, and pay for performance practices recommended by the top CPA firm management consultants. This is the one guide you need, tailored specifically for professional practices, to implement the leading methods to align compensation with performance and strategic initiatives. You get: <ul>
<li>Analysis of leading views on performance management, hiring, and retention</li> <li>Specific, step-by-step guidance on how to implement compensation systems that align to goal-setting and performance measurement</li> <li>Methods for growing the compensation pie to pay for excellent results</li> </ul>
Compensation as a Strategic Asset shows how to align mission, vision, values, strategy, leadership, goal-setting, performance management and compensation to achieve long-term success at your firm.

Compensation as a Strategic Asset: The New Paradigm

Rice, Coral L.

Industries

Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga: a basic bibliography (Research Bibliographies and Checklists)

Literature & Fiction

United States

Tamesis Books

The selection of a managing partner in a professional services firm -- especially in accounting and law -- is just too important and too complex to leave to chance. With the scale of the challenges firms are facing, no firm can afford not to identify and develop a group of partners with the ability to successfully take on the role of managing partner in the future. This monograph lays the groundwork to show firms how to do it -- based on hundreds of interviews with already highly successful managing partners. The right person to lead a major geographic, cross-cultural expansion isn’t necessarily the right person to take tough decisions to correct reducing financial performance or to deal with significant changes in the firm’s business model in response to changes in technology and low cost competition.  For firms, the key is to identify a number of potential managing partners and give them experience of operating in different contexts, which can then be used to determine who is most suited to the challenges the firm faces at the time of the managing partner’s appointment and during their likely tenure.  Making the right call, choosing the right managing partner, is critical to every firm’s future success. Successful managing partners are strong and effective leaders. Leaders whose picture of the future excites and energizes the firm’s partners and people, who help everyone, clients and people, to exceed their expectations and whose personal performance personifies everything the firm stands for.  There’s no getting away from the fact that being a managing partner is a tough job. But with clarity around the behaviors that deliver success, every managing partner now has a chance to truly make a difference

Leadership At Its Strongest: What Successful Managing Partners Do

Lees, Robert J.

Management & Leadership

Bay Street Group LLC

Partners are the culture in a professional services firm – what they believe, what they reward, what they do and how they do it determines what and how things get done. And, if they don’t believe in what the firm is doing, they will never be effective role models who think firm first and actively bring the whole of the firm’s services to their clients. In this brief book, the authors identify six major challenges that firms need to address to engage their partners and to ensure everyone moves forward together. They are: 1. Un-motivational firm vision. 2. Lack of clearly defined core values. 3. Lack of clarity around what being a partner means. 4. Ineffective or non-existent partner performance reviews. 5. Performance systems not tied to strategic initiatives. 6. Lack of successful firm leaders. Most firms consider these six challenges to be merely “touchy feely” aspects of running a professional services firm. They take time to implement and the common response is that “we have clients to serve and this stuff just detracts us from our real job.” But unless you embrace these challenges and get your partners actively engaged and performing for the firm and its future, you may find yourself without clients and without a viable future.

How to Engage Partners in the Firm's Future: The Secrets Every Leader Needs to Know

Accounting

Compensation is the largest expense that a firm incurs. And yet, few firms really manage it well. The trick is realizing it is more complex than just splitting the pie.The crucial issues of compensation and performance are inextricably linked. In this important resource, experts August Aquila and Coral Rice offer a unique perspective on how you can align your compensation and performance management plans in order to boost performance, maximize profits, and keep both your staff and clients happy.This companion to Aquila and Rice’s successful AICPA publication, Compensation as a Strategic Asset, will pick up where that guide left off, offering readers the “Why, What, and How” for compensation plans filtered through the lens of performance management.The authors convey, in the simplest and clearest terms, how firms can improve overall firm performance by engaging in the following activities:Develop a compelling visionDevelop a strategy for what you want to accomplishHave the right systems in place to help achieve the strategyAlign individual goals with firm and departmental goalsCreate an effective performance review systemMonitor performance monthly and quarterly for trendsProvide higher performers with more rewards than average performersUltimately, this guide is based on what other firms are doing, and let's you know why it’s working or why it’s not. By guiding you through a process and providing you with the tools to design a partner and staff compensation plan, Performance Is Everything will help you develop the plan that works for your firm.

Performance Is Everything

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