8 tips on how to grow your CA firm Practice

Many of qualified CA’s have this dilemma

1. If I should start my practice or job is better.
2. How I can grow my CA practice?
3. What I need to provide the quality services to my clients.
4. How I will be able to retain my employees in my CA firm/LLP

I know it’s hard because CA’s are not allowed to advertise or solicit clients.Every CA is concerned about how to expand their services as CA’s can’t form a company we have to limit our entity as partnership firm or LLP. When we try to get business via referral there is huge referral commission. Worst thing is sometimes there is a long chain of referrals with their respective commissions. All those commission eat up a lion’s share and the real service provider get a meek amount and even have to book expanses like salary and rent from that. These problems make it hard to provide quality services and to retain quality staff.These kinds of issues we will try to address here in this article. Normally a Chartered Accountant   faces the following problems while expanding their practice.

• I am unable to expand my CA practice as other CA’s I want to introduce as a partner in my CA firm have a lot of expectation and don’t want to enter as a partner. How can I add more and more CA partners to my Firm? Success of a firm depends on number of partners and staff but it’s hard to add new members. How can I add new partners on convenient terms? Most of CA’s face this problem. This is not very difficult but there are some factors you will have to take care
  • First of all prepare a revenue sharing model as per the current situation of your firm. It can differ firm to firm as per its experience and quantum of work. It is hard only because you don’t have organised things well.
    • If your CA  firm is new you won’t be able to pay remuneration so your revenue sharing agreement should be strictly based on sharing of profits from the assignment introduced by the new CA partner. It should clearly define the revenue kept by each partner for the business they bought to firm and this will defer based on various factors like who delivered the actual service.
  • Related Topic:
    Profit sharing based agreement with tenant will also fall in renting 
    • • If your firm is old and you already have some work you can make revenue sharing agreement on profit sharing plus fixed retainer ship per month. This will help you in delivering your services on time and new partners will also have some safety.

• Very low amount of fees is paid by client as there is competition plus I have to pay referral commissions. How can I get good CA business without referrals? If you want to get real business Best way to get business is to establish your expertise and brand value. Keep your knowledge updated and try to bring it on social platforms. Write some good content and publish it on good web portals like www.consultease.com, Money control, Economic times, Taxguru.in Etc. It will bring you organic clients. I know it’s hard and time taking but in long term it is going to help you a lot.
• Lack of networking and connecting skills. How do I improve my networking? You don’t need to visit every event or seminar to increase your networking but what you need is to kill your hesitation and break ice. Move and offer your card and ask for their details. Tea breaks are not for having tea but to break ice so use it for the correct purpose. Once you reach home save numbers of all the cards you collected and draft an e mail with your signature and brief of your services and thank them and tell that it was a nice meeting.
• A lot of time wasted in meetings to seek business. How can I get good quality business without spending a lot of time in meetings? Connect with more and more professionals. Develop a niche area of your expertise so that not only client but professionals working in other areas may refer your services and do the same for them also. Content is the most important thing. Keep writing nice content it will strengthen your profile day by day. Always prepare an agenda for your meeting with clients.

            Once you drafted the agenda send it to client via e-mail and also mention the time allocated to each discussion. When you reach for meeting open your email and take help of it so that no time is wasted in useless discussion. Start with your intro which should be 45-60 seconds and cover all of your strengths. Then ask for their intro and discuss all points one by one.

• No time to sharpen my knowledge. How can I keep updated?Draft a list of questions come into your mind and tries to draft 20-25 questions for each topic. Once you are done with drafting questions try to answer them. This will help you to find the accurate answers. Unless you will have a question in mind you won’t be able to find what points you should remember. Develop a habit to share your knowledge with other professionals. You can use what’s app group for that or can have a meeting once in a week to discuss various updates and amendments.
• It’s hard to find good quality employees as most of them get high paying jobs in MNC’s and big corporate. How can I retain my employees?We are professional and we don’t have any basic knowledge of recruitment but every firm unless it is very bug can’t afford HR to make hiring. You can take care of some points. While taking interview ask their 5 year goal if they have a goal to enter into practice only then they can be of any help. They should be having a passion to gain and update their knowledge and should be ready to work hard. If they are looking for a safe life with fix money they will finally leave your firm. Try to offer them partnership to retain them for long term.
• Clients make long delays in payment of fees. How can I make my clients to pay on time without getting rude?It’s a universal problem and here is a simple solution. Develop a system to handle the entire process of raising bills and follow up. Always ask for advance and don’t start work till the time you receive advance money.

Create an E-mail Id by name of admin or accounts and use that email id to follow up for payments. It will not affect your relation with client as mail from your side will be taken a routine mail from accounts department.

Clearly define the scope of services and document it with signature of both sides. In future if client asks you for something extra (what they will do most of the time) you can quote extra charges for that.

• My office is in one city and it is hard to handle clients in other cities. How can I expand my practice in various cities and states? Your networking will help you in that but in this case you won’t be able to meet frequently. As I told earlier develop a revenue sharing model and a list of benefits the person in other city will be going to have by their association with you. You can find some good profiles in other cities through professional groups on Facebook and Linkedin and then chose the best one and send them your proposal. You will need good negotiation skills. This should be a continuous process because no business can survive without business development.

 If you want to grow your practice and get good quality of work you need to add more and more people having good expertise. Never add dormant or sleeping partners. As they won’t be able to contribute in work but will always have some expectation and you will have to work harder to fulfil their demands also.

Make a clear differentiation between the qualified staff and partners as both of them may work on same assignments. Their responsibility and rights should be clearly mentioned to stop any future dispute

Hope you will grow fast in future. For any help you can mail us at shaifaly.ca@gmail.com