Description of the 11 workshops
1/ Why have employees? The benefits & challenges
of hiring a team
Many practitioners are extremely reluctant to hire employees, thinking they are more pain than they are worth.
Description: This presentation is designed to cover all the tremendous advantages of having a team, big or small, and work though ways of reducing the pain of having employees.
Participants will learn:
- Advantages of having a team
- Overview of how to select a team
- When is good time to hire
- How do you determine wage offer
- How employees can impact your bottom line
2/ Marketing for practitioners
Contrary to popular belief, marketing is not only for those who are looking for new business and have potential to do more work. Let us show you how marketing can significantly increase the bottom line even if you’re busy enough to turn away work.
Description: Promotion of your firm is one of the keys to its success. This workshop will explain from an accounting firm owner’s perspective why establishing a consistent, relevant and memorable presence in the markets you serve is so important.
Participants will learn:
- Answers key questions about why you should market your firm
- An overview of how a marketing plan is created
- How to establish a budget for your marketing initiatives
- Ways to measure results of your marketing efforts
- The role company culture plays in marketing
- Practical ways you can promote your firm in various markets
- Provide ideas that cost very little or nothing
3/ Infusing Efficiency Into Accounting Process
Description: Todays accountant needs to posses more than just accounting skills. Having the right tools that allow the accountant’s ever changing role to produce meaningful results requires knowing when and how to shop for them.
This presentation is going to address:
- Why are you changing your software?
- When is it time to change accounting software?
- What needs to be identified from the beginning?
- Where to start looking?
- Who should you consider?
Participants will learn what their peers from all across North America are both successfully and unsuccessfully doing in their accounting software procurement process. You’ll walk away more informed and better prepared to be able to recommend how to evaluate solutions before making or recommending this investment.
4/ Value billing
Description: How do you determine the value of services provided? How do you determine that amount where you’re charging maximum fee without scaring current or potential clients away? Are there times when charging by the hour is more appropriate than fixed pricing model?
This program will walk you through the thinking process of moving from charging by the hour to charging based on value provided. It will focus on asking the client the right questions and touch on a few negotiation techniques that will greatly increase the odds of achieving much greater profit and satisfaction with every single engagement.
Participants will learn:
- The art of determining the value of services provided
- How to discuss and sell the value of services to clients
- Techniques to improve the client’s perspective of the value of services provided.
- How to discuss fees with client
- Training and motivating your team on how to value bill and discuss fees with clients and potential clients
- When it’s appropriate to charge by the hour rather than using a fixed pricing model
5/ Effective Use of Time Sheets: Discovering the Gold Hidden Within
Description: “I hate time sheets! Why bother with them?” Filling out timesheets is a pain, time consuming and difficult. So why do it? The reason time sheets fail so miserably for most practices is because most practitioners are either not using the right time/billing software and/or they just don’t know how to use it. Proper use of time sheets will, without a doubt, increase firm profits by tens of thousands of dollars, simply and easily.
Participants will learn:
- How to properly use time sheets
- How to generate all the benefits you had no idea a timesheet held
- How you can increase your bottom line immensely with very little effort
6/ Time Management
Description: Running an accounting practice, or any business for that matter, puts a tremendous amount of stress and demand on our time. Each day provides each of us a very limited amount of time. It’s critical that business owners make every minute count. Prioritizing tasks is no easy feat, but good time management can make all the difference between always being stressed (or not) and running a healthy, successful and profitable business practice (or not).
Participants will learn:
- How to prioritize (better sort through tasks)
- What to delegate and what to not delegate
- How to increase production
- How to deal with technology (emails etc.)
- How to deal with time suckers
7/ Hiring, retaining & motivating your team
Description: Selecting the right team members for your organization is far more challenging than most people think- and convincing them to stick around after you’ve invested so much time and money on them can be even harder.
This workshop will provide you with the tools you need to select an employee who will care, be productive, and increase the odds of them staying a part of your team for years to come.
Participants will learn:
- Where to post and how to attract more and better candidates
- What questions to ask to help bring out whatever attribute you’re seeking
- How to “sell” the opportunity of employment to a potential candidate and negotiate a fair wage
- How to increase employee production, ensure everyone is happier and reduce turnover
8/ Pacioli’s Great Lesson: Balance
Description: To be sustainably successful is no small task. It should start with a definition of successful and end with balance. People often talk about finding balance as though it were just laying around somewhere to be found, it is not. Balance requires a careful and measured response to the challenges we meet in becoming successful. It requires focus and calm, concentration and clear thinking. In this session we will speak to these characteristics and how to enhance them.
Participants will learn:
- What the flight and fight potentiating response is
- How to harness it to drive focus and concentration
- How to maximize resilience
- How to become more emotionally intelligent
9/ Mentors fireside chat
Description: By now, you will have heard from all the speakers. No doubt, having now digested the information presented this far, some of the concepts will resonate well with you, while others will be extremely counter-intuitive. This informal panel discussion will be an opportunity to question, challenge and ask them to expend on what’s been presented.
This Mentor Fireside chat is a great time to draw up your list of all the changes you wish to bring to your practice and ensure you have all you need to properly implement those changes and move you towards a better life.
10/ Practice profitability
Description: This presentation is intended to help practitioners identify the factors and adjustments to their practice that will most greatly impact the profits of their accounting practice. We will provide ideas of where to prioritize efforts, concentrating first on the low hanging fruit that will give greater returns sooner rather than later. The workshop will also provide everyone with better insight on how to prepare, read and use financial statements for management purposes to gain tremendous insight on where to concentrate efforts for greater profitability. Also, we’ll provide practitioners with out-of-the-box reports that will help shed light on the firm’s weaknesses and strengths, which is necessary to achieve the greatest profits ever.
Participants will learn:
- Insight on generating the information needed
- How to determine the right benchmark that everyone needs to understand to sustain a very profitable practice
- How to read financial statements
- How to identify key features of increasing profits
- What metrics every practitioner needs to look at every day, week, month and annually
11/ Buying & Selling a Practice
Description: For obvious reasons, few people have much, if any, experience in buying or selling an accounting or bookkeeping practice. We will look at this transaction from both sides of the coin – the buyer and the seller.
Participants will learn:
- What to look for in a buyer when selling a practice
- How to know if a practice that’s for sale is right for you
- The elements that will influence the price, which will help sellers prepare their practice for an eventual sale
- Give the purchaser the tools to negotiate a fair purchase price
- Steps for a smooth transition