With Flat Organic Growth, and Amid Forecasts of Shrinking Compliance Revenue, CPAs Seek Alternatives to Billing for Time
Oct 30, 2017 – Santa Clarita, CA – Accounting-firm growth consultant and multi-year “Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting” honoree Michelle Golden launches her newest venture, Fore LLC.
Applying Michelle Golden’s original and tested techniques for up-front pricing, Fore LLC provides education and consulting to CPA firms. Public accounting firms are increasingly committed to converting from their after-the-fact time-based revenue model to pricing their work in advance and Michelle’s Advanced Pricing Methods® show them exactly how.
Why now?
“Alternative pricing has been a hot topic for decades, but uptake of non-time-based pricing approaches in the CPA profession was sluggish—limited to a handful of ‘innovators.’ That’s changed,” says Golden.
“Demand from larger firms for my type of pricing help rose sharply this year, no doubt because of heightened talk of impending industry impacts. One driver is time savers like artificial intelligence and blockchain. Another is the growing need for firms to become anticipatory organizations that innovate to replace compliance work with higher-value service offerings.
I’m excited to now help firms who are the next group on the innovation curve: the ‘early adopters.’”
Wider industry factors are also at play. Low to no growth also precipitates a need for alternative pricing approaches. The 2017 Rosenberg Survey of 347 CPA firms reflects no rise in organic growth from 2016—both years report low at 5.8%. And the 2017 IPA Survey of 540 CPA firms shows a top-line organic revenue decline from 6.3% to 5.3% over twelve months.
Accounting Today’s 2017 Top 100 CPA Firms reports revenues are still fairly flat and low since the post-2010 rebound. With this slow growth, the costly distractions of consolidation and retirement transitions, and massive technological changes on the horizon, firms seek to create greater value for customers and get paid accordingly.
Unexpected advantages
“We’ve seen some cool and unexpected advantages to pricing in advance,” Golden shared. “Advanced Pricing Methods® (APM) invoke mindset changes that lead to positive cultural shifts. The methods help CPAs who’ve historically struggled to identify or articulate their impact in client problem solving. With APM, CPAs begin to see themselves and their work differently. Instead of firm-centric task and time-expenditure perspectives, they learn to focus instead on customers’ outcomes.”
“This results in much richer conversations and relationships with their customers,” Golden continues. “When CPAs are more attuned what’s most valuable in buyers’ eyes, they do more of it—it becomes a terrific cycle.”
A longtime independent consultant, Golden had surprised the accounting industry in 2013 when she took her unique expertise in practical pricing methods and product-positioning skills in-house. She joined visionary firm Kennedy and Coe (now KCoe Isom) as a partner and growth leader. At the time, KCoe was the largest CPA firm to implement upfront, value-based pricing on a grand scale. Her firm doubled in size between since 2013 and 2017, now ranked 60th by revenue among U.S. accounting firms.
With K·Coe Isom’s blessing—and a continuing working relationship with the firm—Golden now departs her in-house role to launch Fore LLC in response to the CPA-industry’s demand for better ways to price.
About Fore, LLC
Fore, by definition, means being in front, ahead, and in a lead position—which perfectly suits a company that emphasizes both the customer-friendly approach of providing certainty in price before the work is done, and the desire that the best-of-the-best firms have to be at the forefront of the innovation curve as innovators and early adopters.
About Michelle Golden
Michelle Golden’s prior company, Golden Practices Inc., was known for improving CPA firms’ growth, profitability, and market position from its founding in 1999 until she became a partner at K·Coe Isom in 2013. Recognized as a premier thought leader and change agent, Golden is a sought-after speaker and facilitator (and respected Golden Practices blogger). She has a long history of successfully introducing firms to new ideas and inspiring them to implement change.
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