To understate, there’s a lot going on in our profession. With the rush of private-equity buyers, technology breakthroughs, massive retirements and talent shortages, growth simply isn’t the highest priority. Why then should firms work to improve their understanding of strategic growth?

The short answer is that the current frenzy of activity will not last forever. Market conditions ebb and flow, and ours is no exception.

Historically, before technology freed firms from a future of mundane work, before the aging out of rainmakers, and before the tsunami of interest in consolidation, growth was fueled by individual contributors. Banker breakfasts and lawyer lunches worked well enough, typically until firms reached a volume of about $10 million, and a shortage of rainmakers made it difficult to sufficiently scale the firm and keep everyone busy. It’s often at that point that a strategic approach has been needed to continue a sufficient growth path.

For those firms committed to remaining independent, and those committed to having a growth strategy in place, I offer this overview of strategic organic growth principles, which I consider as foundational and immutable as “debit left, credit right.” The principle, built around service, channels and targets, has had a significant impact on the future and fortunes of highly successful firms.

One firm CEO graciously noted on our website, “Gale Cros­ley helped us to establish a foundation for growth that goes beyond traditional marketing and business development. To this day, all our discussions about growth begin with SCT: service, channel, target. The results speak for themselves.”

Three elements

The visual representation of the strategic growth principle is simple. Imagine three circles with “plus” signs flanking the middle circle. From left to right the circles are named:

1. Services: The offerings you bring to market;
2. Distribution channels: How you and your target market find each other in great quantities; and,
3. Targets: The markets you seek to penetrate.

All elements of strategic growth roll up into one of these categories.

Understanding the principle of strategic growth makes it possible to discover and execute a strategy, rather than implementing tactics without a strategy (e.g., a booth at a conference!). You now have the framework and vocabulary to evolve a revenue growth strategy based upon constantly evolving market conditions.

For example, a review of below-expectation channel performance might reveal a channel into the wrong buyer group, a channel owned by a competitor, or a new channel keeper with limited understanding of the alignment of interests between your two firms.

Similarly, your service performance may be under competitive pressure due to a diminished value proposition. Or perhaps you’re seeing a shift in the target buyer group, such as a regulatory change that reduces the buyer group’s need for your service. Dynamic market conditions mean you need to be constantly attentive to the impact on each element of the strategy. Think about the effect on Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey when Cirque de Soleil came to town — a complete market disruption!

The strategic growth principle is also valuable in making an initial assessment of a firm’s industry and service line performances. In consulting with firm leaders, the three circles are my organizing principle. I envision in my mind the framework as I gain a sense of the relative strength of the three categories. These conversations lead to identification of the changes in the appropriate categories to shore up the strategy and get revenue flowing.

Today is not the future. Change is inevitable and market shifts are certain — don’t be caught without a strategic plan to adapt and grow. In a future article, I will add depth and detail to each of the three circles.

Document management solutions provider SmartVault has expanded its 10-year strategic partnership with Intuit by integrating with ProConnect Tax. The integrated experience automatically creates clients in SmartVault and enables printing and auto-routing of tax returns from ProConnect to the correct client folder in SmartVault. The SmartVault and Intuit ProConnect integration is scheduled to release in early summer 2025. …  Enterprise AI solutions provider boost.ai has launched its AI agent for ERP and accounting solutions provider Sage. Within 50 days, the AI agent was made available to Sage 50 Accounting users in Canada. The deployment of Boost.ai’s conversational AI allows Sage 50 Accounting users to access its automated customer support channel, which helps resolve accounting inquiries and troubleshoot technical issues. … Top 50 firm UHY announced its new strategic partnership with Prophix, a corporate performance management software company. As an official partner within the Prophix network, UHY will offer advisory and implementation services that leverage Prophix One, a financial performance platform. … Cloud ERP provider Acumatica announced a strategic alliance with payroll and HCM company ADP that enables businesses to access a solution that unifies core business processes. The company also announced the expansion of Acumatica’s partnership with Shopify. Combining Shopify’s commerce capabilities with Acumatica’s ERP platform helps merchants manage their entire business, from online storefront to back-end operations. … Accounting-focused cloud services provider Rightworks has joined Wolters Kluwer’s CCH Marketplace. The collaboration allows accounting firms using Wolters Kluwer solutions to give their employees secure, remote access to their tax apps, including CCH Axcess, enabling them to work from anywhere. Additionally, using Rightworks OneSpace, Wolters Kluwer’s users can simplify firm operations, secure their data, connect with clients and scale their practice.

How do we expect more people to join the accounting profession if we don’t brand it properly?

At its core, this is the root of the pipeline crisis. There are already more than enough pieces of thought leadership and industry voices mentioning something related to the pipeline in every conversation; but while these all discuss the assumed causes, the danger of not resolving it, and what potential solutions could be, very few seem to get at the underlying source that these points sit on.

It’s a branding issue. Plain and simple.

Branding … for a profession?

