After speaking to the LSIA’s president, I knew I had to keep the program pretty basic. He admitted that many attendees would prefer not to attempt e-filing, something that’s routine to most accountants. He also asked me to stay away from “that Twitter stuff.”

Of course, I included an entire section on social media in my talk because I knew the group would want to know about LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter strategies, even though they may have thought they didn’t want to hear about it.

The talk went well - and I found the group engaging, hospitable and more than anything else, like sponges. They were hungry to hear my main points on retention strategies, something I explained any accounting firm - regardless of size, location or service delivery - wants to know more about, especially in this economy. After my talk, several members came up and told me they were going straight back to their offices to try some of these strategies.

Here are a few retention strategies I presented:

• Contact clients more than once a year. Most accountants are only in touch with their clients before tax season. Instead, find ways to “touch” the client more often to demonstrate how much you really care about their personal and professional lives.
• Pick up the phone and call the client. Most everyone wants to only communicate by e-mail. Skip the impersonal e-mail and pick up the phone. Your client will be really glad to hear from you and will almost certainly welcome the call.
• Discuss what’s changed and what’s new. Tell the client the clock isn’t running, and you want to discuss what’s changed for the client since you last talked, as well as what changes might be in his or her future.
• Meet for coffee, lunch or some other social event. Schedule a time to meet with the client in person, away from the office. This provides a common ground that is usually more relaxed and informal.
• Exchange referrals. This is perhaps the step most accountants forget; you want referrals for your practice, but you also should offer referrals to your clients. You are in a unique position to help virtually any client because of your own client base and the people you know. However, don’t jump in to the conversation like a smarmy insurance salesman; discuss your businesses and then develop referrals.

Believe it or not, as “basic” as these points seem to some, they are very unique to others - especially accountants who have been content for far too long to do business on the golf course or wait for the phone to ring with repeat or new business. Let’s face facts: in today’s business environment, those who wait for the phone to ring aren’t going to survive for the long haul.

This is the first time the AICPA combined the two conferences, and if there is strength in numbers, it’s very evident at this year’s conference, held June 6-9 at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas. Rumors for the number of attendees range from 800 to 1,000+. Pretty impressive.

The exhibitors seem pleased, albeit the occasional grinch that there is too much time between breaks while attendees are in session. There’s also the thinking on the part of attendees, of course, that once you’ve done the trade show floor … well, you’ve done the trade show floor.

The sessions I attended were fine, although there is not much new in terms of trends other than lots of talk about SaaS (Software as a Service) or cloud solutions. There’s quite a bit of buzz about this, despite reports that accountants are still slow to adopt cloud-computing solutions. I think that’s going to change in a big way, thanks to the efforts of many vendors who are implementing and promoting cloud solutions.

Several announcements were made during the show. One event was the Press Appreciation Reception sponsored by SpeedTax and Fujitsu ScanSnap, at which the companies released a new, joint white paper authored by CPA Tech Guru Jim Bourke of WithumSmith+Brown. I understand the white paper will be available soon from SpeedTax and Fujitsu, so as soon as it’s available, I’ll update this post with a link.

CPA2Biz and its CEO Erik Asgeirsson hosted a press luncheon with the company’s six “Trusted Business Advisor” Solutions Partners: Bill.com, Capital Confirmation, Copanion, Intacct, Paychex and XCM Solutions. Applause to CPA2Biz for continuing to grow and serve the market. I’m impressed with Eric’s vision for the company that certainly has taken its share of criticism over the years. They certainly seem to be headed in the right direction.

More to report in another upcoming blog.

I don’t have all the answers,  but the more you read about the integration of networking and social media, the more often LinkedIn pops up. It’s the subject of Forbes and Fortune articles, and within accounting, many authors regularly tackle the ins and outs of LinkedIn as it applies to this profession.

Just recently, Hugh Duffy of Build Your Firm wrote an article, “How Small Firms Can Get the Most Out of LinkedIn,” specifically targeted to local firms trying to make sense of networking and the challenges faced by not only meeting others, but establishing meaningful relationships to exchange referrals.

I think that’s where LinkedIn becomes truly valuable. I often laugh when someone tells me they have more than 1,000 LinkedIn connections. Really? OK, but how many of those 1,000 or so connections do they really know?

I’ve had more than one instance where I’ve tried to use LinkedIn to reach someone else’s contact, or to network one person to another person’s contacts - only to be faced with a non-response or a flat refusal. This tells me that my connections probably don’t know their connections very well or somehow do not understand the value of LinkedIn.

