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ICYMI
Most of the opportunities we cover this month weren't hidden. They were already happening — in the quick phone calls you weren't billing, the marketing you weren't finishing, the tax season you survived instead of studied. The pattern across all four of these Q&As is the same: the gap isn't knowledge, it's structure. Two minutes here might save you a quarter of underpriced work.
- Bianca Prieto, Editor
Your firm looks identical to 20 others. Here's how to fix that.
Claire Waters, fractional marketing director for accounting firms
Most accounting firms don't have a marketing problem. They have a positioning problem. Waters argues the fix starts before you post a single thing: strip the logo off your website and ask if anyone could tell it apart from the competition. If the answer is no, no amount of LinkedIn content will save you. The firms pulling ahead aren't posting more. They're saying something different, and making it dead simple for an interested prospect to take the next step.
You're already doing advisory. You're just not charging for it.
Tony Proctor, EA, firm principal at Proctor & Assocs.
Every "quick question" a client asks mid-tax-prep is an advisory conversation you're having for free. Proctor's case for CAS isn't theoretical. He says the first step is simply noticing which questions keep showing up across your client roster, then building a structured offer around the one problem you're already solving. The firms that made this shift didn't overhaul their model. They stopped treating their most valuable work like a side conversation.
Stop closing. Start qualifying. That's what actually wins advisory clients.
Brian Mayoral, CEO of Sell Up
Most CPAs lose advisory deals before they ever make a pitch, by over-delivering in the discovery call. Mayoral's diagnosis is blunt: when you explain the how before someone has paid for it, you don't build confidence, you create confusion, and confused people don't buy. The fix isn't a better closing script. It's switching from "how do I convince them?" to "is there actually a fit here?" That single mindset shift, paired with a standardized entry-point offer, removes the friction that stalls most deals.
If your firm survived tax season on heroics, that's not a win. It's a warning.
Jeanne Hardy, CAS firm owner and founder of Levvy
Tax season doesn't create problems. It just makes them visible. Hardy's insight is that most firms aren't held together by good systems. They're held together by two or three experienced people who quietly compensate for every gap. If review has become the place where prep errors, client chaos, and unclear processes all land at once, that's not a review problem. It's a workflow problem that's been hiding all year. The questions to ask your team right now, while the pain is fresh, are the ones that will actually change how next season runs.
You’re all caught up!
I hope you enjoyed this email! Take this quick survey and tell us more! Which interview stood out to you? Got someone in mind who deserves the spotlight in the Net Gains? We’d love to hear from you, and yes, we read every message. Hit reply to shoot us a note!
