Power Partners for Accountants and CPAs

Referral partners. Strategic partnerships. Power partners. These are a few of the terms used to define the same idea – developing supportive relationships with other professionals that are mutually beneficial to the growth of your businesses. Creating a strategic alliance with another individual or company for referrals for your accounting or CPA firm is one of the most powerful ways to build a high-quality client base in competitive Pennsylvania.

If you are a small- or medium-sized accounting firm, you don’t have as many resources in-house as large firms do, but you can mimic larger firms and even out-position them, because smaller firms have more flexibility to be agile and can respond to market forces more quickly than large firms can. Leverage your power as a smaller firm by creatively positioning yourself within a network of powerful partners.

Having strategic partnerships can even give you opportunities to take on projects or bid on larger opportunities that you may not have been able to access before, due to lack of in-house expertise. 

Your partnerships may take a variety of forms, depending on your clients’ needs. These arrangements must be mutually beneficial.

A smaller accounting firm may partner with a larger firm when the smaller firm offers a specialized niche that the larger firm may not offer or when a larger firm wants to offer a competitive bid that contracting with a smaller firm might allow them to do. The smaller firm might also benefit its clients by leveraging some of the larger firm’s offerings.

The terms depend on your perspective: if you are the smaller firm, it’s an upstream alliance; if you’re the larger firm, it’s downstream.

Partnering with individuals or firms in other financial fields can be fruitful when there are additional financial services that you do not offer (and do not intend to offer). These partnerships may include financial advisors, auditors, forensic accountants, or specialists in a niche such as intellectual or investment property. 

Your clients require many other professional services that can complement the services that you offer.  The options are as broad as your clients’ needs:

• Legal services agencies

• Real estate agents – business, residential, rental – depending on your clients’ needs

• Insurance agents, particularly those in niches your clients might need

• Mortgage brokers

• Loan officers and bankers

• Health insurance providers for small businesses and entrepreneurs

• Business coaches

• Strategic planning experts

• Property or business valuation

• Marketing and advertising

• Social media services

• Web design and IT services

Your first step in determining where to start with strategic partnering is to determine your ideal client and the types of services your ideal client needs. What types of clients do you like working with the most – entrepreneurs, small businesses, individuals? Within your preferred category, who are your best clients? With these clients in mind, in what direction would you like your firm to grow? What kinds of services do you want your firm to offer in the future?

After asking yourself these questions, ask your best clients a few. You may already have had a client ask if you knew someone who could offer some service – business insurance, for instance, or investment planning. Talk to your best clients about what other services they need. Be honest and tell them you’d like to be able to make valuable referrals for your clients when they need other services, so you’d like to know where their needs lie. This honesty will build your relationship, as your clients will see that you sincerely want to provide them with the best and that their opinions are important to you. 

Once you have a list of services, choose a few that were mentioned the most. Start small, with just a few partnership ideas, so that you have time to carefully research the best options in the area. Your clients may be able to give good reviews of the people who provide services to them but do your own research. PSTAP’s network is an excellent resource for upstream, downstream, and horizontal partnerships. Get to know other members to see how you may mutually benefit each other.

Keep in mind that this partnership is to be exclusive. If you enter into an alliance with a business insurance agent, for instance, that agent should refer clients only to you for the particular accounting services that you offer, and you should refer clients only to him for the type of insurance he offers. 

Once you have decided on someone, introduce yourself by phone or email and express an interest in exploring the possibility of working together in a mutually beneficial partnership. If you can name one of your clients as a referral, so much the better. Offer to take the person out for lunch to discuss your ideas.

Get to know each other’s businesses a little more and get a sense of whether or not you are a good fit, both professionally and with respect to your personalities. You need to like the person you will be partnering with. Take some time, perhaps meet a few times to hash out details, and offer a short trial period of about 4-6 months to determine if the partnership works for both of you.

Try this with a few different service areas and be sure you benefit each other. If you choose your power partners strategically, you will see tremendous growth in your CPA or accounting practice in the direction that you want it to go.