Can we please stop making useless connections just for the sake of hitting a quota? Honestly, if someone asked me to make that kind of connection for them, I would be more than happy to do so. Why? I KNOW all of my connections; they aren’t just random connections I’ve made at networking events.

OK … OK, I know I’m ranting, but I think you get the point. LinkedIn is a great tool to make connections; now let’s start using it a bit more wisely to achieve results.

And, of course, you can find me on LinkedIn.

This is a rhetorical question, of course, because we all have seen terrible presentations from able, smart presenters who think they have to cram as much information on a slide as possible. A 10 column Excel file? Sure, no problem.

How large should the type be? My standard answer is no smaller than 24 points.

I didn’t just dream this up. There’s scientific evidence known as the “8H Rule.” Here’s part of the explanation from PPfaq.com:

The 8H rule says that the maximum viewing distance shouldn’t be more than 8 times the height (H) of the screen; if that condition is met then as long as your text is at least 1/50th the height of the screen, then it’ll be legible at the maximum viewing distance. That assumes that the person in the back row has good eyes, that the projected image is perfectly crisp, and that no other factors interfere. And it’s an absolute minimum, not a recommended size.

A normal screen show slide in PowerPoint is 7.5 inches or 540 points tall, so the absolute, don’t go below it minimum text size would be 540 / 50 or roughly 11 point text. For 35mm slides or good quality overheads, that’s not unreasonable. For screenshow projection, it’s wildly optimistic. You simply can’t form legible text at this height … roughly 12 pixels … in most fonts. For projected 800×600 screens, I’d at least double that, or use 1/25th the screen height to determine minimum text size. That translates to roughly 22 points. Use 24 points to give yourself some extra leeway in case projection conditions or your audience’s vision aren’t perfect (they won’t be).

Now to the question of how much to put on each slide and the font itself. Use something easy to read that is san-serif (block type without the ends of letters versus something more ornamental); I prefer Tahoma and Verdana.

Your PointPoint slides should be simple keyword concepts rather than complete sentences so you can avoid the trap most speakers fall into: reading their slides. However, if you must put bullets with sentences on the slides, use no more than four bullets per slide. The human mind can’t comprehend much more than that.

Now, I have no scientific evidence to support the 4-line rule - it’s the Cytron rule. Again - think of simple slides with images and keywords rather than too much type.

Here is one good and one bad example of what I’m talking about:

Good example: "The Elephant in the Room." This says it all.

A bad slide - images are not readable and the slide "says" nothing.

According to research conducted by the Enterprise Council on Small Business, Rick wrote that “business owners surprisingly found that ’satisfaction” was the primary way they defined success, followed by ‘growth.’ They asked business owners to define what satisfaction means to them. Business owners said maintaining a healthy work/life balance was the single biggest factor in their definition of success.”

Rick added, “Keep that in mind when you’re considering how to help your clients achieve their goals. Their goals may not be what you think.”

I think this so incredibly true and something that creates a huge gap in the way CPA firms and companies serve their clients and customers. And, although this wasn’t a survey on the outlook of accounting firms, I am quite sure - without scientific research - that CPA firms also have a similar outlook.

Having this information in your bag of tricks can help drive business in several ways:

1. Most people like doing business with others who share their personal and professional values - it’s a bonding process. The next time you call on a client or try to woo a customer, talk about the work/life balance within your firm. There almost certainly will be some commonality between your firm and your client’s or prospect’s business.
2. Practice what you preach. Look internally in your own firm or company and assess your own staff’s beliefs. This creates a subtle “touch” point to boosting loyalty within your ranks and creates a conversation starter. Perhaps you find, for example, that you need a “Happiness” Committee to create buzz about ways to improve morale.
3. Focusing in on the third belief, “Doing What I Love,” how often do we take our clients and employees for granted by not recognizing this? Sure, work is just a “job” to some, but others feel differently - this is their life’s work. Recognize accomplishments and reward loyalty.

How does your firm compare to the survey findings? Comment on this post and we’ll explore your answers in a future blog posting.

First and foremost, make sure you realize one important thing: unless you’re technically skilled in HTML and Website behind-the-scences activity, optimizing pages is best left up to your Web services provider or someone skilled in this area. These resources should be easy to find; if you don’t have one readily available, ask your colleagues or professional friends for their recommendations.

