Charlie Jones, CPA Founder and Managing Partner Marshall Jones & Company

We are a 25 year old, 12 person Atlanta firm. Our mix of revenues is about 52% tax (very high level) and 48% audit. We have recently added accounting services by hiring an experienced bookkeeper to do controllership by the hour, basically Quickbooks review and cleanup. We abandoned traditional write-up work several years ago, and until recently, really didn’t serve any smaller corporate clients.

My partner, Harry Marshall, died a year ago. He headed up our tax department. His idea of growing the firm was “do good work and referrals will follow”. That works for high level tax clients, but only yields 5% or less revenue growth.
On the audit side, my area, you have to have a marketing plan.

At our 25th anniversary luncheon last October, I announced that I was going to spend 50% or more of my time over the next ten years doubling the size of our firm to 25 professionals. I am 65 and my personality, talents and passions are more in marketing than in technical work.

Over the last 6 months, I have joined every industry trade organization, chamber of commerce, and a weekly networking group. It’s fun, but exhausting. I have stated a goal of adding $150,000 in revenues this calendar year. All of these efforts are SLOWLY yielding some limited results.

In March/April of this year we signed on to GoodAccountants.com for the $5,000 program. After about 2 weeks, the credibility between our two firms accelerated considerably, to such an extent that we advanced to the $25,000 level. The results have been fantastic. We have booked about $20,000 of new work, and have a possible $10,000 audit client that we are meeting with next week.

One thing I must warn you about. If you sign up, you better be prepared to be responsive to the leads they send you. Because I had already structured my firm so that I could do this, I have been able to respond almost immediately to all referrals they have given us. Two days ago I traveled two hours south of Atlanta to meet with a small non-profit. It will likely be less than $5,000 per year. We’re still working on exactly what they need. GoodAccountants.com will want to see that you can handle the work they send you. They have their reputation to maintain. But I can assure you, if you hold up your end of the deal, they will fulfill their obligation.

If they continue to send us referrals at the current pace, my guess is that we will engage them for a second $25,000 program later this year after we have booked the first $75,000 in revenues.

I will likely phase out of my other marketing initiatives. The GoodAccountants.com marketing program is almost a sure fire guarantee that I will reach my $150,000 goal, and our goal for increased revenues in 2011 will be in the $150-$175,000 range. We have the capability to take on work as fast as they can get it to us. There are plenty of good out-of-work accountants, and we are part of a small 10 firm Atlanta CPA Alliance that I started 4 years ago, and we share staff sometimes on large projects, so getting the added work done is not a problem.

Bottom line, these folks are for real. If you want to grow your practice, they can help you do it. I would be remiss if I didn’t add that we have had several low level referrals. Mostly dis-advantaged individuals with tax problems. We have treated them like any other referral, but most have not shown up for agreed upon appointments. Point is, we will not decline to attempt to help any GA referral, but some of them just don’t fit. But we let them make that decision (the potential client).

Charlie Jones – MarshallJones.com