At our most recent Managing Partner Roundtable for a BDO Alliance Group,
Bob Lewis spent the day discussing the CPA M&A marketplace, evaluating your succession team, outsourced client accounting services, and how to increase a firm’s advisory revenue.
Some key points included:
- CPA M&A. How do you identify the drivers and that add value to your firm and what drivers detract from firm value? How can you prepare yourself to be in a better place to attract merger or acquisition candidates or be more attractive if you are seeking an upward merger or to sell? What kind of payment structure, timelines, and opportunities are in most deals?
- Succession Team Evaluation. They discussed the core issues of why succession teams fail and how to look for those signals in their firms. The main failure points are their succession team cannot bring in business, they do not think the firm is worth what the partners are selling it for, many do not want to make the investment to own, and some cannot raise the capital to buy. They went into detail on how incoming partner buy-ins could work.
- Outsourced CAS. One of the participants has over a dozen full-time professionals in India which help him focus on efficiency and help combat the hiring issues in the U.S. A point was does it make sense to take a network like that to offer to other local firms who need help and let them use your network at a cost to support their clients?
- Advisory Services. This was a big point of discussion because it led to understanding how internal personnel resources are being used on clients who pay less at the potential revenue and value-added expense of higher-paying, more complex clients. Ones who could use the advisory services and will pay for their value. The discussion went deeper into the reasons why so many firms struggle to deepen their advisory services revenue. Two core reasons are: the people who could deliver advisory services internally are often the busiest people in the firm and many of the advisory needs require bringing in external providers that make the partners uncomfortable introducing into their audit and tax clients.
The Visionary Group can create a custom session for your Managing Partner group or firm retreat. We prefer an interaction-style session rather than a lecture format. Visionary can bring in outside experts to join a session with you as well. Call us to learn more. 800.995.9186.