Succession planning

According to Doug Sleeter, taking steps to ramp up your tech know-how is good for your firm’s current business and for the value of your firm in the future.

Chris Geier, the newly installed CEO of the Top 100 Firm, shares the details of its leadership planning process, as well as its roadmap to future growth.

Many practice owners have quietly decided that they’re simply going to wind down their practices and walk away -- but it's not as simple as that.

Create a well-thought-out succession plan for your wealth management division that will benefit your family, staff, clients and suppliers.

Only 23 percent of family companies have a robust succession plan in place, according to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, with 46 percent saying they are reluctant to pass the business to the next generation.

In a changing industry, adaptation is key.

Many firms are offering estate planning or wealth management services, but ironically, a lot of CPAs aren’t necessarily ready for their own retirement.

As we reflect on the upcoming year, leaders in mid-market CPA firms need to address five practice challenges as they approach 2017.

If your firm is like many small and midsize CPA firms, you don’t have a formal strategic plan and you don’t set goals or hold your partners accountable for converting a strategy into real live actions that drive growth and per partner bottom line improvements.

The word passion comes up frequently in the context of business strategy for accounting and advisory firms.

It’s the milestone you’ve worked toward for your entire career—promotion to partnership. After the announcement’s been made, you revel in the excitement and recognition of what you’ve achieved.

CPA firms are challenged today by an unprecedented pace of change and intense margin pressure, with no reason to believe the end is in sight.

This past April, I stepped onstage to deliver the keynote address to one of my firm’s largest client conferences for tax. I addressed a group of 1,200 or more professionals almost evenly balanced between men and women. In fact, in EY’s own tax practice, women represent 52 percent of the professionals.

A talent war is taking place as competition intensifies for quality high-level positions.

Many CPA firms have been expanding rapidly, both organically and through mergers and acquisitions. This has included significant geographic expansion beyond the firms’ core locations. It has also included expanding into new areas such as IT-related advisory services.

Joel Sinkin of Transition Advisors explains in this video why the location of a firm is a major factor in its M&A opportunities and value.

Joel Sinkin of Transition Advisors discusses in this video how the retention period can be a key factor when buying or selling an accounting firm.

Joel Sinkin of Transition Advisors explains in this video why valuations of accounting firms that are being bought and sold are on the decline.

Imagine a partner announces their retirement and your firm buys out the equity stake. Five years later, the partner is still working with and controlling the same client relationships as always. Worse yet, the “retired” partner is getting more and more difficult to work with every day but has been fully paid. What do you do?

This column was precipitated by my hearing of the untimely death of a sole practitioner who was a friend. His family wanted to sell the practice and was shopping around for a buyer.