I have 3 tips for you, but first, here is why SEO is important:

• You can have the most functional, informative site, but if clients and prospects can’t find you through searches, then your efforts will be ineffective.
• We’ve become a society totally conditioned to using the search function to find information. You no longer have to know the URL or even remember it.
• SEO is one tool in a series of tools you should be using to effectively manage your Web site. Other tools include usability studies, competitive analysis and, above all, user feedback that doesn’t cost anything. When was the last time you asked your clients what they thought about your site?

Here are my 3 tips to improve SEO:

1. Continually optimize your 50 most popular pages. Once you have several months of data on what words people are using to search for you, you can use them to improve your ranking. The trick is to do this on a monthly or continuous basis.
2. Add footers to every one of your pages. It’s surprising how many firms use their footer space for their physical address only. At the very least, include your cities, but also include your services.
3. Keywords: Use the terms people might use, not what you think they want to use. When marketing a firm, we know that we need to talk about what we can do for the client, not what the firm is all about. This same concept holds true for keywords you have on your site. Tip: Ask your clients what they would use to search for accounting services.

There is a great deal more to cover about SEO, but I’ll reserve more tips for another CPATechViews blog. Please submit your own SEO tips and tricks! I’m sure our readers will want to know what works for you and your firm or company.

Promoted as an instant PDF mobile scanner, I had my doubts about quality and ease of use - but am, instead, completely blown away by how simple the ScanSnap is to use. I had previously used my Lexmark all-in-one printer as a scanner - and it was neither easy nor exhibited the kind of quality I need.

The ScanSnap can scan 8 double-sided color pages in less than a minute, with a feeder that holds 10 total pages. That’s right. I said double-sided. Once the scan is complete, a pop-up window asked me to decide where I wanted it - as a file on my system, attached to an e-mail, or in Word or Excel.

It can be powered by AC or USB, and took less than 5 minutes to set up. USB-capabilities enable it to be truly mobile - perfect for staff working remotely.

I’m sold on this. Now if I can just break away from scanning everything in the office, I can get back to work.

• “How to Talk to Your Clients about Sales and Use Tax,” a free guide for CPAs to sales and use tax, was authored by Geni Whitehouse, CPA.CITP, CSPM, and released by sales tax technology provider SpeedTax. The guide outlines five steps firms should take to begin addressing their clients’ sales and use tax needs.
  

  Geni Whitehouse

• “Quantum of Paperless,” a guide on how firms can integrate paperless or “less paper” processes into their firms, was authored by Roman Kepczyk, CPA.CITP, of InfoTech Partners North America, Inc. Roman is a respected accounting technology consultant who has years of experience he has now imparted in this terrific book. It’s available on Amazon.

Sage sponsored the meeting because it wanted feedback and advice on how to effectively reach out to the accounting profession - but what I think the company really wanted to validation on its brand. A few of us in the room who work in public relations and marketing realized this right away.

The consensus was that Sage needed to simplify its brand by focusing on core messages about its products to the accounting profession. With so many brands (MIP, Peachtree, MAS and several new ones), how can the average accountant begin to understand what Sage has to offer, let alone make sense of this to push out solutions to clients?

This point was driven home very eloquently by Jennifer Wilson of ConvergenceCoaching. Thank you Jennifer!

Although the discussion was heated at time - driven by the fact that this group of leaders are VERY passionate about what they do - I hope Sage walked away with information it can use to make itself more organized and more useful to the profession. Time will tell.

My eye was drawn this morning to an American Express Open Forum story authored by Jantsch on Five Small Business Trends for 2010. LIke many readers of the CPATechViews blog, I, too, own a small business and am constantly searching for ways of doing business that will help me stand apart from my competition.

Although all five are noteworthy, two of his predictions have direct parallels to accounting: #4 - Kitchen Sink on a Cloud, and #5 - Fusion Boosts Offline.

“Kitchen Sink on a Cloud” is all about cloud computing - technology you’ve read about from Darren Root and others who hail the virtues of outsourced information repositories. The article states:

“The sacred cow of the desktop, financial data will finally move online completely as QuickBooks Online. Tools like Freshbooks make it very easy to do bookkeeping online while providing secure access for financial employees and outside accounting resources.”

I personally think you’ll see even more information coming about in 2010 about cloud computing, so stay tuned.

The other prediction, “Fusion Boosts Offline” goes back to something I talk with accounting groups and firms about all the time. You have to “mine” your contact database in person as much as you mine them online and/or in social media. I compare this scenario to the way technology impacts our lives - we use it to its fullest, and yet, there are some activities that are just as effective in an offline environment.

Enjoy the article.