We usually think about branding in terms of how a company that sells a product or service gets their corporate message and image out to the public, but this exercise applies to work disciplines as well.

Let’s look at mainstream finance or investment professionals. Love them or hate them, “Finance Bros” have become an iconic image of the finance profession’s brand — regardless of your opinion on it being a positive stereotype or not, the facts show that it does attract individuals to pursue careers in that industry.

Interestingly enough, I would argue accounting professionals are better suited for these roles; however the masses don’t see that value and often opt to skip straight to pursuing the traditional finance roles.

How about marketing professionals? They’re seen as creative and receive great praise for successfully executing major marketing campaigns. These are campaigns that can create cultural moments in society, making the major and career path very attractive to college students. 

Of course, most of these individuals won’t end up doing the fun, exciting and flashy things that they were inspired by — but again, that’s the power of telling a compelling branding story; it doesn’t actually matter what’s on the other side.

Even lawyers, who debatably have to do even more tedious work and brutal hours than accountants, have adequately branded themselves, with the help of pop culture. Think of every law or crime show, or movie, that showcases the brilliance of a clever lawyer winning a case in remarkable fashion. Outside of Hollywood, though, law firms are known for having elaborate and wild holiday parties, and positioning themselves as the country’s elite workforce.

So what about accounting? Well, sometime over the last century, the stigma that accountants are boring, dull and quirky “number people” took hold as the profession’s identity, and being the risk averse folks that we inherently are, we didn’t push back.

The truth, however, is the exact same types of negative stereotypes that we’ve been labeled with can and should be spun into the positives that each offers. For example, being somewhat of a “nerd” should be positioned as simply being smarter than the rest (we have to try to be a little cocky — not too much, but we’ve earned a little bit) 

All these professions and industries have either intentionally or unintentionally created brand identities that, even if misleading, have been embraced by interested individuals. Our profession actually has so much that is true and valid to be excited about, and we just need to embrace it.

To make it simple for us corporate folks, think of it all as a “recruiting” campaign in the same way that HR does at any business. There are companies that do a better job and have an easier job recruiting because they are a place that attracts top tier talent. This is due to the company being well branded. In our case, the profession is the company.

Becoming better storytellers

Look, there’s a reason we all choose accounting instead of filmmaking. Usually that reason is because we don’t have that same natural creativity that artistic talents have; but that doesn’t mean we have to also be poor storytellers.

When I began working in content with seasoned entertainment and film industry professionals, I got to spend a lot of time in “writers rooms,” wherein you brainstorm ideas, pitch concepts and develop the best storylines for the piece of content you’re going to produce.

Early on, I learned a key lesson that everyone in the entertainment space utilizes when trying to put together a great film: show, don’t tell.

For the accounting profession, we rarely even do the telling part, so let’s break it down.

The self-fulfilling prophecy that we’ve spiraled into is the neverending loop of not being proud to share what we do. This further creates disinterest from unknowing masses who believe the stereotypes (since it’s the only information they have available to go off of) and makes what we do not something that we want to share, and the cycle continues.

We’ll first need to start with talking about the incredible and impressive spectrum of job and career opportunities that exist at all stages and levels of business, which are better enabled by CPA and accounting backgrounds. I’m talking about the traditional stuff such as CFOs who rose through the ranks of accounting, as well as the nontraditional paths such as product developers for accounting software. Heck, even my role as a content producer and strategist is only possible because of my CPA license and accounting experience.

We can’t be afraid to talk about what we do, and in a more exciting way. People read the energy of those they communicate with, and if your energy in telling a story is low, the mood of the receiver will also be low.

Then we can evolve past just telling, but start to create enough buzz for the visual part of the story — after all, our society loves watching content. By showing what we do, which is very much a part of being active online, we’ll foster a deeper connection to the positive and inspiring aspects of the profession.

Rather than trying to convince individuals to join us, we should be inspiring them to seek us out.

Inspiring the future

If you go onto the accounting subreddits, LinkedIn or #TaxTwitter, you’ll find plenty of peers giving their best efforts to proudly tout their CPA license and accounting life, but we need to amplify these voices and galvanize the corporate accounting class, who I would say are the most passive of professionals.

I know this from countless firsthand conversations with colleagues at accounting events who have expressed their interest in and enjoyment of my content, which I would otherwise have had no clue of since they did not re-share, like or comment. There’s nothing wrong with this; however, it does set us up for a losing battle online in a digital world where voice reach and community engagement is everything. 

I know it isn’t going to be an overnight thing, but the excitement that technology and AI bring offers a new chance to spread a positive stereotype around what it means to be an accountant. Nobody needs to singlehandedly shift the perception, but we each can with an immaterial amount of effort impact our circles and spread the word. Our rebranding is something we need to actively focus on — it can’t be a passive “set it and forget it” marketing activity. 

As CPAs and accounting professionals with diverse backgrounds, experiences and positions, we can work together as a collective along with leading CPA organizations at the national, state and local levels to tell a better story and help rebrand the profession.